280 THE GLANDS REGULATING PERSONALITY 



one attempts to consider the bearing of this underlying principle 

 upon concrete situations. What happens, say, when a pituito- 

 centric mates with a thyrocentric? Or when a pituitocentric 

 marries a pituitocentric? Is there a reinforcement or a cancel- 

 lation of the dominant endocrine? Is there a quantitative addi- 

 tion of internal glandular tendencies in the germplasm, or a more 

 complex rearrangement dependent upon reactions between all the 

 internal secretions? 



The term endocrine dominants brings up the inquiries of Men- 

 delism, and the relation of Mendelian conceptions of dominant 

 and recessive to the internal secretions. The Mendelians have 

 emphasized the role of the unit factor in heredity, and the con- 

 servation of the unit factor as an entity through all the adven- 

 tures of matings. Also, that when unit factors, say of the color 

 of the eyes, come into conflict, brown or black being mixed with 

 blue or grey, one, the recessive., is submerged and overlaid but 

 not destroyed by the other, the dominant. So brown or black 

 eyes, dark hair, curly hair, dark skin, and so on, are dominant, 

 while blue or grey eyes, light or straight hair, light skin are 

 recessives. A nervous temperament is dominant to the phleg- 

 matic. A number of psychic qualities have been declared to be 

 Mendelian unit factors: memory, mechanical instinct, mathe- 

 matical ability, literary ability, musical ability, and even hand- 

 writing. 



As architects of human qualities the endocrines must be in- 

 volved in the Mendelian unit factors. Moreover, they seem to 

 act upon a particular locale in different degrees, which is the 

 strongest argument against the resolution of a number of struc- 

 tural traits into Mendelian unit characters. Most characters, 

 somatic or psychic, are the products not of the action of I 

 internal secretion alone, but of the interlinked activities of all 

 of them. The amount of fat deposited under the skin, for in- 

 stance, is influenced by the pituitary, the thyroid, the pancreas, 

 the liver, the ad' lands. Other qualities, like- 



wise -ultants of a coinpromi n all the endocrine 



factors comprising the equation of the individual. If we are to 

 look for unr all in endocrine hen look 



more deeply into e< • ore the hormone poten- 



tials and t!:< ir rnobilizat ion or sup; 



ill, in all probability! be found that the stability or e 

 bility of an flodoerlM will have a good deal to do with tl 

 played by it in inheritance as well ay in the life of the individ'.. 



