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Europe to become organised in his system, and there to accept the part which his tyranny imposes on it.

Thus the miser's tyranny over those subjected to him seconds his parsimony, his industry, his vigilance, his prudence, his secrecy, his cunning and unsociableness, which are the essential means of his avarice. He is secret, because he is suspicious. He is suspicious, because he pursues ends to which other men would be opposed, and because he has no counteracting trust of affection. He is cunning, because he both suspects and tries to outwit others. He makes a pretence of poverty, that no claims may be made on him, and that he may justify his economies. He is unsociable, because he is secret and suspicious, being engaged in pursuing an object of which others do not approve, and which alienates them from him.

The qualities to which we have referred appear to belong to avarice, in the sense that its thought, will, and conduct tend to acquire them because they are indispensable to the achievement of its ends.

We may next consider the dynamical relation of Avarice to the rest of the character, and try to discern the effects which it produces on other sentiments. In Grandet's affection for his daughter we observe the restricted manifestation of his generosity. Twice a year he gives her a rare gold coin which it was understood she would not part with: "Grandet liked to watch the money accumulating in her hands. He did not part with his money; he felt that it was only like taking it out of one box and putting it into another."1 Other tendencies of affection are similarly restricted or destroyed. He cannot consider the happiness of his daughter from her point of view, and breaks her heart by refusing to allow her to marry the penniless cousin whom she loves. He is without pity for her distress; for pity would urge him to change his resolution. But by his bi-annual presents he thinks he is "fostering in his heiress a proper love of gold," which has given him the only happiness he understands. Thus the welfare and happiness which a parent conceives of for his child is determined by what he conceives 1 P. 27 (trans. E. Marriage). 2 Ibid.

to be welfare and happiness for himself, and these by the nature of his own sentiments. For his servant Nanon whom he has fashioned in habits as penurious as his own, and who loves him, he has a certain affection. From time to time he pities her, and exclaims "poor Nanon," but "this pity in the miser's soul, which gave a thrill of pleasure to the lonely woman," was cold blooded; "it was a luxury that cost him nothing."

"1

In the emotional constitution of Grandet's sentiment we find a certain poverty of elements. His joy in his growing wealth, his absorbing desire continually to add to it, the hopes and anxieties with which his different ventures fill him, his suspicion of those with whom he has dealings, all these we are able to distinguish; although the last is not developed to the same degree as in other examples of the same type, because all the members of his household have been fashioned by him to complete obedience; but the symbol of the miser's suspicion, the bunch of keys, is always in his immediate control; everything is kept locked, and into his strong room no member of his household is ever allowed to enter.

The simplicity of his sentiment in respect of emotions, is due to the fact that he has been uniformly successful. He is never tried by failure and loss, but grows wealthier continually. Balzac has furnished him with an astute and penetrating intellect, and this in conjunction with the tenacity of his will accounts for his success. This quality of the will is a feature of all misers: without it avarice could never become a master-sentiment; but the degree and quality of the intellect is so much a matter of native endowment that it varies greatly in different examples of the type. In the portrait of the miser by the Russian novelist, Gogol, we see how deficiency of intelligence may render him ridiculouswhich Grandet never becomes-and counteract his ends. For he grew poorer, not richer, because he accumulated, not money alone but everything, and expended nothing. His property fell into decay; the corn and hay rotted in his barns, but he "rambled about the streets of his village, peering beneath the bridges, and the planks thrown across the gutters, 1 Op. cit. p. 25.

and everything he came across, whether it was the old sole of a shoe, a woman's discarded rag, an iron nail, or a piece of a broken earthenware pot, he carried it all home with him, and threw it upon the heap in the corner of the

room." 1

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Balzac has added nothing essential to the type of the miser as it was drawn by Molière, but he has made it more complex and human in providing it with a few stunted affections. In Molière's "L'Avare" the miser has no love even for his children; in other respects his features are the same. His suspicion is increased, because he has less control of his household than Grandet. He suspects his children of robbing him "Je crois qu'ils se font signe l'un à l'autre de me voler ma bourse."2 But he undergoes misfortune. He loses for a time his money; and we observe his grief and distraction. In his apostrophe at his loss, he personifies his wealth, and for the moment, and through this artifice, he feels pity on behalf of it: yet even at this moment his sorrow is almost entirely for himself. "Hélas! mon pauvre argent! mon pauvre argent! mon cher ami! on m'a privé de toi; et puisque tu m'est enlevé, j'ai perdu mon support, ma consolation, ma joie tout est fini pour moi, et je n'ai plus que faire au monde." 3

We have now furnished sufficient illustration to show that Avarice is not merely a sentiment, but that it is an instance of the law to which we referred, and therefore tends to form a complete type of character of its own, constituted of the emotions, thoughts, and volitions which its end requires, and also of a number of qualities which, becoming fixed in the character, counteract the qualities of other sentiments that conflict with them. It is in dynamic relation with all other sentiments in the character, restricting some, destroying others. It exercises only a few emotional dispositions, and allows the rest to perish through disuse; and thus in the growth of avarice tender and sympathetic emotions are eliminated, until with their loss the character acquires the negative quality of inhumanity.

1 'Les Armes Mortes,' ch. vi.

3 A. iv., S. vii.

2 A. i., S. v.

With this conception of the all-pervasive influence of the sentiment in character, there is naturally connected the problem of tracing the different types of character which different sentiments tend to develop, and this directs observation and research to the discovery of the laws connecting each sentiment with the rest of the character.

OF

CHAPTER XIII

THE INFLUENCE OF THE TEMPERAMENT ON THE
CHARACTER

1. Of the Distinction between Temper and Temperament.

THE additions that we have made in the preceding chapters to our working conception of character have enabled us to define certain problems of the science that will hereafter, as we hope, direct our research to the discovery of important laws. In this chapter we have to study another side of character, to form a conception of it and of the problems which it suggests. Besides those qualities which a sentiment acquires for its own needs, there are other qualities to which we have not referred that are innate in character, and which are the foundation of the variety of its natural tempers and temperaments. Besides the problem of the influence of a sentiment on the character as a whole, there is the corresponding problem of the influence of the character on the formation of sentiments.

'Temperament' and 'character'! Two ideas that we so often combine, distinguish, and sometimes oppose, as we combine, distinguish, and oppose 'character' and 'intellect,' 'character' and 'conduct,' 'character' and 'circumstances.' Yet there is no character apart from the intellectual processes that subserve it; no character that does not tend to manifest itself in conduct; no character manifested without circumstances that arouse it to activity, that supply it with the material on which it reacts ;-so also there is no character without temperament.

We vaguely surmise that our character develops as we grow up, and that at a certain age it is set and its chief

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