A very interesting statement of one of our contemporaries is that any person, to one degree or another, is both a psychologist and a philosopher - they say, life forces him to. On the one hand, the main driving force of every person is the craving for knowledge, the desire to reach certain social heights, the desire to be wise in any everyday situations - and this is the philosophy of life. How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict (best contemporary novels txt) 📖
- Author: Elsie Lincoln Benedict
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The Quick Temper
¶ "Flying off the handle," and "going up in the air" are phrases originally inspired by our dear, delightful friends, the Thoracics.
Other types do these more or less temperamental things but they do not do them as frequently nor on as short notice as this type.
¶ A fiery nature is part and parcel of the Thoracic's makeup. But did you ever see a fiery-natured man who didn't have lots of warm friends! It is the grouch—in whom the fire starts slowly and smoulders indefinitely—that nobody likes. But the man who flares up, flames for a moment and is calm the next never lacks for companions or devotees.
¶ One may belong to the Thoracic type whether his hair is blonde or brunette or any of the shades between, but it is an interesting fact that most of the red-haired are largely of this type. "He didn't have red hair for nothing" is a famous phrase that has been applied to the red-haired, quick-tempered Thoracic for generations.
You will be interested to note that this high color and high chest are distinctly noticeable in most of the red-haired people you know—certain proof that they approximate this type.
As you walk down the street tomorrow look at the people ahead of you and when you find a "red-head" notice how much more red his neck is than the necks of the people walking beside him. This flushed skin almost always accompanies red hair, showing that most red-haired people belong to this type.
¶ The red-haired man's temper usually expends itself instantly. His red-hot fieriness is over in a moment. But for every enemy he has two friends—friends who like his flame, even though in constant danger from it themselves.
Whereas the Alimentive avoids you if he disagrees with you, the Thoracic likes to tell you in a few hot words just what he thinks of you. But the chances are that he will be so completely over it by lunch time that he will invite you out with him.
¶ To be admired and a wee bit envied are desires dear to the heart of this type. Everybody, to a greater or lesser degree, desires these things, but to no other type do they mean so much as to this one. We know this because no other type, in any such numbers, takes the trouble or makes the sacrifices necessary to bring them about.
¶ The ego of every individual craves approval but the majority of the other types craves something else more—the particular something in each case depending upon the type to which the individual belongs.
You can always tell what any individual WANTS MOST by what he DOES. The man who thinks he wants a thing or wishes he wanted it talks about getting it, envies those who have it and plans to start doing something about it. But the man who really WANTS a thing GOES AFTER it, sacrifices his leisure, his pleasures and sometimes love itself—and GETS it.
¶ The lime-light appeals more to this type than to others because it goes further toward gratifying his desire for approbation. So while other men and women are dreaming of fame the Thoracic practises, ploughs and pleads his way to it.
The personal adulation of friends and of the multitude is the breath of life to him. Extremes of this type consider no self-denial too great a price to pay for it.
¶ The stage in all its forms is as natural a field to the Thoracic as salesmanship is to the Alimentive. The pleas of fond papas and fearsome mamas are usually ineffective with this type of boy or girl when he sets his heart on a career before the foot-lights or in the movies.
Whether they achieve it or not will depend on other, and chiefly mental, traits in each individual's makeup, but the yearning for it in some form is always there. So the managers' waiting rooms are always crowded with people of this type. It is this intensity of desire which has goaded and inspired most stage artists on to success in their chosen fields.
¶ To be able to put one's self in the role of another, to feel as he feels; to be so keenly sensitive to his situation and psychology that one almost becomes that person for the time being, is the heart and soul of acting.
The Thoracic has this sensitiveness naturally. After long study and acquaintance you may be able to put yourself in the place of a few friends. The Thoracic does this instantly and automatically.
¶ Those who have succeeded to fame in any given line are wont to proclaim, "Hard work is the secret of success," and to take great credit unto themselves for the labor they have expended on their own.
It is true of course that all success entails hard work. But the man or woman sufficiently gifted to rise to the heights gets from that gift such a strong inward urge towards its expression that what he does in that direction is not work to him. The long hours, concentration and study devoted to it are more pleasurable than painful to him. He chooses such activities voluntarily.
