<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></SPAN></span></p>
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<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
<h1>The Cerebral Type</h1>
<h3>"The Thinker"</h3>
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<p>ll those in whom the nervous system is more highly developed than any
other are Cerebrals.</p>
<p>This system consists of the brain and nerves. The name comes from the
cerebrum or thinking part of the brain.</p>
<p>Meditation, imagining, dreaming, visualizing and all voluntary mental
processes take place in the cerebrum, or brain, as we shall hereinafter
call it. The brain is the headquarters of the nervous system—its "home
office"—just as the stomach is the home office of the Alimentive system
and the heart and lungs the home office of the Thoracic.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Your Freight System</h4>
<p>� The Thoracic system may be compared to a great freight system, with
each of its tributaries<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></SPAN></span>—from the main trunk arteries down to the
tiniest blood vessels—starting from the heart and carrying its cargo of
blood to every part of the body by means of the power furnished by the
lungs.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Your Telegraph System</h4>
<p>� But the nervous system is more like an intricate telegraph system. Its
network of nerves runs from every outlying point of the body into the
great headquarters of the brain, carrying sense messages notifying us of
everything heard, seen, touched, tasted or smelled.</p>
<p>As soon as the brain receives a message from any of the five senses it
decides what to do about it and if action is decided on, sends its
orders back over the nerve wires to the muscles telling them what action
to perform.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Your Working Agents</h4>
<p>� This latter fact—that the muscles are the working agents of the
body—also explains why the Muscular type is naturally more active than
any of the others.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Source of Your Raw Materials</h4>
<p>� The body may be compared to a perfectly organized transportation
system and factory com<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></SPAN></span>bined. The Alimentive system furnishes the raw
materials for all the systems to work on.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Stationary Equipment</h4>
<p>� The bones of the body are like the telegraph poles, the bridges and
structures for the protection and permanence of the work carried on by
the other systems of the body.</p>
<p>Now poles, bridges and structures are less movable, less alterable than
any of the other parts of a transportation system, and likewise the bony
element in man makes him less alterable in every other way than he would
otherwise be. A predominance of it in any individual indicates a
preponderance of this immovable tendency in his nature.</p>
<p>Mind and matter are so inseparably bound up together in man's organism
that it is impossible to say just where mind ends and matter begins. But
this we know: that even the mind of the bony person partakes of the same
unbending qualities that are found in the bones of his body.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>"Every Cell Thinks"</h4>
<p>� Thomas A. Edison, as level-headed and unmystical a scientist as lives,
says, "Every cell in us thinks." Human Analysis proves to us that
something very near this is the case for it shows how the habitual
mental processes of every individual are always "off the same piece of
goods" as his body.<br/><br/><br/><br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-220.png" width-obs="238" height-obs="400" alt="" title="" /> <br/><br/><br/></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>Thus the fat man's mind acts as his body acts—evenly, unhurriedly,
easefully and comfortably. The florid man's mind has the same quickness
and resourcefulness that distinguish all his bodily processes. The
muscular man's mind acts in the same strenuous way that his body acts,
while the bony man's brain always has an immovable quality closely akin
to the boniness of his body.</p>
<p>He is not necessarily a "bonehead," but this phrase, like "fathead," is
no accident.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>The Large Head on the Small Body</h4>
<p>� As pointed out before, the larger any organ or system the more will it
tend to express itself. So, the large-headed, small-bodied man runs more
to mental than to physical activities, and is invariably more mature in
his thinking. (See Chart 9) Conversely, the Alimentive type gets its
traits from that elemental stage in human development when we did little
but get and assimilate food, and when thinking was of the simplest form.
