Four Cardinal Humors

The humors are our ruling passions, derived from the original Latin meaning of the word, which signified "liquid." In the 1600s, physicians understood the four humors to signify patterns of speech, behavior and other qualities that predominate in a human being.

The four primary humours are blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile) and melancholy (black bile), which are presumed to dominate a person's temperament.

References to humour as a variety of human temperaments appear in the 17th century in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. In 1909, anthroposophist Rudolph Steiner lectured on these same four temperaments, further explaining them as: Choleric (ego/blood), sanguine (nervous system/astral body), phlegmatic (etheric or life body), and melancholic (physical body).

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy(1) published in 1621, describes the four humours:

"Blood, a hot, sweet, tempered, red humour, prepared in the meseraic veins, and made of the most temperate parts of the chylus (chyle) in the liver, whose office it is to nourish the whole body, to give it strength and colour, being dispersed through every part of it. And from it spirits are first begotten in the heart, which afterwards in the arteries are communicated to the other parts.

"Pituita, or phlegm is a cold and moist humour, begtotten of the colder parts of the chylus (or white juice coming out of the meat digested in the stomach) in the liver.His office is to nourish and moisten the members of the body.

"Choler is hot and dry, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus, and gathered to the gall. It helps the natural heat and senses.

"Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black and sour, begotten of the more feculent part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen, is a bridle to the other two humours, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones.

"An exact balance of the four primary humours makes the justly constituted man, and allows for the undisturbed production of the concoctions or processes of digestion and assimilation."

Literature's fascination with the four temperaments shows up in the introduction to ben Johnson's play, "Every Man out of his Humour":

 

Why humour, as it is 'ens,' we thus define it,

To be a quality of air or water;

And in itself holds these two properties

Moisture and fluxure: as, for demonstration

Pour water on this floor. 'Twill wet and run.

LIkewise the air forced through a horn or trumpet

Flows instantly away, and leaves behind

A kind of dew; and hence   we do conclude

That whatsoe'er hath fluxure and humidity

As wanting power to contain itself

Is humour. So in every human body

The choler, melancholy, phlegm and blood

By reason that they flow continually

In some one part are not continent

Receive the name of humours. Now thus far

It may, by metaphor, apply itself

Unto the general disposition;

As when some one peculiar quality

Doth so possess a man that it doth draw

All his effects, his spirits and his powers,

In their confluxion all to run one way,--

This may be truly said to be a humour."

Rudolph Steiner defined the four temperaments: (for more info, see http://www.homeopathyfaq.com/content/other_texts/steiner,4temp.htm

Choleric: "When the ego predominates, a choleric temperament results. Cholerics come across as people who must always have their own way. Their aggressiveness, everything concerned with their forcefulness of will, derives from their blood circulation.

Sanguine:  In the sanguine the nervous system dominates, and thus the astral body dominates (because the astral body expresses itself physically in the nervous system). "Sanguines surrender themselves in a certain sense to the constant and varied flow of images, sensations, and ideas, since in them the astral body and nervous system predominate. The nervous system's activity is restrained only by the circulation of the blood. That this is so becomes clear when we consider what happens when a person lacks blood or is anemic, in other words, when the blood's restraining influence is absent. Mental images fluctuate wildly, often leading to illusions and hallucinations.

"A touch of this is present in sanguines. Sanguines are incapable of lingering over an impression. They cannot fix their attention on a particular image nor sustain their interest in an impression. Instead, they rush from experience to experience, from percept to percept."

Phlegmatic: This temperament derives from the etheric or life body. "The result is a sense of inner well being. The more human beings live in their etheric body, the more they are preoccupied with their own internal processes. They let external events run their course while their attention is directed inward.

Melancholic: "In the melancholic the physical body is master over the others. Melancholics feel they are not master over their body, that they cannot bend it to their will. The physical body, which is intended to be an instrument of the higher members, is itself in control, and frustrates the others. Melancholics experience this as pain, as a feeling of despondency. Pain continually wells up within them because the physical body resists the etheric body's inner sense of well-being, the astral body's liveliness, and the ego's purposeful striving.

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1. All references in this section are from my wonderful 1910 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was originally published in 1768 and updated each decade thereafter.

2. From the lecture "The Four Temperaments," available in several forms but also in the booklet   "Anthroposophy in Everyday Life," published by the Anthroposophic Press, 1995.

Click for a full size image of Burton's book title page.

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