http://i.imgur.com/jqchG.jpg
He VIs like Ti-INTj. It was long time ago that I've read his stories, but from memory, yeah, there wasn't anything there that could be remotely called Fi there, so he's likely in Ti-quadra.
He evaluates others according to their mental abilities rather than personal qualities:
Quote:
- It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision ...
- Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal ...
- but of this I must say little, since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendants around me
- even those of the keenest possible intellect and aesthetic ability-simply have not the psychological equipment or adjustment to feel that way
Attempts to analyze ethics via logic, deriving that kindness must be weakness:
Quote:
- The undesirability of any system of rule not tempered with the quality of kindness is obvious; for "kindness" is a complex collection of various impulses, reactions and realisations highly necessary to the smooth adjustment of botched and freakish creatures like most human beings. It is a weakness basically—or, in some cases, and ostentation of secure superiority—but its net effect is desirable; hence it is, on the whole, praiseworthy. Since all motives at bottom are selfish and ignoble, we may judge acts and qualities only be their effects. Pessimism produces kindness. The disillusioned philosopher is even more tolerant than the priggish bourgeois idealist with his sentimental and extravagant notions of human dignity and destiny.
Devalues senses saying that "less material life" is a truer form of life. There's some derealization happening here, which hints at strong introversion, or may be intuition, or both.
Quote:
- Life has never interested me so much as the escape from life.
- Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.
- Our means of receiving impressions are absurdly few, and our notions of surrounding objects infinitely narrow. We see things only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain no idea of their absolute nature. With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos, yet other beings with wider, stronger, or different range of senses might not only see very differently the things we see, but might see and study whole worlds of matter, energy, and life which lie close at hand yet can never be detected with the senses we have.
In general, he has a rather impersonal, detached, even bleak view of the world, though it was probably compounded by his sickness:
Quote:
- It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients—or their lack—and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws. We call a thing "good" because it promotes certain petty human conditions that we happen to like—whereas it is just as sensible to assume that all humanity is a noxious pest and should be eradicated like rats or gnats for the good of the planet or of the universe. There are no absolute values in the whole blind tragedy of mechanistic nature—nothing is good or bad except as judged from an absurdly limited point of view. The only cosmic reality is mindless, undeviating fate—automatic, unmoral, uncalculating inevitability. As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence. That plan is most deserving of praise which most ably fosters the creation of the objects and conditions best adapted to diminish the pain of living for those most sensitive to its depressing ravages. To expect perfect adjustment and happiness is absurdly unscientific and unphilosophical.
- Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world—we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Radio
as per stereotype he'd fit the profile of a 5, and i've seen 6 suggested for him elsewhere but i am certain that he was a 9. the idea of truth being incomprehensibly terrifying, and forces larger than life -- larger than our window of perception could ever fully capture -- flooding our consciousness to insanity. These to me are distinctly 9 themes of living in a world ultimately too big, too high, too complex, to ever have complete (if any) control over.
I dunno about positive outlook triad for him, doesn't seem fitting, just not a guy with an uplifting, optimistic vision of life.
In one of his quotes he mentioned that he never wished to take his own life because he was always intensely involved in his hobbies and interests, which hints at him being sx-primary. Remembering back to Naranjo's lectures about how sx 5's are prone to grooming of their inner demons, and how this is quite fitting of Lovecraft's writing, I would be inclined to type him something like 5w4 sx/sp or at least a wing-5.