In those<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></SPAN></span> days man was more physical than mental; he had a large stomach
but a small head.</p>
<p>So today we see in the pure Alimentive type people who resemble their
Alimentive ancestors. They have the same proportionately large stomach
and proportionately small head,—with the stomach-system dominating
their thoughts, actions and lives.</p>
<p>The Cerebral is the exact opposite of this. He has a top-heavy head,
proportionately large for his body, and a proportionately undeveloped
stomach system.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>His Small Assimilative System</h4>
<p>� The extreme Cerebral differs from other types chiefly in the fact that
while his head is unusually large compared to the body, his alimentive,
thoracic, muscular and bony systems are smaller and less developed than
the average. The latter fact is due to the same law which causes the
Alimentive to have a large body and a small head. Nature is a wonderful
efficiency engineer. She provides only as much space as is required for
the functioning of any particular organ, giving extra space only to
those departments that need it.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>The Cerebral-Alimentive is the combination which makes most of the
"magnates" and the self-made millionaires. Such a man has all the
Alimentive's desires for the luxurious comforts and "good things of
life," combined with sufficient brains to enable him to make the money
necessary to get them.</p>
<p>Nature doesn't give the pure Alimentive a large skull because he doesn't
need it for the housing of his proportionately small brain, but
concentrates on giving him a big stomach fitted with "all modern
conveniences." On the other hand, the head of the Cerebral is large
because his brain is large. The skull which is pliable and unfinished at
birth grows to conform to the size and shape of the brain as the glove
takes on the shape of the hand inside it.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Stomach vs. Brain</h4>
<p>� Because the Alimentive and Cerebral systems are farthest removed from
each other, evolutionally, a large brain and a large stomach are a very
unusual combination. Such an individual would be a combination of the
Alimentive and Cerebral types and would have the Alimentive's fat body
with a large highbrow head of the Cerebral. The<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></SPAN></span> possession of these two
highly developed but opposite kinds of systems places their owner
constantly in the predicament of deciding between the big meal he wants
and the small one he knows he should have for good brain work.</p>
<p>We are so constructed that brain and stomach—each of which demands an
extra supply of blood when performing its work—can not function with
maximum efficiency simultaneously.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Why Light Lunches</h4>
<p>� When your stomach is busy digesting a big meal your brain takes a
vacation. This little fact is responsible for millions of light
luncheons daily. The strenuous manual worker can empty a full dinner
pail and profit by it but the brain worker long ago discovered that a
heavy midday meal gave him a heavy brain for hours afterwards.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Clear Thinking and a Clear Stomach</h4>
<p>� Clear thinking demands a clear stomach because an empty stomach means
that the blood reserves so necessary to vivid thinking are free to go to
the brain. Without good blood coursing at a fairly rapid rate through
the brain no man can think keenly or concentratedly. This explains why<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></SPAN></span>
you think of so many important things when your stomach is empty that
never occur to you when your energy is being monopolized by digestion.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Heavy Dinners and Heavy Speeches</h4>
<p>� All public speakers have learned that a heavy dinner means a heavy
speech.</p>
<p>Elbert Hubbard's rule when on his speaking tours was one every orator
should follow. "Ten dollars extra if I have to eat," said Fra
Elbertus—a far cry from the days when we "fed up" the preacher at
Sunday dinner with the expectation of hearing a better sermon!<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Uses His Head</h4>
<p>� Just as assimilation is the favorite activity of the Alimentive type,
head work is the favorite activity of the large-headed Cerebral. He is
so far removed, evolutionally, from the stomach stage that his stomach
is as much a remnant with him as the brain is a rudiment with the
extreme Alimentive.</p>
<p>The extra blood supply which nature furnishes to any over-developed part
of the body also tends to encourage him in thinking, just as the same
condition encourages the fat man in eating.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></SPAN></span><br/><br/></p>
<h4>Forgets to Eat</h4>
<p>� An Alimentive never forgets dinner time.</p>
<p>But the Cerebral is so much more interested in food for his brain than
food for his body that he can go without his meals and not mind it. He
is likely to have a book and a cracker at his meals—and then forget to
eat the cracker!<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Physical Sensitivity</h4>
<p>� We are "mental" in proportion to the sensitiveness of our mental
organization. The Cerebral possesses the most highly developed brain
center of any type and is therefore more sensitive to all those stimuli
which act upon the mind.</p>
<p>His whole body bespeaks it. The fineness of his features is in direct
contrast to some of the other types. The unusual size of his brain
denotes a correspondingly intricate organization of nerves, for the
nerves are tiny elongations of the brain.</p>
<p>The intellectual sensitiveness of any individual can be accurately
estimated by noting the comparative size of his brain and body.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>His Triangular Head and Face</h4>
<p>� A triangle is the geometrical figure approximated by the Cerebral's
front face and head.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>If he is a pure, extreme Cerebral a triangle is again what you are
reminded of when you look at his head from the side, for his head stands
on a small neck, his forehead stands out at the top, while his back head
is long. These bring the widest part of his head nearer the top than we
find it in other types.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Delicate Hands</h4>
<p>� A thin, delicate hand denotes a larger-than-average Cerebral element.
