Phlegmatic
Peace-oriented
- Speed: Phlegmatics do not react quickly. While their slow temperament helps them to plan out projects with patience, their calm and slow planning may never leave the planning stage. Taking action in the face of the challenge requires a heroic effort from the phlegmatic.
- Intensity: This humor does not have intense reactions, which helps them to be serene in the face of challenge, but hurts them when battling with the challenge. Because they do not have the sociability of the sanguine, phlegmatics may seem rigid or cold in conversation. Without the intensity of the choleric or the sanguine, phlegmatics may compare themselves with others more than what's good for them, which often leads to self-pity and a lack of self-confidence.
- Duration: This temperament does not have enduring reactions. When insulted or injured, they can brush it off without a second thought. Although they are dutiful because emotions tend not to interrupt their thinking process, they may see a problem, make a mental note, and forget about it because the impression does not last long.
Examples from Western Literature
Phlegmatic
Charles Le Brun's sketch for an allegorical statue depicts the phlegmatic temperament. The resigned phlegmatic, with his arms crossed to show inactivity, is clothed in badger fur (an animal known for its laziness) and accompanied by a turtle, symbolizing his lack of initiative.
Saint Thomas Aquinas
G. K. Chesterton’s The Dumb Ox, on St. Thomas Aquinas:
“St. Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the humility of holiness; and abstracted, even apart from his occasional and carefully concealed experiences of trance or ecstasy...St. Thomas was so stolid that the scholars, in the schools which he attended regularly, thought he was a dunce. Indeed, he was the sort of schoolboy, not unknown, who would much rather be thought a dunce than have his own dreams invaded, by more active or animated dunces.... It was the outstanding fact about St. Thomas that he loved books and lived on books; that he lived the very life of the clerk or scholar in The Canterbury Tales, who would rather have a hundred books of Aristotle and his philosophy than any wealth the world could give him. When asked for what he thanked God most, he answered simply, "I have understood every page I ever read."
Susan in Mansfield Park
Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, chapter XL: on Susan's character
Her temper was open. She acknowledged her fears, blamed herself for having contended so warmly; and from that hour Fanny, understanding the worth of her disposition and perceiving how fully she was inclined to seek her good opinion and refer to her judgment, began to feel again the blessing of affection, and to entertain the hope of being useful to a mind so much in need of help, and so much deserving it. She gave advice, advice too sound to be resisted by a good understanding, and given so mildly and considerately as not to irritate an imperfect temper, and she had the happiness of observing its good effects not unfrequently. More was not expected by one who, while seeing all the obligation and expediency of submission and forbearance, saw also with sympathetic acuteness of feeling all that must be hourly grating to a girl like Susan. Her greatest wonder on the subject soon became—not that Susan should have been provoked into disrespect and impatience against her better knowledge—but that so much better knowledge, so many good notions should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the midst of negligence and error, she should have formed such proper opinions of what ought to be; she, who had had no cousin Edmund to direct her thoughts or fix her principles.
Merry Wives of Windsor
Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor 1.4:
MISTRESS QUICKLY: I beseech you, be not so phlegmatic. Hear the truth / of it: he came of an errand to me from Parson Hugh.
Phlegmatic Faults in Persuasion
Jane Austen’s Persuasion, chapter 17, when Anne recognizes the faults of Mr. Elliot’s phlegmatic character:
Mr. Elliot was rational, discreet, polished, but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped. Mr. Elliot was too generally agreeable. Various as were the tempers in her father's house, he pleased them all. He endured too well, stood too well with everybody. He had spoken to her with some degree of openness of Mrs. Clay; had appeared completely to see what Mrs. Clay was about, and to hold her in contempt; and yet Mrs. Clay found him as agreeable as anybody.
The Phlegmatic Anne Elliot
Jane Austen’s Persuasion, chapter 14: on Anne's character:
Immediately surrounding Mrs. Musgrove were the little Harvilles, whom she was sedulously guarding from the tyranny of the two children from the Cottage, expressly arrived to amuse them. On one side was a table occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up silk and gold paper; and on the other were tressels and trays, bending under the weight of brawn and cold pies, where riotous boys were holding high revel; the whole completed by a roaring Christmas fire, which seemed determined to be heard, in spite of all the noise of the others. Charles and Mary also came in, of course, during their visit, and Mr. Musgrove made a point of paying his respects to Lady Russell, and sat down close to her for ten minutes, talking with a very raised voice, but from the clamor of the children on his knees, generally in vain. It was a fine family-piece. Anne, judging from her own temperament, would have deemed such a domestic hurricane a bad restorative of the nerves, which Louisa's illness must have so greatly shaken.