CHAPTER X

THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY

THE ENDOCRINE PERSONALITY

If a single gland can dominate the life history of an individual it becomes possible to speak of endocrine types, the result of the endocrine analysis of the individual.  Studying endocrine traits of physique, life reactions, disease tendencies, hereditary history and blood chemistry, one may gain an insight into the composition or constitution of an individual.  The endocrine type of an individual is a summary of these, his behaviour in the past, and is also a prediction of his reactions in the future, much as a chemical formula outlines what we believe to be the skeleton of a compound substance as deducible from its properties under varying conditions.  Only, admittedly, as yet the endocrine label is but roughly qualitative and most crudely quantitative, whereas the chemical formula is the essence of the exact.

However, the fact remains that though we are only upon the first rungs of the ladder, we are upon the ladder.  The horizon undoubtedly broadens.  We possess a new way of looking upon humanity, a fresh transforming light upon those strange phenomena, ourselves.  Of the ugly achievements of that dreadful century, the nineteenth, the most illuminating was the discovery of itself as the ape-parvenu. Yes, we are all animals now, it said to itself, and set its teeth in the cut-throat game of survival.  But there was no understanding in that evil motto of a disillusioned heart.  The ape-parvenu, desperately lonely and secretive, has still to understand himself.

Let us be clear if we can.  There is perhaps a certain presumption in the phrase, the endocrine type.  It is ambitious, and perhaps will not fulfill its promise.  But it is useful because it points a parallel and an ideal.  As Wilhelm Ostwald never tired of repeating, H_{2}O is a complete shorthand record for the bundle of qualities commonly known as water.  It is an example of that highest task of mind, synthesis.  It is the highest synthesis of the studies of the internal secretions that certain combinations of them, permutations and blendings of them, are responsible for those unique wonders of the universe, personalities.

The riddle of personality!  Are we at last upon the track of its uncovering?  That elusive mystery, which philosophers have wrapped in the thousand veils of Greek and Latin words, and psychologists, even unto the third and fourth generation of Freudians, have floundered about in, moles before a dazzling sun, is it to be unwound for our inspection?  Think of the human soul.  What an invisible, intangible chameleon is its true reality!  Watch it, and you see something that seems to uncurl and expand like a feather with exultation and delight and joy, to contract and stiffen into a billiard ball with fear and pride, shrewd caution and vigilant malevolence, to rear back and spark fire like lightning with anger and temper, and to crawl and slither with abjection and smirking slyness, when it needs to.  This multiplex Thing-Behind-Life, are we really about to dissect it into its elements?