J.—PSYCHOLOGY. 219 
—particularly delinquency and neurosis—has shown very clearly that 
none of these is due exclusively to inborn constitution, nor yet entirely 
to shocks and mental traumata in the remote or immediate pasb; they 
spring largely out of coritemporarieous conditions and conflicts. Even 
with the normal individual, simply to learn in what social class he 
moves, or in what city or street he lives, is to divine very plausibly the 
chief of his guiding habits and ideas—his code, his creed, and his 
customs. Strange persons are like strange words: their intentions 
are best guessed from their context. One incidental item of practical 
import rises to the surface in most of these investigations. Of all 
external factors home influences are paramount; moral influences are 
far more powerful than material, emotional than intellectual. With- 
out a knowledge of the emotional attitudes elicited in a person by the 
attitude of his parents, of his various relatives, and of others in daily 
contact with him, his standpoint towards life can never be properly 
envisaged or explained. 
B. Personality. 
1.—Physical Condition. 
Turning from the environment to the personality proper, from the 
setting to the gem, it, is essential to glance first at physical conditions 
before we pass to psychological; to see what is reflected on the surface 
before we hold the centre to the light. That a man’s body has a pro- 
found influence upon his mind has been realised in every age. But 
we are only just beginning to discover in definite detail how certain 
physical states and certain physical disorders are attended by certain 
psychical effects. 
Once more it is in patlology—where more or less morbid conditions 
of body produce more or less morbid conditions of mind—that the most 
convincing instances are to be seen. At present, it is true, the ten- 
dency in the newer schools of psychology is to trace mental derange- 
ments, particularly in their milder forms, almost exclusively to mental 
origins. But those who deal daily with young children, where the 
causal factors can be more readily unravelled, find it impossible to over- 
look the co-operation of such purely physical conditions as rheumatism, 
chronic catarrh, nasal obstruction in numerous forms, minor lesions of 
the brain, or the absorption of toxines from internal foci or superficial 
sores. 
The study of juvenile delinquency shows, in most unexpected direc- 
tions, the influence of physique upon character. Anything that weakens 
physical health tends to weaken self-control. Anything that conduces 
to physical irritation tends to set up a mood of mental irritability. A 
holiday in the country is sometimes the best cure for crime. With 
the intellectually subnormal the efficacy of simple physical remedies is 
quite as striking as with those who are subnormal in character or tem- 
perament. The provision of spectacles, the extraction of teeth, the 
extirpation of tonsils and adenoid-growths, measures in themselves 
comparatively trifling, have often converted an alleged mental defective 
into a normal or nearly normal child. 
