Furneaux Jordan - Body, Parentage and Character in History

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BODY, PARENTAGE AND CHARACTER
IN HISTORY.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

ReadyNew and Cheaper Edition, in great part Rewritten, 2/-

CHARACTER AS SEEN IN BODY AND PARENTAGE,
with a Chapter on
Education, Career, Morals, and Progress .

A remarkable and extremely interesting book.Scotsman.

A delightful book, witty and wise, clever in exposition, charming in style, readable and original.Medical Press.

Men and women are both treated under these heads (types of character) in an amusing and observant manner.Lancet.

We cordially commend this volume.... A fearless writer.... Merits close perusal.Health.

Mr. Jordan handles his subject in a simple, clear, and popular manner.Literary World.

Full of varied interest.Mind.

Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner, and Co. Limited.

BODY, PARENTAGE

AND

CHARACTER

IN HISTORY:

NOTES ON THE TUDOR PERIOD.

BY
FURNEAUX JORDAN, F.R.C.S.

LONDON:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner & Co. Limited ,
1890.

Birmingham:
Printed by Hall and English.

---

PREFACE.

In my little work on Character as Seen in Body and Parentage I have put forward not a system, but a number of conclusions touching the relationship which I believe to exist between certain features of character on the one hand and certain peculiarities of bodily configuration, structure, and inheritance on the other. These conclusions, if they are true, should find confirmation in historic narrative, and their value, if they have any, should be seen in the light they throw on historic problems.

The incidents and characters and questions of the Tudor period are not only of unfailing interest, but they offer singularly rich and varied material to the student of body and character.

If the proposal to connect the human body with human nature is distasteful to certain finely-strung souls, let me suggest to them a careful study of the work and aims and views of Goethe, the scientific observer and impassioned poet, whom Madame de Stal described as the most accomplished character the world has produced; and who was, in Matthew Arnolds opinion, the greatest poet of this age and the greatest critic of any age. The reader of Wilhelm Meister need not be reminded of the close attention which is everywhere given to the principle of inheritanceinheritance even of the minutest faculty.

The student of men and women has, let me say in conclusion, one great advantage over other studentshe need not journey to a museum, he has no doors to unlock, and no catalogue to consult; the museum is constantly around him and on his shelves; the catalogue is within himself.

---

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

Note I.The Various Views of Henry VIII.s Character.

Momentous changes in sixteenth century

Many characters given to noted persons

A great number given to Henry

The character given in our time

Attempt to give an impartial view

Need of additional light

Note II.The Relation of Body and Parentage to Character.

Bodily organisation and temperaments

Leading types in both

Elements of character run in groups

Intervening gradations

Note III.Henrys Family Proclivities.

Henry of unimpassioned temperament

Took after unimpassioned mother

Derived nothing from his father

Character of Henry VII.

Henry VIII., figure and appearance

Note IV.The Wives Question.

Henrys marriages, various causes

Passion not a marked cause

Henry had no strong passions

Self-will and self-importance

Conduct of impassioned men

Note V.The Less Characteristic Features of Henrys Character.

Characteristics common to all temperaments

Henrys cruelty

Henrys piety

Note VI.The More Characteristic Features of Henrys Character.

Always doing or undoing something

Habitual fitfulness

Self-importance

Henry and Wolsey: Which led?

Love of admiration

Note VII.Henry and his Compeers.

Henrys political helpers superior to theological

Cranmer

Sir Thomas More

Wolsey

Note VIII.Henry and his People and Parliament.

No act of constructive genius

Parliament not abject, but in agreement

Proclamations

Liberty a matter of race

Note IX.Henry and the Reformation.

Teutonic race fearless, therefore truthful

Outgrew Romish fetters

French Revolution racial

The essential and the accidental in great movements

Wyclif

Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Knox

Henrys part in the Reformation

No thought of permanent division

The dissolution of the monasteries

Note X.Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary.

Henry VIII. and Elizabeth much alike

Elizabeth less pious but more fitful

Elizabeth and marriage

Elizabeths part in the Reformation

Elizabeth and Mary Stuart very unlike

Lofty characters with flaws

Marys environment and fate

Bodily peculiarities of the two Queens

---

THE VARIOUS VIEWS OF HENRY VIII.S CHARACTER.

NOTE I.

The progress of an individual, of a people, or even of a movement is never up, and their decadence is never down, an inclined plane. Neither do we see sudden and lofty flights in progress nor headlong falls in decadence. Both move rather by stepssteps up or steps down. The steps are not all alike; one is short another long; one sudden another gradual. They are all moreover the inevitable sequences of those which went before, and they as inevitably lead to those which follow. Our Fathers took a long step in the Tudor epoch, but older ones led up to it and newer ones started from it. The long step could not possibly be evaded by a Teutonic people. Rome lay in the path, and progress must needs step over the body of Romenot a dead body then, though wounded from within, not a dead body yet, though now deeply and irreparably wounded from without. Civilization must everywhere step over the body of Rome or stand still, or turn backwards.

Two factors are especially needed for progress: brain (racial brain), which by organisation and inheritance tends to be large, free, capable; and secondly, circumstance, which continually calls forth capability, and freedom, and largeness. All the schools of supernaturalism, but above all the Romish school, compress and paralyse at least a portion of the brain: if a portion is disabled all is enfeebled. If a bodily limb even, a mere hand or foot, be fettered and palsied, the body itself either dies or droops into a smaller way of life. It is so with a mental limba mental hand or foot in relation to the mental life.

To the group of ever-present and subtle forces which make for progress, there were added in the sixteenth century seemingly new and conspicuous forces. The art of printing or writing by machinery sowed living seed broadcast over a fertile soil; the new learning restored to us the inspiring but long hidden thought of old Aryan friends and relatives, and this again in some degree relaxed the grip of alien and enslaving Semitic ideas which the exigencies of Roman circumstance had imposed on Europe with the edge of the sword. New action trod on the heels of new thought. New lands were traversed; new seas were sailed; new heavens were explored. The good steed civilisationlong burdened and blindfolded and curbed,had lagged somewhat; but now the reins were loose, the spurs were sharp, the path was clear and the leap which followed was long.

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