¶ Nothing can rightly be called work which one does out of sheer preference. Work never made an actress and work never made a singer where innate talent for these arts was lacking. Nature, the true maker of every famous name, bestows ninety per cent and man, if he hustles, can provide the other very necessary ten. But his sense of humor if not his sense of justice should be sufficient to prevent his trying to rob the Almighty of His due.
¶ Every individual who is not feeble-minded can be a success at something in this big world. Every normal-minded individual is able to create, invent, improve, organize, build or market some of the myriads of things the world is crying for. But he will succeed at only those things in which his physiological and psychological mechanisms perform their functions easily and naturally.
¶ Man is, by inclination, very little of a worker. He is, first, a wanter—a bundle of instincts; second, a feeler—a bundle of emotions; last and least, he is a thinker. What real work he does is done not because he likes it but because it serves one of these first two bundles of instincts.
When the desire for leisure is stronger than the other urges, leisure wins. But in all ambitious men and women the desire for other things outweighs the leisure-urge.
¶ Now what is it that causes some to have ambition and others to lack it?
Your ambitions take the form determined by your predominating physiological system. For instance, in every great singer the Thoracic has been present either as the first or second element.
The effect of the physical upon our talents is no more marked anywhere than here. For it is his unusual lung power, his high chest, the sounding boards in his nose section and his superior vocal cords that make the real foundation of every singer's fame. These physiological conditions are found in extreme degree only in persons of thoracic tendencies.
It was the great lung-power of Caruso that made him a great singer. It was his remarkable heart-power that brought him through an illness in February, 1921, when every newspaper in the world carried on its front page the positive statement that he could not live another day. That he lived for six months afterward was due chiefly to his remarkable heart.
The nature resulting from a large heart and large lungs is one distinctly different from all others—in short, the Thoracic nature.
¶ The best dressed man and the best dressed woman in your town belong predominantly to this type. This is no accident. The Thoracics, being possessed of acute eye senses, are more sensitive to color and line than any other type. These are the foundations of "style" and artistic grooming.
¶ Being desirous of the approval of others and realizing that though clothes do not make the man they can unmake him, this type looks to his laurels on this point.
Because clothes determine the first impressions we make upon strangers and because that impression is difficult to change, clothes are of vast importance in this maze of human relationships.
The Thoracic is more sensitive to the attitude of others because their attitude is more vital to his self-expression. He senses from childhood the bearing that clothes have for or against him in the opinion of others and how they can aid him to express his personality.
¶ The Thoracic therefore often becomes "the glass of fashion and the mold of form." His consciousness of himself is so keen that, even when alone, he prefers those things in dress which are at once fine, fancy and fashionable.
Some types are indifferent to clothes, some ignorant of clothes and some defiant in their clothes but the Thoracic always has a keen sense of fitness in the matter of apparel.
¶ The distinctive dresser is one who essays the extremely fashionable, the "last moment" touch. He is always a step or two ahead of the times. His ties, handbags, handkerchiefs and stick pins are "up to the minute." Such a man or woman invariably has a large thoracic development and is well repaid by the public for his pains.
¶ The public looks more eagerly than we suppose to changes in styles and fads. It gives, in spite of itself, instantaneous admiration of a sort to those who follow the dictates of fashion. This being one of the quickest roads to adulation, it is often utilized by this type.
¶ The latest thing in coiffures is always known by the Thoracic woman. And because she is, more often than any other type, a beautiful woman she can wear her hair in almost any style and find it becoming.
So when puffs were the thing this type of woman not only wore puffs but the most extreme and numerous puffs. When the "sticking-to-the-face" style was in vogue she bought much bandoline and essayed the sleekest and shiniest head of all. When the ear-bun raged she changed those same paper-like curls over night into veritable young sofa cushions.
¶ With intent to keep the spotlight on himself the Thoracic is always on dress parade. He is vividly aware of himself; he knows what kind of picture he is making. He is seldom "self-conscious," in the sense of being timid. When he does happen to be timid he suffers, by reason of his greater desire for approval, more acutely than any other type.
¶ Instantaneous reaction to stimuli—with all the reflex actions resulting therefrom—constitutes the keynote of this type. This makes an individual who is physiologically and psychologically affectable.
Because life is full of all kinds of stimuli, acting during every waking moment upon every sense in the organism, any person who is high strung finds himself in the midst of what might be called "nerve-bedlam."
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