Temperaments (According to the Latest Findings of Science)

(According to the latest findings of science)

The Sanguine. Every impression acts on him quickly and lightly: hence, says Hufeland, his frivolity... In his youth he is a bebe a small child (French). and a Spitzbube a rascal (German).. He is rude to his teachers, does not cut his hair, does not shave, wears spectacles, and scribbles on walls. He studies badly but finishes his course all the same. He does not honor his parents. When he is rich he plays the dandy; when he is poor he lives like a pig. He sleeps until noon and goes to bed at no fixed hour. He writes with mistakes. Nature made him for love alone: loving is all he does. He is never averse to getting drunk as a lord; having soaked himself silly by evening, he rises in the morning brisk as ever, with only the faintest heaviness in his head, having no need of "similia similibus curantur" "like is cured by like" (Latin).. He marries by accident. He is at war with his mother-in-law forever. He is on bad terms with his relations. He lies without stint. He is terribly fond of scandals and amateur theatricals. In the orchestra he is first violin. Being frivolous, he is liberal. Either he never reads anything at all, or he reads himself sick. He loves the newspapers and is not above a spot of newspapering himself. The letters column of the comic weeklies was invented for sanguines and no one else. He is constant in his inconstancy. In the service he is a clerk of special errands or something of the kind. At the gymnasium he teaches literature. Rarely does he rise to the rank of actual state councillor; but if he does, he turns phlegmatic, and sometimes choleric. Wastrels, scoundrels, and idlers – these are sanguines. It is not advisable to share a room with a sanguine: he tells anecdotes the whole night through, and failing anecdotes, slanders his neighbors or lies. He dies of diseases of the digestive organs and premature exhaustion.

The sanguine woman is the most bearable of women, if she is not a fool.

The Choleric. Bilious, and sallow-grey in the face. His nose is somewhat crooked, and his eyes roll in their sockets like hungry wolves in a cramped cage. He is irritable. For the bite of a flea or the prick of a pin he is ready to tear the whole world to pieces. When he speaks he sputters and shows his brown, or else very white, teeth. He is deeply convinced that in winter it is "the devil knows how cold," and in summer "the devil knows how hot..." He changes cooks weekly. At dinner he feels very ill-used, because everything is always overdone, oversalted... For the most part a bachelor, and if married, he keeps his wife under lock and key. Jealous as the devil. He does not understand jokes. He cannot abide anything at all. He reads the newspapers only in order to abuse the newspapermen. Even in his mother’s womb he was already convinced that all the papers lie. As a husband and a friend he is impossible; as a subordinate he is scarcely conceivable; as a superior he is unbearable and thoroughly undesirable. Not infrequently, unhappily, he is a pedagogue: he teaches mathematics and Greek. I do not recommend sharing a room with him: all night he coughs, hawks, and loudly curses the fleas. Hearing by night the singing of cats or roosters, he coughs and, in a rattling voice, sends the footman up to the roof to catch and, whatever it takes, throttle the singer. He dies of consumption or diseases of the liver.

The choleric woman is the devil in a skirt, a crocodile.

The Phlegmatic. A pleasant man (I speak, of course, not of the Englishman, but of the Russian phlegmatic). His appearance is quite ordinary, blunt-hewn. Eternally serious, because he is too lazy to laugh. He eats whatever and whenever he likes; he does not drink, because he fears an apoplexy; he sleeps twenty hours in the twenty-four. He is an indispensable member of every possible commission, sitting, and emergency assembly, at which he understands nothing, dozes without a qualm of conscience, and patiently waits for the end. He marries at thirty with the help of uncles and aunts. He is the most convenient man imaginable for marriage: he agrees to everything, never grumbles, and is easy to get along with. He calls his wife "little soul." He loves sucking-pig with horseradish, church choristers, everything a bit sour, and a cool breeze. The saying "Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas" "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity" (Latin). (Nonsense of nonsenses and every kind of nonsense) was invented by a phlegmatic. He falls ill only when he is chosen for jury duty. Catching sight of a stout woman, he grunts, wiggles his fingers, and tries to smile. He subscribes to "The Field" and is annoyed that it does not color its pictures or print anything funny. He considers writers the cleverest of men and, at the same time, the most pernicious. He is sorry that his children are not birched at the gymnasium, and would not mind giving them a birching himself now and then. In the service he is content. In the orchestra he is the double bass, the bassoon, the trombone. At the theater he is the cashier, the footman, the prompter, and now and again, pour manger for his bread (French)., an actor. He dies of paralysis or dropsy.

The phlegmatic woman is a weepy, goggle-eyed, fat, mealy, doughy German woman. She resembles a sack of flour. She is born in order to become, in time, a mother-in-law. To be a mother-in-law is her ideal.

The Melancholic. His eyes are grey-blue, forever ready to fill with tears. There are wrinkles on his brow and around his nose. His mouth is somewhat crooked. His teeth are black. He is inclined to hypochondria. He complains eternally of a pain under the pit of his stomach, a stitch in his side, and poor digestion. His favorite occupation is to stand before the mirror and examine his sluggish tongue. He believes his chest is weak and his nerves are shattered, and so every day he drinks a decoction instead of tea, and an elixir of life instead of vodka. With sorrow and with tears in his voice he informs his neighbors that laurel-cherry and valerian drops no longer help him at all... He supposes that once a week it would do no harm to take a purgative. He has long since decided that the doctors do not understand him. Quacks, wise women, whisperers, drunken feldshers, and now and then midwives are his chief benefactors. He puts on his fur coat in September and takes it off in May. In every dog he suspects rabies, and ever since a friend informed him that a cat is capable of smothering a sleeping man, he sees in cats the implacable enemies of mankind. His last will and testament has long been ready. He swears by heaven and earth that he drinks nothing at all. Now and then he drinks warm beer. He marries an orphan. His mother-in-law, if he has one, he calls the fairest and wisest of ladies; her admonitions he hears out in silence, his head inclined to one side; to kiss her plump, sweaty hands, smelling of pickle brine, he considers his most sacred duty. He carries on an active correspondence with uncles, aunts, his godmother, and the friends of his childhood. He does not read the newspapers. He once read the "Moskovskie Vedomosti," but, feeling at each reading a heaviness under the pit of his stomach, a pounding of the heart, and a mist before his eyes, he gave it up. In secret he reads Debay and Josa. During the Vetlyanka plague he took communion five times. He suffers from watering eyes and nightmares. In the service he is not especially fortunate: he will get no further than assistant desk clerk. He loves "The Little Splinter." In the orchestra he is the flute and the cello. He sighs day and night, and so I do not recommend sharing a room with him. He has forebodings of floods, earthquakes, war, the final collapse of morality, and his own death from some dreadful disease. He dies of diseases of the heart, of the quacks’ cures, and, not infrequently, of hypochondria itself.

The melancholic woman is the most unbearable, the most restless of creatures. As a wife she drives one to stupefaction, to despair, and to suicide. Her one saving grace is that she is not hard to be rid of: give her money and pack her off on a pilgrimage.

The Choleric-Melancholic. In the days of his youth he was a sanguine. A black cat crossed his path, the devil struck him on the back of the head, and he became a choleric-melancholic. I speak of the well-known, the immortal neighbor of the "Zritel" editorial office. Ninety-nine percent of the Slavophiles are choleric-melancholics. An unrecognized poet, an unrecognized pater patriae father of the fatherland (Latin)., an unrecognized Jupiter and Demosthenes... and so on. A cuckold. In general, anyone loud but not strong.