(See Chart 10)<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Smooth Fingers</h4>
<p>� What have long been known as "smooth fingers" are typical of the
Cerebral. These are not to be confused with the fat, pudgy babyish
fingers of the Alimentive, for though the latter's fingers are smooth
around, they do not present straight outlines at the sides. They puff
out between the joints.</p>
<p>Smooth fingers are characteristic of the extreme Cerebral type. They are
called this because their outlines run straight up and down.</p>
<p>The joints of the Alimentive finger (See Chart 2) mark the narrowest
places owing to the fact that the joints are not changeable. In the
Osseous fingers (See Chart 8) the opposite is true. The joints mark
the widest spots and the spaces between are sunken.<br/><br/><br/><br/><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-228.png" width-obs="293" height-obs="400" alt="" title="" /> <br/><br/><br/></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>The fingers of the Thoracic are inclined to be pointed like his head,
while the Muscular's fingers are square at the end and look the power
they possess.</p>
<p>� But the Cerebral has fingers unlike any of these. There is no fat to
make them pudgy and no muscle to make them firm. Neither are there large
joints to make them knotty. Their outlines therefore run in almost
straight lines and the whole hand presents a more frail, aesthetic
appearance.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Meditation His Keynote</h4>
<p>� Thinking, contemplating, reflecting—all the mental processes coming
under the head of "meditation"—constitute the keynote of this type.</p>
<p>The Alimentive lives to eat, the Thoracic to feel, the Muscular to act,
the Osseous to stabilize, but the Cerebral lives to meditate.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Air Castles</h4>
<p>� He loves to plan, imagine, dream day-dreams, visualize and go over and
over in his mind the manifold possibilities, probabilities and
potentialities of many things.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>When he carries this to extremes—as the person with a huge head and
tiny body is likely to do—he often overlooks the question of the
practicability of the thing he is planning. He inclines to go
"wild-catting," to dream dreams that are impossible of fruition.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Thought for Thought's Sake</h4>
<p>� He will sit by the hour or by the day thinking out endless ultimates,
for the sheer pleasure it gives him. Other men blame him, criticise him
and ridicule him for this and for the most part he does fail of the
practical success by which the efficient American measures everything.</p>
<p>But the fact must never be forgotten that the world owes its progress to
the men who could see beyond their nose, who could conceive of things no
one had ever actually seen.</p>
<p>This type, more than any other, has been the innovator in all forms of
human progress.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>The Dreamer</h4>
<p>� "Everything accomplished starts with the dream of it," is a saying we
all know to be true. Yet we go on forever giving all the big prizes to
the doers. But the man who can only dream lives in a very hostile world.
His real world is his<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></SPAN></span> thoughts but whenever he steps out of them into
human society he feels a stranger and he is one.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Doesn't Fit</h4>
<p>� The world of today is ruled by people who accomplish. "Putting it
over," "delivering the goods," "getting it across," are a part of our
language because they represent the standards of the average American
today.</p>
<p>The Cerebral is as much out of place in such an environment as a fish is
on dry land. He knows it and he shows it. He doesn't know what the other
kind are driving at and they know so little of what he is driving at
that they have invented a special name for him—the "nut."</p>
<p>Doing isn't his line. He prefers the pleasures of "thinking over" to all
the "putting over" in the world. This type usually is a failure because
he takes it all out in dreaming without ever doing the things necessary
to make his dream come true.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>A "Visionary"</h4>
<p>� These predilections for overlooking the obvious, the tangible and the
necessary elements in everyday existence tend to make of the Cerebral
what he is so often called—a "visionary."<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>For instance, he will build up in his mind the most imposing
superstructure for an invention and confidently tell you "it will make
millions," but forget to inform himself on such essential questions as
"will it work?" "Is it transportable?" or "Is there any demand for it?"<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Ahead of His Time</h4>
<p>� "He was born ahead of his time" applies oftenest to a man of this
type.</p>
<p>He has brains to see what the world needs and not infrequently sees how
the world could get it. But he is so averse to action himself that
unless active people take up his schemes they seldom materialize.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>What We Owe to the Dreamers</h4>
<p>� Men in whom the Cerebral type predominated anticipated every step man
has made in his political, social, individual, industrial, religious and
economic evolution. They have seen it decades and sometimes centuries in
advance. But they were always ridiculed at first.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>The Mutterings of Morse</h4>
<p>� History is replete with the stories of unappreciated genius. In
Washington, D. C., you will have<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></SPAN></span> pointed out to you a great elm, made
historic by Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph. He could not make
the successful people of his day give him a hearing, but he was so
wrapped up in his invention that he used to sit under this tree whenever
the weather permitted, and explain all about it to the down-and-outers
and any one else who would stop. "Listen to the mutterings of that poor
