Emotional Liabilities.

- The lack of emotional fervor and enthusiasm prevents this type from impressing others.

Business a.s.sets.

- Keeping his word, orderliness and system are the chief business a.s.sets of this type.

Business Liabilities.

- A disinclination to mix, the inability to adapt himself to his patrons and a tendency to hold people too rigidly to account are the business handicaps of the Osseous.

Domestic Strength.

- Constancy and faithfulness are his chief domestic a.s.sets.

Domestic Weaknesses.

- Tightness with money, a tendency to be too exacting and dictatorial, and to fail to show affection are the things that frequently prevent marriage for the Osseous and endanger it when he does marry.

Should Aim At.

- The Osseous should aim at being more adjustable to people and to his environment in general. He should try to take a greater interest in others and then show it.

Should Avoid.

- Indifference and the display of it, solitude and too few interests are things the Osseous needs to avoid.

His Strong Points.

- Dependability, honesty, economy, faithfulness and his capacity for finishing what he starts are the strongest points of this type.

His Weakest Points.

- Stubbornness, obstinacy, slowness, over-cautiousness, coldness and a tendency to stinginess are the weakest links in people of the extreme Osseous type.

How to Deal with this Type Socially.

- There is little to be done with the Osseous when you meet him socially except to let him do what he wants to do.

Don't interfere with him if you want him to like you.

How to Deal with this Type in Business.

- As an employee, give him responsibility and then let him alone to do it his way.

Then keep your hands off.

Don't give him constant advice; don't try to drive him.

Let him be as systematic as he likes.

When dealing with him in other business ways rely on him and let him know you admire his dependability.

Remember, the distinguishing marks of the Osseous, in the order of their importance, are PROPORTIONATELY LARGE BONES FOR THE BODY, PROMINENT JOINTS and A LONG FACE. Any person who has these is largely of the Osseous type no matter what other types may be included in his makeup.

CHAPTER V.

The Cerebral Type.

"The Thinker"

All those in whom the nervous system is more highly developed than any other are Cerebrals.

This system consists of the brain and nerves. The name comes from the cerebrum or thinking part of the brain.

Meditation, imagining, dreaming, visualizing and all voluntary mental processes take place in the cerebrum, or brain, as we shall hereinafter call it. The brain is the headquarters of the nervous system--its "home office"--just as the stomach is the home office of the Alimentive system and the heart and lungs the home office of the Thoracic.

Your Freight System.

- The Thoracic system may be compared to a great freight system, with each of its tributaries--from the main trunk arteries down to the tiniest blood vessels--starting from the heart and carrying its cargo of blood to every part of the body by means of the power furnished by the lungs.

Your Telegraph System.

- But the nervous system is more like an intricate telegraph system. Its network of nerves runs from every outlying point of the body into the great headquarters of the brain, carrying sense messages notifying us of everything heard, seen, touched, tasted or smelled.

As soon as the brain receives a message from any of the five senses it decides what to do about it and if action is decided on, sends its orders back over the nerve wires to the muscles telling them what action to perform.

Your Working Agents.

- This latter fact--that the muscles are the working agents of the body--also explains why the Muscular type is naturally more active than any of the others.

Source of Your Raw Materials.

- The body may be compared to a perfectly organized transportation system and factory combined. The Alimentive system furnishes the raw materials for all the systems to work on.

Stationary Equipment.

- The bones of the body are like the telegraph poles, the bridges and structures for the protection and permanence of the work carried on by the other systems of the body.

Now poles, bridges and structures are less movable, less alterable than any of the other parts of a transportation system, and likewise the bony element in man makes him less alterable in every other way than he would otherwise be. A predominance of it in any individual indicates a preponderance of this immovable tendency in his nature.

Mind and matter are so inseparably bound up together in man's organism that it is impossible to say just where mind ends and matter begins. But this we know: that even the mind of the bony person partakes of the same unbending qualities that are found in the bones of his body.

"Every Cell Thinks"

- Thomas A. Edison, as level-headed and unmystical a scientist as lives, says, "Every cell in us thinks." Human a.n.a.lysis proves to us that something very near this is the case for it shows how the habitual mental processes of every individual are always "off the same piece of goods" as his body.

[Ill.u.s.tration 9: Cerebral the "thinker"]

Thus the fat man's mind acts as his body acts--evenly, unhurriedly, easefully and comfortably. The florid man's mind has the same quickness and resourcefulness that distinguish all his bodily processes. The muscular man's mind acts in the same strenuous way that his body acts, while the bony man's brain always has an immovable quality closely akin to the boniness of his body.

He is not necessarily a "bonehead," but this phrase, like "fathead," is no accident.

The Large Head on the Small Body.

- As pointed out before, the larger any organ or system the more will it tend to express itself. So, the large-headed, small-bodied man runs more to mental than to physical activities, and is invariably more mature in his thinking. (See Chart 9) Conversely, the Alimentive type gets its traits from that elemental stage in human development when we did little but get and a.s.similate food, and when thinking was of the simplest form. In those days man was more physical than mental; he had a large stomach but a small head.

So today we see in the pure Alimentive type people who resemble their Alimentive ancestors. They have the same proportionately large stomach and proportionately small head,--with the stomach-system dominating their thoughts, actions and lives.

The Cerebral is the exact opposite of this. He has a top-heavy head, proportionately large for his body, and a proportionately undeveloped stomach system.

His Small a.s.similative System.

