himself or his neighbor. It seeks to analyze the fundamentals of
personality, avoiding metaphysics as the plague. It does not
define character or seek to separate it from mind and
personality. Written by a neurologist, a physician in the active
practice of his profession, it cannot fail to bear more of the
imprint of medicine, of neurology, than of psychology and
philosophy. Yet it has also laid under contribution these fields
of human effort. Mainly it will, I hope, bear the marks of
everyday experience, of contact with the world and with men and
women and children as brother, husband, father, son, lover,
hater, citizen, doer and observer. For it is this plurality of
contact that vitalizes, and he who has not drawn his universals
of character out of the particulars of everyday life is a
cloistered theorist, aloof from reality.



CHAPTER I. THE ORGANIC BASIS OF CHARACTER

The history of Man's thought is the real history of mankind. Back
of all the events of history are the curious systems of beliefs
for which men have lived and died. Struggling to understand
himself, Man has built up and discarded superstitions, theologies
and sciences.

Early in this strange and fascinating history he divided himself
into two parts--a body and a mind. Working together with body,
mind somehow was of different stuff and origin than body and had
only a mysterious connection with it. Theology supported this
belief; metaphysics and philosophy debated it with an acumen that