Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Previous Page
–
Next Page
OCR
“ I speak Truth, not so much as I would, but as much
as I dare; and dare a little more as I grow older.”
FELHCHTATHCNS
Felix Shay
Wlind Dominant
ROFESSORS of Psy-
chology, from Aris-
totle to William
James, are so famil-
iar with the subject
that they make it
unfamiliar to us.
Only learned gentles
men of a kind and
' sort may read the
books that other gentlemen per se of their
rank and ilk do write.
Into minute particles the predigested
psychological matter is divided that the
mental ameba may envelop and absorb.
Though we do absorb enough to live on,
ameba-like, we exist without eyes or
brains-without a conscious knowledge
of that which gives us life.
Certain phases of Psychology approach
the secrets of Health and Happiness and
Eternal Youth. Therefore, 't is a pity that
the subject is not so presented, without
side references or academic wrangle,
Without footnotes or classroom jargon,
Wlth cleamess and completeness, that the
Man-on-the-Street may read and grasp.
Time after time we have bored through
Treatises that in turn bored us through,
and addled such brains as occupy our
Cllondrocranium with crisscross conclu-
sxons and echoes of echoes until we have
P1'3Yed. “ 0 Lord, make him say it
soon! " so so-
So for the nonce we will terminate and
take over the Psychologist’s usufruct, and
feeble-mindedly attempt to unscrew the
unscrutable!
ITHER the mind dominates the body
or the body dominates the mind,
partially or entirely! The resultant types
we call Mental or Vital; the half-and-half
or Motortype is a hybride-something of
both and something more.
The high type of human is Mental;
identify this type as the “ absent-minded"
College Professor who forgets when it 's
mealtime, forgets to put on his collar;
who perchance is concerned with matters
of more importance.
The low type of human is Vital; he never
misses a meal or a drink, and he adorns
himself with red tie, checkered vest and
diamonds, or does the best he can!
Simeon Stylites, the Syrian monk who
lived atop a sixty-foot pillar, three feet
wide, for thirty-seven years, was a mental-
plus type so He cast clear the bondages
of the World and the Flesh, found sur-
cease of sorrow and desire in meditation.
The Christian Martyrs who were thrown
into the arena of the Colosseum at Rome,
to be torn to pieces by wild beasts, were
Mental types so Sympathy for them is
wasted Mr Long before physical death
actually came they had passed on in
spirit, and left the poor body to its fate.
(L The Spartan boy who secreted a wolf
beneath his cloak to tear his vitals gives
us a glimpse of heroic Mind dominant.
(I When the Mind sits enthroned, physi-
cal whimperings sound far off, impersonal.
We know a frail little man of today who
for three years has been racked and
persecuted by the ravages of tuberculosis,
who night and day knows no rest, but
who smiles and writes us cheerful letters
and never once mentions his afflictions,
except to jest. That man is all Mental so-
Thirty-nine