HOW THE GLANDS INFLUENCE THE MIND 175 



common everyday process in conduct. Which will win means 

 which will will. And so we have an energetic basis for volition. 



Which will win appears to depend primarily upon the kind of 

 endocrines that predominate in the make-up of the individual, 

 secondarily with his education. For it is the endocrines that are 

 really in conflict when there is a struggle between two instincts. 

 And if one endocrine system conquers, it must be either because 

 it is inherently stronger, its secretion potential, that is, the amount 

 of secretion it can put forth as a maximum, is greater (so explain- 

 ing the term dominant) — or because a past experience has con- 

 ditioned it to respond, although the opposing endocrine system 

 does not. Fear and anger, respectively bound up with the activi- 

 ties of the adrenal medulla and cortex, we shall see, provide as 

 good exemplars as any of this process. 



The response of the ductless glands to situations varies with 

 their congenital capacity, and acquired susceptibility. Capacity 

 is a question of internal chemistry, modifiable by injury, disease, 

 accident, shock, exhaustion. Susceptibility depends upon the 

 play of the forces focusing upon them that may be summed up 

 as associations. In the ability of one endocrine system to inhibit 

 another we have the germ of the unconscious. Hence the modus 

 operandi of the repressions and suppressions, compensations and 

 dissociations, which may unite to integrate or refuse to inte- 

 grate, and so disintegrate and deteriorate a personality. 



As the personality develops, the vegetative system becomes 

 susceptible to the manifold associates of family, school, church 

 and society, art, science and religion, and last but not least 

 sex. All the different nuances of personality are expressions of 

 a particular relationship, transitory or permanent, between the 

 endocrines and the viscera and muscles. Conversely, behaviour 

 shows what a person actually is chemically; that is, what en- 

 docrine and vegetative factors predominate in his make-up. 



Fear, Anger, and Courage 



Fear and anger are the oldest and so the most deep-rooted of 

 the instincts. An ameba, contracting at the touch of some un- 

 pleasant object, feels fear in its most primitive form. And anger, 

 the destructive passion, must have appeared early upon the scene 

 of life. Certainly these two instincts were definitely developed 

 and fixed in the cells before sex differentiation and the sex 



