WILL. 539 



the latter do not make mistakes, or when they are always 

 able to retrieve them, theirs is one of the most engaging and 

 indispensable of human types.* 



In infancy, and in certain conditions of exhaustion as 

 well as in peculiar j^athological states, the inhibitory power 

 may fail to arrest the explosions of the impulsive discharge. 

 We have then an exjjlosive temperament temporarily real- 

 ized in an individual who at other times may be of a rela- 

 tively obstructed type. I cannot do better here than copy 

 a few pages from Dr. Clouston's excellent work : f 



"Take a child of six months, and there is absolutely no such brain- 

 power existent as mental inhibition ; no desire or tendency is stopped 

 by a mental act. ... At a year old the rudiments of the great 

 faculty of self-control are clearly apparent in most children. They 

 will resist the desire to seize the gas-tlauic, they will not upset 

 the milk-jug, they will obey orders to sit still when they want to run 

 about, all through a higher mental inhibition. But the power of 

 control is just as gradual a development as the motions of the hands. 

 . . . Look at a more complicated act, that will be recognized by any 

 competent physiologist to be automatic and beyond the control of any 

 ordinary inhibitory power, eg., irritate and tease a child of one or two 

 years sufficiently, and it will suddenly strike out at you ; suddenly 

 strike at a man, and he will either perform an act of defence or offence, 

 or both, quite automatically, and without power of controlling himself. 

 Place a bright tempting toy before a child of a year, and it will be in- 

 stantly appropriated. Place cold water before a man dying of thirst, 

 and he will take and drink it without power of doing otherwise. Ex- 



*Iu an excellent article ou The ' Mental Qualities of an Athlete ' in the 

 Harvard Monthly, vol. vi. p. 43, Mr. A. T. Dudley as.signs the first place 

 to the rapidly impulsive temperament. " Ask him how, in some complex 

 trick, he performed a certain act, why he pushed or pulled at a cerlaic in- 

 stant, and he will tell you he does not know , he did it by instinct ; or 

 ratiier his nerves and muscles did it of themselves. . . . Here is the dis- 

 tinguishing feature of the good player ; the good player, confident in his 

 training and his practice, in the critical game trusts entirely to his impulse, 

 and does not think out every move. The poor player, unable to trust his 

 nnpulsive actions, is compelled to think carefully all the time. He thus 

 not only loses the opportunities through liisslowness in comprehending the 

 whole situation, but, being compelled to think rapidly all the time, at crit- 

 ical points becomes confused ; while the fiisl rate player not trying to 

 reason, but acting as impulse directs, is continually distinguishing him.self 

 and plays the better under the greater pressure.'' 



t T. S. Clouston, Clinical Lectures ou Menial Diseases iLondon 1883)^ 

 pp. 310-318. 



