The type group which we have just considered is one of the most clearly
marked and easily recognized. It is a type which we often meet with
among the so-called criminal classes, where its characteristic features
can be seen in exaggerated proportions. Without attempting to analyze
any additional types (a task of great delicacy and difficulty), the
truth that the underlying fault of character is often unlike the
symptoms which appear most conspicuously on the surface may be further
illustrated by the following example. I have known of a person who made
himself obnoxious to his friends by his overbearing manners and apparent
arrogance. Casual observers condemned him on account of what they
believed to be his overweening self-confidence, and expressed the
opinion that his self-conceit ought to be broken down. But the real
trouble with him was not that he was too self-confident, but that he had
not self-confidence enough. His self-confidence needed to be built up.
He was overbearing in society because he did not trust himself, because
he was always afraid of not being able to hold his own, and hence he
exaggerated on the other side. Those who take such a person to be in
reality what he seems to be will never be able to influence him. If we
find such a trait in a child, and simply treat it as if it were
arrogant, we shall miss the mark entirely. We must find the underlying
principle of the character the occult cause of which the surface
symptoms are the effects.
Our knowledge of the great type groups is as yet extremely meager.
Psychology has yet to do its work in this direction, and books on
education give us but little help. But there are certain means by which
the task of investigation may possibly be assisted. One means is the
study of the plays of Shakespeare. That master mind has created certain
types of character which repay the closest analysis. The study of the
best biographies is a second means. The study of the moral
characteristics of the primitive races--a study which has been begun by
Herbert Spencer in his work on Descriptive Sociology, and by Waitz in
his Anthropologie der Naturvoelker--is perhaps another means; and honest
introspection, when it shall have become the rule among intelligent
persons, instead of being the exception, will probably be the best
means.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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