The choleric-phlegmatic axis deals with what may well be the first problem in the practical life of the soul: how a person stands before reality when reality resists, wears them down and makes demands. Contrary to what is often thought, it does not set the "nervous" against the "calm," or the "aggressive" against the "relaxed," which would be far too poor. What is at stake is the difference between a structure that tends toward practical impact, toward cutting through, toward confrontation and toward imposing a direction, and another that tends toward preservation, stability, cushioning friction and protecting the ground it stands on.
The choleric pole
The choleric pole is the pole of action in the face of the arduous, which the method pictures as dryness and electricity. The image is not there as ornament: electricity expresses precisely the kind of energy the choleric carries, an energy that is fast, directional and incisive, capable of discharge, of attacking the obstacle, of giving shape to things and of producing an effect. Dryness means that this energy does not want to spread through its surroundings, or to hold itself in stability, or to thicken into cold weight. It wants to get to the point, to strike, to overcome the resistance of reality by intervening.
That is why the choleric tends to attack the obstacle, to be ready, to respond quickly, to cut through and to set direction, and tends to transform reality by their own impact. Their inner world reads reality as something that must be acted upon: the obstacle is not merely endured, it is confronted, and resistance is not merely perceived, it is a provocation to respond. There is something offensive in the choleric, in the structural sense of the word, which is not necessarily moral aggressiveness but the tendency to go out of oneself to stake out the field.
The phlegmatic pole
The phlegmatic pole, by contrast, is the pole of stability in the face of transition, which the method pictures as moisture and plant life. Here too the image has its reason: plant life expresses permanence, absorption, growth without noise, quiet adaptation, economy of energy and resistance that lasts. Phlegmatic moisture does not want to cut through the field; it wants to keep it. It does not want to pierce its surroundings; it wants to remain in them without breaking. That is why the phlegmatic tends toward preservation, continuity, reducing friction, protecting their own integrity and cushioning the shock.
What the choleric tries to solve by impact, the phlegmatic tries to solve by preservation, and what the choleric confronts as a problem to be overcome, the phlegmatic tends to endure, work around or cushion. The axis measures, then, the way practical energy is used. The choleric uses it as directed discharge and acts upon reality; the phlegmatic uses it as stable retention and holds steady in reality without letting themselves be broken.
What the axis shows in body and soul
This difference also appears at the psychophysical level. The inhibited pole of the axis is the phlegmatic, not the choleric, and the word must be understood in the method's sense: phlegmatic inhibition is a higher cost of transition, a resistance to leaving the state one is in for a new mobilization, and not shyness, introversion or fear. The phlegmatic is therefore the pole of greater vigilance, retention and cushioning, where the stimulus passes more slowly into action; the choleric is the disinhibited pole, which easily turns a sense impression into direction, cutting through and confrontation. The neighboring research is Kagan's, who followed children who were very restrained or very spontaneous in the face of the unfamiliar at age two and found, at age seven, the same tendency in most of them, with physiological differences suggesting an inherited threshold of excitability in regions of the limbic system (Kagan, Reznick and Snidman, 1988). The study comes close to the axis because it shows that the ease or difficulty of passing into action is rooted in the body and holds over time; but it does not prove it, because Kagan's inhibited child pulls back from the new, and phlegmatic inhibition can exist with no fear at all.
That is why this axis is especially tied to the irascible appetite, which concerns the difficult good, the arduous evil, combat and the practical reaction to the resistance of reality. In the choleric, the irascible rises quickly to attack; in the phlegmatic, it rises more slowly and tends to cushion or preserve.
Virtue and fall on the first axis
In the created order, this corresponds to two good aptitudes. The choleric has an aptitude for the matter of fortitude: they face, resist and persist with ease, and so confronting evil, actively defending the good and acting under pressure come more readily to them. The phlegmatic has an aptitude for certain operations of prudence: they do not rush, they give judgment time and they preserve what has value. Neither aptitude is yet the virtue. Fortitude shows itself when the choleric has to keep going in the good without the reward of effectiveness, and prudence, when the phlegmatic has to reach a conclusion and then command the action, because delay is not prudence.
Under the fall, however, each of these aptitudes can be egoized. In the choleric, power comes to be demanded as proof of who they are, and reality is summoned to confirm it; by this path comes pride, accompanied by wrath, rashness, harshness and the desire to dominate. In the phlegmatic, the cost of moving comes to define what they ought to do; by this path comes lukewarmness, accompanied by omission, complacency and flight from necessary conflict. The axis, then, does not set energy against a lack of energy, but two very different ways of existing before reality: through action or through preservation.
Whoever understands this axis well is freed from two confusions. The first is to think that all calm is virtue, when calm can be phlegmatic flight. The second is to think that all strength is fortitude, when strength can be choleric pride. The axis reveals the structure, and the structure shows at the same time the created power and the possible deformation. Before praising your own serenity or your own firmness, it is worth asking which of the two they are serving: the good that makes demands, or the self that protects and imposes itself.