The choice of a mate.

  • Anthony Ludovici
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details
    428/546 (page 398)
    Author. Types. MacAuliffe Dehydrated Flat Muscular and Respir- Hydrated Flat Cerebral Russian School .. Asthenic Normal Apoplectic Infantile Endocrinologists Thyroidal Pituitary Hypothyro- pituitary Myxoedema and dyspit- uitarism Clinicians Graves Disease Acromegaly Kretschmer Jung Cervantes Asthenic- schizoid Introvert Don Quix ote Athletic- schizoid Pyknic- cycloid Extravert Sancho Panza Shakespeare Hamlet Othello FalstafF Contemptuously Cranks, Fakirs Boxers, Brutes Boozers, Gluttons Highbrows The careful reader, who has traced the common factors in the theories of types above, including Kretschmer’s and Jung’s, should have little difficulty in drawing the right conclusions. We are, alas ! so much accustomed to the abnormal to-day, and perverted enough to think it “ interesting ”, that the normal of the above data and arguments may not be instantly apparent. If, however, we allow what we have read to relate itself to all we have seen in the masterpieces of sculpture, in the best speci mens of native races encountered abroad or studied in books of travel or ethnology, and in the finest examples of our own people, what are we forced to conclude ? Let me put it in a sentence : That the desirable type of man is a healthy leptosome, with a frame sufficiently robust and well- clothed with muscle, and with a skin sufficiently tonic and well- nourished, to enable him to react without hyper-æsthesia, irritability, or undue haste, to environment, and yet sensitive and alert enough to enable him adequately to grasp his environment and master it. Not as heavy as an athlete or a professional heavy weight boxer, but naturally wiry and slim without being mer curial, his body gets out of any scrape, and wriggles through any crevice. This is the thoroughbred male, resilient, agile, powerful, recuperative, resourceful, fleet, fiery and essentially sane. Brave because he has confidence in his natural equipment, even-tempered because he is strong 1 and every pinprick is not a stab, constant because his character is stable, 2 objective and, 1 See Balzac : Les Paysans, “ Comme tous les êtres réellement forts , il avait Vhumeur égale.” 2 See D.A., p. 9 : “ Plus un caractère est fort , moins il est sujet à V inconstance.” 398