Archetype

“ The simplest and narrowest class is that of actual Individuals. The next is formed by the cohesion of individuals into groups, creating Institutions. The third is made by the artistic conversion of individuals into fictitious characters, sufficiently artificial to be designated as Types,—more or less complex, according to the nature of their creator, but never entirely simple, if they are fashioned of human stuff.
Even more than usual, however, is the caution necessary that the classification is artificial and the classes inseparable. ”

“ The essential character of any anthropomorphic or human attribute—power for example, or wisdom, or goodness—is that it is limited, imperfect, and liable to error. But when we conceive of these qualities as existing in absolute perfection and boundless capacity, while we retain the idea that they are personal qualities, we in fact divest them of their anthropomorphic or human character. ”

“ Nature herself never offers the general without the individual, nor the individual without the general. Every figure is composed of individual traits which distinguish it from all others, and make its own looks, and, at the same time, it has general traits which{158} constitute what is called the human figure. These general traits are the constitutive lineaments, and this figure is the type, that are given to the pupil that is beginning in the art of design to trace. ”

“ Human life, as represented in literature, consists of two main branches, character and action. Of these, character, which is the realm of personality, is generalized by means of type, which is ideal character; action, which is the realm of experience, by plot, which is ideal action. It is convenient to examine the nature of these separately. A type, the example of a class, contains the characteristic qualities which make an individual one of that class ”

“ When the mind has learned to appreciate the difference between reputation and Character, between the Seeming and the being, it must next decide, if it would build up a worthy Character, what it desires this should be; for to build a Character requires a plan, no less than to build a house. A deep and broad foundation of sound opinions, believed in with the whole heart, can alone insure safety to the superstructure. Where such a foundation is not laid, the Character will possess no architectural unity,—will have no consistency. ”

“ If therefore you find some tales in one collection bearing a close resemblance with those you have read in another, you should make it a matter of interest to observe what is individual in the character of each, and to trace the points both of diversity and analogy in the mode of expression in which they are clothed, and which will be found just as marked as the difference in costume of the respective peoples who have told them each after their own fashion. ”

“ Is there one universal type of human character embracing and reconciling all the conflicting differences of human types in the living world and in its historic or prehistoric past? Can really scientific reasons be advanced in support of the sentimental belief in that colossal personage called "man," whose abstract unity is allowed to put on new phases of external form, but whose "essence" is declared to remain unaltered? ”

“ And so characters whether ingraven in metals, gemms, stones, clay, plaister or wood, or written upon parchment, paper, or the like, of what figure or form soever they be, are but qualities, and do qualifie the matter according to the form and figure impressed in the subject matter, which being artificially done, the matter is the patient, the figure or character is the exemplar cause, and the force that maketh the impression is the efficient cause, and that these as qualities have some efficacy, no rational man can deny. ”

“ I have been trying to show that culture is, or ought to be, the study and pursuit of perfection; and that of perfection as pursued by culture, beauty and intelligence, or, in other words, sweetness and light, are the main characters. But hitherto I have been insisting chiefly on beauty, or sweetness, as a character of perfection. To complete rightly my design, it evidently remains to speak also of intelligence, or light, as a character of perfection. ”

“ But then it must be confess’d, that as the great difficulty of Characteristic-Writing consists in this, so does the main Beauty and Force of it too: For Objects are apt to affect and move us according to their Presence or Absence; and a Character will naturally strike us more forcibly, the more the Images, which it consists of, are lively and natural; because the Object is then most present to our Mind. ”

“ DETACHED REFLECTIONS ON DIFFERENT QUESTIONS OF ÆSTHETICS. All the properties by which an object can become æsthetic, can be referred to four classes, which, as well according to their objective differences as according to their different relation with the subject, produce on our passive and active faculties pleasures unequal not only in intensity but also in worth; classes which also are of an unequal use for the end of the fine arts: they are the agreeable, the good, the sublime, and the beautiful. ”

“ In the state of differentiation to which superior and cultivated human species have attained, each individual forms surely a separate variety determined by what is called, abstractly, "the character." ”

“ We have now passed in review the traits that are usually taken as constituting culture. The anthropological conception of the term is that it is the trait-complex manifested by a separate social unit of mankind. Some anthropologists take the position that the only correct view of the data of our subject is that which regards the social unit solely and that all such discussions as we have so far made are wrong in principle, because each trait has a peculiar relation to the complex practised by the group. ”

“ Each variety of form, color, and character has its appropriate style; but our space here is too limited to allow us to do more than drop a hint toward what each requires, to produce the most harmonious and effective combination. ”

“ They have, in pursuance of their Theory, mapped out the human scull into compartments, to each of which they have assigned a particular faculty or sentiment, and they profess to tell, with some degree of accuracy, the individual character by the peculiar formation of the head. ”

“ There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It is sufficient, to our present purpose, to indicate three. One class live to the utility of the symbol; esteeming health and wealth a final good. Another class live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol; as the poet, and artist, and the naturalist, and man of science. ”

“ We have only started the subject of correspondence with individual character, because we think that imaginative minds might take up the idea with some success, as furnishing them with a guide in the variation of their designs, more certain than mere experiment on unmeaning forms, or than ringing indiscriminate changes on component parts of established beauty. ”

