The Foundations of Personality

by Abraham Myerson

There are plenty of other examples of the influence of the endocrines on mind, character and personality. I here briefly mention a few of these.

In the disease called acromegaly, which is due to a change in the pituitary gland, amongst other things are noted "melancholic tendencies, loss of memory and mental and physical torpor."

A very profound effect on character and personality, exclusive of intelligence, is that of the sex glands. One need not accept the Freudian extravagances regarding the way in which the sex feelings and impulses enter into our thoughts, emotions, purposes and acts. No unbiased observer of himself or his fellows but knows that the satisfaction or non-satisfaction of the sex feeling, its excitation or its suppression are of great importance in the destinies of character. Further, man as herdsman and man as tyrant have carried on huge experiments to show how necessary to normal character the sex glands are.

As herdsman he has castrated his male Bos and obtained the ox. And the ox is the symbol of patience, docility, steady labor, without lust or passion,—and the very opposite of his non-castrated brother, the bull. The bull is the symbol of irritability and unteachableness, who will not be easily yoked or led and who is the incarnation of lust and passion. One is the male transformed into neuter gender; and the other is rampant with the fierceness of his sex.

Compare the eunuch and the normal man. If the eunuch state be imposed in infancy, the shape of the body, its hairiness, the quality of the voice and the character are altered in characteristic manner. The eunuch essentially is neither man nor woman, but a repelling Something intermediate.

Enough has been said to show that mind and character are dependent upon the health of the brain and the glands of the body; that somewhere in the interaction of tissues, in the chemistry of life, arises thought, purpose, emotion, conduct and deed. But we need not go so far afield as pathology to show this, for common experience demonstrates it as well.

If character is control of emotions, firmness of purpose, cheerfulness of outlook and vigor of thought and memory, then the tired man, worn out by work or a long vigil, is changed in character. Such a person in the majority of cases is irritable, showing lack of control and emotion; he slackens in his life's purposes, loses cheerfulness and outlook and finds it difficult to concentrate his thoughts or to recall his memories. Though this change is temporary and disappears with rest, the essential fact is not altered, namely, fatigue alters character. It is also true that not all persons show this vulnerability to fatigue in equal measure. For that matter, neither do they show an equal liability to infectious diseases, equal reaction to alcohol or injury. The feeling of vigor which rest gives changes the expression of personality to a marked degree. It is true that we are not apt to think of the tired man as changed in character; yet we must admit on reflection that he has undergone transformation.

Even a loaded bowel may, as is well known, alter the reaction to life. Among men who are coarse in their language there is a salutation more pertinent than elegant that inquires into the state of the bowels.[1] The famous story of Voltaire and the Englishman, in which the sage agreed to suicide because life was not worth living when his digestion was disordered and who broke his agreement when he purged himself, illustrates how closely mood is related to the intestinal tract. And mood is the background of the psychic life, upon which depends the direction of our thoughts, cheerful or otherwise, the vigor of our will and purpose. Mood itself arises in part from the influences that stream into the muscles, joints, heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, digestive tract and all the organs and tissues by way of the afferent nerves (sympathetic and cerebro-spinal). Mood is thus in part a reflection of the health and proper working of the organism; it is the most important aspect of the subconsciousness, and upon it rests the structure of character and personality.

[1] What is called coarse is frequently crudely true. Thus, in the streets, in the workshops, and where men untrammeled by niceties engage in personalities the one who believes the other to be a "crank" informs him in crude language that he has intestinal stasis (to put the diagnosis in medical language) and advises him accordingly to "take a pill."

This does not mean that only the healthy are cheerful, or that the sick are discouraged. To affirm the dependence of mind upon body is not to deny that one may build up faith, hope, courage, through example and precept, or that one may not inherit a cheerfulness and courage (or the reverse). "There are men," says James, "who are born under a cloud." But exceptional individuals aside, the mass of mankind generates its mood either in the tissues of the body or in the circumstances of life.