THE TYPES OF PERSONALITY 229 



which are the species and varieties of the greater classes. Combi- 

 nations and variations of control among the adrenals and thy- 

 roid, pituitary or thymus, and so on, occur, with effects that are 

 sometimes additive, reinforcing a particular trait of the person, 

 and at others conflicting, and neutralizing. Quantitative varia- 

 tions of the same secretion may occur periodically in the same 

 individual, which explains the multiplicity and complexity, the 

 inconsistency and contradictions of conduct in a man or woman 

 at the different episodes and crises of life, to a certain extent. 



There should be a stable balance between the various endo- 

 crines, the stability expressing itself in what we are pleased to 

 call the normal. There should also be a balance between the 

 antagonistic elements in the same gland; for instance, the pitui- 

 tary. The pituitary, built of two distinct portions, the anterior 

 and the posterior, is in equilibrium when the two are nicely ad- 

 justed. But the accidents and vicissitudes of life (pregnancy for 

 example) will upset the balance. And so there will result changes 

 of physique, conduct and character. Like possibilities apply to 

 all the other glands of internal secretion. In our ability to 

 exercise a control over these disturbances of balance, to be devel- 

 oped in the future, lies one of the great hopes for a chemical 

 perfectability of human life and nature. 



Nature's Experiments vs. Man's 



The kinds of personality described, as prototypes and variants 

 and the fundamental facts supporting the view that they are the 

 reaction types of the human beings we meet in everyday life, 

 represent simply a beginning of the work to be done. Putting 

 into our hands a new powerful searchlight that penetrates the 

 interiors of body and soul, a fresh attitude toward the complicated 

 problems of Man in society grows imminent. The normal and 

 the abnormal become illuminated with an effect as if our retinas 

 were suddenly to get sensitive to the ultraviolet rays to which 

 we are now blind. An apparatus is put in our hands which shows 

 us not only a static condition at a given moment, but the whole 

 life process of an individual, normal or abnormal, his past and 

 his future. 



Upon that fetich of the biologists, the struggle for existence, the 

 struggle for survival, the struggle for possessions and satisfac- 

 tions, for happiness, victory and virility, in short, for success, as 

 success is measured by the biologists, a searching spectroscope 



