158 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
convenient to restrict the meaning of personality in this way, but I see 
no valid objection to following a common practice and regarding per- 
sonality in its widest connotation as the integration of all the marks of 
mind and body, as affected by nature and nurture. But as it is difficult 
to say anything scientific about a ‘ total personality ’ there must be some 
attempt at analysis. Up to a point there is considerable agreement. 
Thus there may be a general acceptance to include at least five great 
classes of factors of personality which, according to McDougall, seem to 
be in great measure, though not entirely, independent variables in the 
make-up of personality—namely, (1) the factors of intellect, (2) of dis- 
position, i.e., the array of innately given conative or affective tendencies, 
(3) of temper, i.e., the general peculiarities of the mode of working of all 
the conative tendencies, (4) of temperament, i.e., the influences, direct or 
indirect, of bodily metabolism upon the psycho-physical processes of the 
nervous system, and (5) of character, i.e., matters of acquired organisation 
of the affective tendencies in sentiments and complexes. 
Investigators, however, diverge widely when they attempt to elaborate 
such a scheme with a view to the actual testing of concrete personalities, 
and there is no limit to the number of traits which, it is claimed, can be 
tested in the sense that the values obtained may be represented by actual 
magnitudes or, at least, be placed somewhere along a continuum. 
It thus becomes apparent that in our present study the dependent 
variable, personality, cannot usefully be employed. It involves a large 
number of dependent variables, every one of which in turn must be 
studied with reference to the independent variable, age. Here, in age, 
we have a variable which gladdens the heart of the tester. For there is 
usually, at least in this country, documentary evidence of it which ensures 
scientific accuracy. It is fortunate that such evidence is available, as 
otherwise after the age of twenty-five there would be little, if any, proof 
of age, whether of the living or dead, which would be conclusive in medical 
jurisprudence. It is true that common knowledge comes more or less to 
our aid, enabling us to make a fair approximation to the decade within 
which a person may be, but any closer approximation must be made with 
sO many reservations as to be hardly worth consideration. Crow’s-feet 
about the eyes or white hair often appear in the young from suffering 
or shock or for no apparent reason. ‘To say that a person is thirty years 
of age is a definite reference to solar time, but that person may be sixty 
years old when judged by physical, physiological, or psychological criteria 
of oldness. And the last sentence would still hold if the words ‘ thirty’ 
and ‘sixty’ are interchanged. Such considerations are vital as well as 
interesting with reference to individual biographies, but in psychology, 
no less than in other sciences, due regard must be placed on tendencies. 
If it becomes possible by laborious investigations to ascertain what is the 
tendency for a trait to change with advancing age it may be well worth 
the trouble. A failure to appreciate the significance of tendencies is 
obviously the cause of letters appearing periodically in the press, which 
attempt to draw a universal conclusion, possibly on the strength of some 
alleged practice by a few centenarians. 
A word may now be added on the difficulty of distinguishing between 
