8 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



feminist movement has been an attempt to break away from the 

 traditions of the wife-careerist, and to strike a line of auto- 

 careerism. Can the careeristina instinct, the fruit of the practice 

 of so many generations, be uprooted by the good intentions of a 

 mere statesman? 



But the masculine careerist is a marvelous creature. He is a 

 biologic sport, an abnormal variation. New York is the place to 

 watch and study him in his thousands and tens of thousands. 

 You can observe him climbing, climbing, climbing, precisely as 

 an ant climbs a tree. Nothing can really discourage or sway 

 him from his chosen path. If he is not getting on financially, he 

 is getting on socially, or he is using the one method of advance 

 to help him with the other. How the line of least resistance and 

 greatest advantage is determined for and taken by him is a fas- 

 cinating process. 



The careerist instinct, the inherited flair for a career, must not 

 be confounded w^th the instincts of self-preservation, self-expan- 

 sion or self-expression, because they are utterly different. Indeed, 

 the careerist instinct is often their direct antagonist, clashing with 

 and dominating them. The making of the career involves the 

 distortion, the mutilation, degradation, degeneration or even the 

 complete suppression of the true personality. But it is all instinc- 

 tive. To consider the life of the careerist as an expression of 

 instinct will explain too the success of so many who have no 

 inner awareness of what they want. These go straight for the 

 career, looking neither to the right nor to the left, without doubt 

 or hesitation, just as they go for the respiration business as soon 

 as they are born. 



Then there is the Super-Careerist. Ordinarily, the careerist is 

 rather obvious, easily recognizable, with diaphanous motives and 

 conduct. But there is another and rarer bird, the careerist of 

 talent, even the careerist of genius, whom it is not so easy to see 

 through. Clever and brainy, he may be a good all around trifler, 

 or his specific gift for some line of achievement may make him 

 more"effective. There is nothing he may not call himself: conser- 

 vative, liberal, progressive, or radical. Often he is an agnostic 

 about social and political affairs and problems, which passes 

 for the indecision of the open mind, and is quite handy to render 

 him all things to all men. But perpetually, the underlying 

 careerist instinct drives him to use all men and women, all ideas 

 and movements and forces he comes in contact with for his own 

 personal advancement, just as the slave making instinct guides 



