No, we do not get any certain standard of men by a chart of their
temperaments; it will hardly answer to select a wife by the color of
her hair; though it be by nature as red as a cardinal's hat, she may
be no more constant than if it were dyed. The farmer who shuns all
the lymphatic beauties in his neighborhood, and selects to wife the
most nervous-sanguine, may find that she is unwilling to get up in
the winter mornings and make the kitchen fire. Many a man, even in
this scientific age which professes to label us all, has been cruelly
deceived in this way. Neither the blondes nor the brunettes act
according to the advertisement of their temperaments. The truth
is that men refuse to come under the classifications of the
pseudo-scientists, and all our new nomenclatures do not add much to our
knowledge. You know what to expect--if the comparison will be pardoned
--of a horse with certain points; but you wouldn't dare go on a journey
with a man merely upon the strength of knowing that his temperament was
the proper mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is not
able to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I am
very far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness and of
meanness that run through families and can be calculated to appear in
individuals with absolute certainty; one family will be trusty and
another tricky through all its members for generations; noble strains
and ignoble strains are perpetuated.
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