INHERITANCE OF TEMPERAMENT. 



lie; 



society, they doubtless are; but those requirements are, after all, 

 rather narrow and rigid, and it would be strange if, amid the vast range 

 of human characteristics, many combinations did not occur that are 

 far from ideal. If a person shows periodic excitement but has intelli- 

 gence enough to put himself during the outburst where he will do no 

 harm, society can easily tolerate him; but another who has similar 

 outbursts and is not intelligent enough to segregate himself or work 

 off the excitement by other methods, but who assaults, breaks furni- 

 ture, and yells, has to be confined. It is doubtful if the latter is more 

 truly diseased than the former; but his complex of traits is less social. 

 Similarly, the classical dementia precox in its earlier stages shows a 

 complex of traits that are constitutional, and that separably are not 

 unknown in some degree among persons who pass for normal, but 

 together are quite incompatible with efficiency and a proper standing 

 in society. Studies in inheritance of the elements of intelligence, or 

 resistance to mental stress and of disposition, seem to point clearly to 

 the conclusion that the functionally insane are mosaics of chance, 

 accidental associations of socially undesirable, hereditary traits. As 

 a corollary it seems probable that the Kraepelinian or any other classi- 

 fication of the functionally insane is rather harmful than otherwise, 

 since it distracts attention from the principal points, such as perio- 

 dicity, temperament, inhibition, the destruction of neurones in the 

 cerebrum, and the specific control of behavior by internal secretions. 

 When we analyze behavior, when we seek to find upon what neural 

 or visceral differences each elementary trait of behavior depends, then 

 we may make progress toward a knowledge of real causes and toward 

 such improvement of conditions by physiological-chemical means, or 

 others, as may be possible. 



XI. THE HYPERKINETICS AND THE HYPOKINETICS IN THE 

 POPULATION-THE ROMANTIC AND THE CLASSIC TYPES. 



We have seen that at one extreme of the population are to be found 

 overactive, jolly persons; at the opposite extreme the exceptionally 

 quiet and sad. Of course between these extremes lie the vast majority 

 of people who are more or less intermediate or mixed, but many of 

 them show a clear inclination toward the one or the other condition. 

 These two types have been recognized before. I >ne of the most inter- 

 esting treatments of them as they occur among geniuses is that of 

 Ostwald (1909) in "Grosse Manner." He separate them into the 

 romantics and the classics, and says they differ in the rapidity of their 

 reactions. The classics are the slower, the romantics the swifter. 

 And these types he correlates with the four temperaments ^i the older 

 psychology, in that the sanguine and choleric are the quickly-reacting 

 temperaments; the phelgmatic and melancholic the slowly-reacting 

 temperaments; and of these the choleric and melancholic represent 



