Besides the ante-pituitary, in the evolution of judgment, and the judgment faculty, due stress must be laid upon the influence of the internal secretion of the testes or ovaries, the product of the interstitial cells. Although the probability is that the effects are indirect, through a stimulation of the ante-pituitary, the fact remains that, in a child, memory may be marvelous and judgment poor (such memory is possibly purely thyroid in its determination). With the advent of the gonads upon the scene, judgments become the centre of the play's plot undoubtedly. The intelligence of eunuchs and eunuchoids is in general low. The skull and brain of castrates, animal and human, is smaller than the average. Gall, the physiologist who popularized ideas concerning the meaning of the protuberances and depressions of the head in relation to faculty and character, early in the nineteenth century, was the first to prove this. Among historic castrates, eunuchs, not a single example of great intellect, of the creative type, is known. On the contrary, the native gifts of the mind were destroyed. Thus Abelard, who was punished with castration by his uncle for his love affair with Helöise, never composed a verse of poetry thereafter.
IMAGINATION AS AN ENDOCRINE GIFT
That brings us to the consideration of imagination as influenced by the endocrines. The physical conditions of exercise of the imaginative faculty have not been sufficiently investigated. Alcohol has long been known to act as an evocant of strange images. The hallucinations of delirium tremens are the results obtained in extreme intoxication. A strangely imaged flow of consciousness, the imaginative state, may also be evoked by morphine and cannabis indica. There is no doubt that the brain cells may be made to combine in the fresh, novel, and unfamiliar associations that are recognized as unreal.
Francis Galton, pioneer student of the conditionings of human faculty, left an interesting study of the visualising capacity, so far as it could be attacked by the statistical method. Two of his conclusions are worth repeating for our purposes. One is that the power to imagine is poor in philosophers and men of science. The other that it is higher in the female sex than in the male. We have seen that the philosophic, scientific, intellectual mind, the capacity to abstract, and think in terms of abstractions, is definitely dependent upon proper secretion by the ante-pituitary. In woman, the post-pituitary is generally predominant over the ante-pituitary. Though we are in need of a series of studies of the endocrine traits and composition of men endowed with high imaginative qualities, and so are at a loss, we have indications of an endocrine control of the state of consciousness we speak of as the imaginative.
Most of the evidence accumulated in the examination and treatment of morbid conditions characterized by a restless, incoordinate activity of the brain cells points to excess of the post-pituitary secretion as the cause, or as one of the most important causes. The thyroid and the adrenal medulla also exert their influence. But the strongest appears to be the post-pituitary. Phobias, fears which obsess the mind, anxiety neuroses, suspicions, hallucinations, delusions, nervousness, all expressions of what we may sum up technically as the imaginative state of mind, occur and occur frequently, associated with other symptoms of posterior pituitary overactivity. Persons in whose make-up it rules are more liable to imagine disturbances of their mentality, or exhibit a well-developed imaginative streak. Normal states of overactivity of the post-pituitary such as occur in some women during the menstrual period and pregnancy, and in some men as part of the endocrine cycle of their everyday lives, are accompanied by increase in the susceptibility and vigor of the imagination. Whether the feeding of excess post-pituitary would lead to a stimulation of the tendency or ability to imagine is still to be decided. But it is known that quieting the post-pituitary by various means will cause a depression of the faculty, and eliminate its pathologic manifestations.
Psychologists distinguish between the constructive imagination that expresses itself in an ordered activity and the unbalanced fancies of the fearful neurotic for example. The post-pituitary confers the lability of the underlying state of brain in all of these imaginative tincturings of consciousness. The constructive imagination, one of the few truly precious gifts of a personality, is probably the expression of a certain balanced activity of the ante-pituitary and the post-pituitary.
MOODS AND THE ORGANIC OUTLOOK
The lability the post-pituitary confers upon the combinations of perceptions and conceptions, grouped as the imagined, extends to the ruling mood that may be spoken of as the organic outlook. Post-pituitary in excess, without compensation or balancing by one or some of the other endocrines, is associated with an instability of mood and the organic outlook. Concomitant is a defective self-control. Typically, one sees the effects in the mental abnormalities of women during the premenstrual period. A number of them have their pituitary balance upset then, with an overtopping of the ante-pituitary by the post-pituitary. Irritability, a sub-hysteria, or an actual hysteria may emerge in the usually most placid characters. A quiet wife and mother may go for her husband, curse and mortify him, even strike and beat him. She may slap her children at that time and no other. It is well known that most of their crimes are committed by women during the menstrual period. So are the suicides. Deterioration of mentality and character so often observed during the menopause, with its apathies or excitements, melancholia or mania, the fits of weeping or gaiety, the loss of grip upon reality, the complete change in mood and temperament that reflect the transformation of the organic outlook, demonstrate clearly the overwhelming influence of the endocrines upon the attitudes of the self toward the self.
It is possible to speak of thyroid moods, adrenal moods, ante-pituitary or post-pituitary moods, gonadal moods. Each of these is the echo in the mind of cells stimulated or depressed, by concentration or dilution in the blood of particular internal secretions. Restlessness and excitement can be produced experimentally by feeding thyroid. Vague anxiety, depressive fancies and fears, imaginative overactivity can be removed by inhibiting the post-pituitary. Hypersecretion of the ovary will cause a sexual susceptibility and a mood of genital obsession, capable of the most remarkable sublimations and perversions.