“ While the ideal type is adhered to, and a morphological unity may be proved, yet there is an orderly and beautiful gradation, in which each form becomes more complicated than the form which precedes it. ”

“ To the three spheres of sentiment, of science, and of practice, conform three classes of character, in whom each respectively predominates. We feel the spirit of the first; we admire the intellect of the second; we deal only with the actions of the third. We turn to the first for inspiration and for influence ”

“ But when we have inveighed as much as we need against the dangers of classification, we must swing round to the first statement that for unifying the character and giving it fundamental significance such classification is of great importance.
Merely to find the type to which a character belongs is not sufficient; such a process leaves the character stamped, to be sure, but without interest. We care for living people not chiefly because of their type but because of their individuality, the little traits that set them apart from their fellows. ”

“ Everywhere we observe the traits of character distinctive of the individual and his position, rendered with a scrupulous fidelity: nothing is omitted, no detail of the characteristics of the model is suppressed. ”

“ Approaching the question as we do, not from the point of view of the evolution of a particular literary form, but from that of a persistent ideal and quasi-philosophical tradition, which manifests itself in all manner of forms and fashions, we have a perfect right to adopt whatever classification suits our purpose best, provided always that we have a clear notion what it is we are discussing. ”

“ Not only does he achieve a large unity of action, building into a shapely structure round his central figure a complex of persons, motives and social conditions, but he deals in detail with the inner life of his characters, and he gives to passion and sentiment the pervading importance that has now become traditional in this form of literature. ”

“ On your style often depends your own character,—almost always the character given you by the world. If you adopt the lofty style,—if you string together noble phrases and swelling Sonora,—you have expressed, avowed, a frame of mind which you will insensibly desire to act up to; the desire gradually begets the capacity. ”

“ Thus the indications of character, of peculiarity, so predominate, the whole is so much of one colour, that the result resembles one of those allegorical personifications in which, as much as possible, everything human is eliminated except what belongs to the peculiarity, the personification. ”

“ It has done what it had to do, it has represented a certain unique combination, one particular expression of the race. These types are shadows—manes. Century after century employs itself in fashioning them. Glory—fame—is the proof that one type has seemed to the other types newer, rarer, and more beautiful than the rest. The common types are souls too, only they have no interest except for the Creator, and for a small number of individuals. ”

“ But this evolution of personal character—under which we include the actions, instincts, emotions, reason, imagination of the individual unit—must not be viewed apart from the extent to which it prevails, that is, the number of units in any social group who may be regarded as having attained a given standard of such evolution. ”

“ Properties belong to things in themselves, but qualities exist in the mind as properties are viewed in relation to human designs. Qualities are relations, and the terms of the relation are properties on the one hand and purposes on the other. ”

“ I contend then that certain features of character, it may be in very varying degrees of intensity, belong to the more active and passionless temperament, and certain other features attend on the more reflective and impassioned temperament. If it can be shown that there are two marked groups of elements in character—the more impassioned group and the less impassioned group—and that each group may be inferred to exist if but one or two of its characteristic elements are clearly seen, why even then much would be gained in the interpretation of history and of daily life. ”

“ The first point however which demands our attention is to determine in which of the higher classes soul is included and what is its generic character — whether, in other words, it is an individual thing and real substance or a quality or quantity or any other of the categories as they have been distinguished. ”

“ Whether the varieties which are apparent in the human character are to be traced up to the different methods employed in its formation, or to some inherent peculiarity in the constitution of the mind, is a much vexed question amongst philosophers. Education and example no doubt exercise a most material influence, but they do not operate in a uniform manner, as we have known the most opposite characters rise out of the same family. ”

“ Perhaps the principles of unity and variety—two essentials of any art work—enter into the matter. The variety in the uniforms of the different sections satisfies the eye, and the unity of the marching pleases the mind. ”

“ I understand, by this term, those who have no special form of their own, the acquired characters. In these there is nothing innate, nothing resembling a vocation; nature has made them plastic to excess. ”

“ I love forms, because they are pleasant and useful. I hate propriety, because it would be our master, and by propriety you mean decorum--I understand you perfectly. Yes, then, yes: I love the forms of society, that give an æsthetic charm to existence, and make it smooth and easy, but I hate what people call decorum. ”

“ The first occasion of it was, from a desire I had, to give some assistance to another person, who was willing to ingage in this design of framing a real Character, from the Natural notion of things; for the helping of whom in so worthy an undertaking, I did offer to draw up for him, the Tables of Substance, or the species of Natural Bodies, reduced under their several Heads ”

“ The champions of the theory, moreover, place it on a metaphysical basis, finding in the will the essence of human personality, and therefore of the art which shows human personality raised to its highest power. ”

“ In fact, all these theories are of little use as formulæ of interpretation, for we must study carefully each trait-complex before a conclusion as to its origin can be reached. Their true functions are to define the different ways in which cultural similarities have been observed to come about.
The intensive analytic study of single trait-complexes has developed the pattern theory. [8] The conception is that in certain phases of culture each social unit develops a style, or pattern, for its traits and that borrowed traits will be worked over to make them conform to this pattern. ”