Commentary on Human Temperaments as They Depend on the Structure and Fabric of the Body

sensations and mixes itself into all the actions of the melancholics in such a way that they always have some color of sadness, or at least of moroseness. Therefore, I think that a certain disposition of the mind is found to be joined to this particular bodily temperament.

b) The diverse structure and softness of the brain, regarding its various substances and parts.

We can indeed establish nothing certain regarding this matter, nor can I be persuaded that all those smaller parts of the brain whose functions have remained unknown to us until now, such as the pineal gland, the quadrigeminal bodies, the mammillary processes, and so many other diversely named parts, lack influence on the faculties of the soul according to their varying organization. Diverse softness of the brain seems to be of no less importance. I do not doubt that it contributes greatly to the various motions of the brain that are perhaps required to carry out the faculties of the soul, but it is also very likely that a just softness of the brain is needed to receive the impressions of ideas. Tender infants have hardly any memory; it flourishes most in adolescents and youths, and in men, and more so in the elderly, it again grows obsolete. In tender infancy, indeed, the excessive softness of the brain, and in the virile or senile age, its increased firmness, seems not to be sufficiently apt for retaining impressions for a long time. This seems to have the appearance of truth all the more as we see daily that the elderly, who are almost forgetful and too talkative, are accustomed to narrate primarily those things that were done in their youth, the traces of which still remain. Diverse quality of memory, however, can vary the temperament of the soul greatly; because whatever we conclude for the future, we gather from the comparison of the past with the present, or certainly from the connection of many ideas, some of which must necessarily precede others x. In younger men, there is more cortical substance; as age increases, however, it diminishes, and this change indeed seems to contribute something to the increase of the mind's faculties y.

c) The various quantity and magnitude of the encephalon compared with the whole mass of the body.

However, since the brain and the rest of the human body do not grow at the same rate, since men have more brain the less their age is adult (which does not agree with the meager faculties of the soul in a tender infant), and since very often the body decreases in quantity and magnitude due to disease and other causes while the mass of the brain does not, this cause, without another attribute, seems to contribute little to the temperament of the soul, as the illustrious Wrisberg also judges z.

x) Famous scholar Markerr, Lectures on H. Boerhaave's Medical Institutions, Vienna 1785, Vol. III, p. 382 ff.
y) The illustrious Wrisberg, loc. cit., p. 317.
z) loc. cit.