- The extreme Cerebral differs from other types chiefly in the fact that while his head is unusually large compared to the body, his alimentive, thoracic, muscular and bony systems are smaller and less developed than the average. The latter fact is due to the same law which causes the Alimentive to have a large body and a small head. Nature is a wonderful efficiency engineer. She provides only as much s.p.a.ce as is required for the functioning of any particular organ, giving extra s.p.a.ce only to those departments that need it.

The Cerebral-Alimentive is the combination which makes most of the "magnates" and the self-made millionaires. Such a man has all the Alimentive's desires for the luxurious comforts and "good things of life," combined with sufficient brains to enable him to make the money necessary to get them.

Nature doesn't give the pure Alimentive a large skull because he doesn't need it for the housing of his proportionately small brain, but concentrates on giving him a big stomach fitted with "all modern conveniences." On the other hand, the head of the Cerebral is large because his brain is large. The skull which is pliable and unfinished at birth grows to conform to the size and shape of the brain as the glove takes on the shape of the hand inside it.

Stomach vs. Brain.

- Because the Alimentive and Cerebral systems are farthest removed from each other, evolutionally, a large brain and a large stomach are a very unusual combination. Such an individual would be a combination of the Alimentive and Cerebral types and would have the Alimentive's fat body with a large highbrow head of the Cerebral. The possession of these two highly developed but opposite kinds of systems places their owner constantly in the predicament of deciding between the big meal he wants and the small one he knows he should have for good brain work.

We are so constructed that brain and stomach--each of which demands an extra supply of blood when performing its work--can not function with maximum efficiency simultaneously.

Why Light Lunches.

- When your stomach is busy digesting a big meal your brain takes a vacation. This little fact is responsible for millions of light luncheons daily. The strenuous manual worker can empty a full dinner pail and profit by it but the brain worker long ago discovered that a heavy midday meal gave him a heavy brain for hours afterwards.

Clear Thinking and a Clear Stomach.

- Clear thinking demands a clear stomach because an empty stomach means that the blood reserves so necessary to vivid thinking are free to go to the brain. Without good blood coursing at a fairly rapid rate through the brain no man can think keenly or concentratedly. This explains why you think of so many important things when your stomach is empty that never occur to you when your energy is being monopolized by digestion.

Heavy Dinners and Heavy Speeches.

- All public speakers have learned that a heavy dinner means a heavy speech.

Elbert Hubbard's rule when on his speaking tours was one every orator should follow. "Ten dollars extra if I have to eat," said Fra Elbertus--a far cry from the days when we "fed up" the preacher at Sunday dinner with the expectation of hearing a better sermon!

Uses His Head.

- Just as a.s.similation is the favorite activity of the Alimentive type, head work is the favorite activity of the large-headed Cerebral. He is so far removed, evolutionally, from the stomach stage that his stomach is as much a remnant with him as the brain is a rudiment with the extreme Alimentive.

The extra blood supply which nature furnishes to any over-developed part of the body also tends to encourage him in thinking, just as the same condition encourages the fat man in eating.

Forgets to Eat.

- An Alimentive never forgets dinner time.

But the Cerebral is so much more interested in food for his brain than food for his body that he can go without his meals and not mind it. He is likely to have a book and a cracker at his meals--and then forget to eat the cracker!

Physical Sensitivity.

- We are "mental" in proportion to the sensitiveness of our mental organization. The Cerebral possesses the most highly developed brain center of any type and is therefore more sensitive to all those stimuli which act upon the mind.

His whole body bespeaks it. The fineness of his features is in direct contrast to some of the other types. The unusual size of his brain denotes a correspondingly intricate organization of nerves, for the nerves are tiny elongations of the brain.

The intellectual sensitiveness of any individual can be accurately estimated by noting the comparative size of his brain and body.

His Triangular Head and Face.

- A triangle is the geometrical figure approximated by the Cerebral's front face and head.

If he is a pure, extreme Cerebral a triangle is again what you are reminded of when you look at his head from the side, for his head stands on a small neck, his forehead stands out at the top, while his back head is long. These bring the widest part of his head nearer the top than we find it in other types.

Delicate Hands.

- A thin, delicate hand denotes a larger-than-average Cerebral element. (See Chart 10) Smooth Fingers.

- What have long been known as "smooth fingers" are typical of the Cerebral. These are not to be confused with the fat, pudgy babyish fingers of the Alimentive, for though the latter's fingers are smooth around, they do not present straight outlines at the sides. They puff out between the joints.

Smooth fingers are characteristic of the extreme Cerebral type. They are called this because their outlines run straight up and down.

The joints of the Alimentive finger (See Chart 2) mark the narrowest places owing to the fact that the joints are not changeable. In the Osseous fingers (See Chart 8) the opposite is true. The joints mark the widest spots and the s.p.a.ces between are sunken.

[Ill.u.s.tration 10: A: Typical CEREBRAL face B: Typical CEREBRAL hand]

The fingers of the Thoracic are inclined to be pointed like his head, while the Muscular's fingers are square at the end and look the power they possess.

- But the Cerebral has fingers unlike any of these. There is no fat to make them pudgy and no muscle to make them firm. Neither are there large joints to make them knotty. Their outlines therefore run in almost straight lines and the whole hand presents a more frail, aesthetic appearance.

Meditation His Keynote.

- Thinking, contemplating, reflecting--all the mental processes coming under the head of "meditation"--const.i.tute the keynote of this type.

The Alimentive lives to eat, the Thoracic to feel, the Muscular to act, the Osseous to stabilize, but the Cerebral lives to meditate.

Air Castles.

- He loves to plan, imagine, dream day-dreams, visualize and go over and over in his mind the manifold possibilities, probabilities and potentialities of many things.