old fool" said the wise ones as they hurried by on the other side of the
street. But today people come from everywhere to see "The Famous Morse
Elm" and do homage to the great mind that invented the telegraph.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>"Langley's Folly"</h4>
<p>� Today we fly from continent to continent and air travel is superseding
land and water transportation whenever great speed is in demand. A man
receives word that his child is dangerously ill; he steps into an
airplane and in less than half the time it would take trains or motors
to carry him, alights at his own door.</p>
<p>Commerce, industry, war and the future of whole nations are being
revolutionized by this man-made miracle. Yet it is but a few short years
since S. P.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></SPAN></span> Langley was sneered at from one end of this country to the
other because he stooped to the "folly" of inventing a "flying machine."<br/><br/></p>
<h4>The Trivial Telephone</h4>
<p>� Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. But it was many years
before he could induce anybody to finance it, though some of the
wealthiest, and therefore supposedly wisest, business men of the day
were asked to do so. None of them would risk a dollar on it. Even after
it had been tested at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and
found to work perfectly, its possibilities were so little realized that
for a long while no one could be found to furnish the funds necessary to
place it upon the market.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>The Wizardry of Wireless</h4>
<p>� Then after the world had become accustomed to transacting millions of
dollars worth of business daily over the once despised telegraph and
telephone it took out its doubts on Marconi and his "wireless
telegraphy." "It's impossible," they said. "Talk without wires? Never!"</p>
<p>But now the radio needles pierce the blue from San Diego to Shanghai and
from your steamer in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></SPAN></span> mid-ocean you can say good night to your loved one
in Denver.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Frank Bacon's Play</h4>
<p>� Ideas always have to go begging at first, and the greater the idea the
rougher the sledding.</p>
<p>The most successful play ever put on in America was "Lightnin'," written
by Frank Bacon, a typical Cerebral-Osseous. It ran every night for three
years in New York City. It has made a million people happy and a million
dollars for its sponsors. But when Mr. Bacon, who also plays the title
role, took it to the New York producers they refused it a try-out. But
because he had faith in his dream and persisted, his name and his play
have become immortal.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>An Ideal Combination</h4>
<p>� The ideal combination is a dreamer who can DO or a doer who knows the
power of a DREAM. Thinking and acting—almost every individual is doing
too much of one and too little of the other!<br/><br/></p>
<h4>The World's Two Classes</h4>
<p>� The world is divided roughly into these two classes: those who act
without thinking (and as a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></SPAN></span> result are often in jail); and those who
think without acting (and as a result are often in the poorhouse).<br/><br/></p>
<h4>To be a Success</h4>
<p>� To be a successful individual today you have got to dream and then DO;
plan and then PRODUCE; contemplate and then CONSTRUCT; think it out and
then WORK it out.</p>
<p>If you do the latter at the expense of the former you are doomed to work
forever for other people, to play some other man's game. If you do the
former at the expense of the latter you are doomed to know only the
fringes of life, never to be taken seriously and never to achieve.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Pitfalls for Dreamers</h4>
<p>� If you are inclined to take your pleasure out in cerebrating instead
of creating; if it suffices you to see a thing in your imagination
whether it ever comes to pass or not, you are at a decided disadvantage
in this hustling world; and you will never be a success.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Pitfalls for the Doer</h4>
<p>� On the other hand if you are content to do what other men dream about
and never have<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></SPAN></span> dreams of your own you will probably always have a berth
but will never have a million. You will exist but you will never know
what it is to live.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>The Hungry Philosopher</h4>
<p>� The extreme Cerebral can sit on a park bench with an empty purse and
an empty stomach and get as much pleasure out of reflecting on the
"whichness of the what and the whitherness of the wherefore" as an
Alimentive gets out of a planked steak. Needless to say, each is an
enigma to the other. Yet most people imagine that because both are human
and both walk on their hind legs they are alike. They are no more alike
than a cow and a canary.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>His Frail Body</h4>
<p>� The extreme Cerebral type finds it difficult to do things because, as
we have seen, he is deficient in muscle—one of the vital elements upon
which activity and accomplishment are based. This type has little
muscle, little bone, and little fat.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>Deficient in "Horse Power"</h4>
<p>� He is not inactive for the same reason that the Alimentive is; his
stomach processes do not slow<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></SPAN></span> him down. But his muscles are so
undeveloped that he has little inward urge toward activity and little
force back of his movements. His heart and lungs are small, so that he
also lacks "steam" and "horse power."</p>
<p>He prefers to sit rather than to move, exactly as the Muscular prefers
to be "up and doing" rather than to sit still.<br/><br/></p>
<h4>The Man of Futile Movements</h4>
<p>� Did you ever look on while a pure Cerebral man tried to move a kitchen
stove? Ever ask the dreamer in your house to bring down a trunk from the
attic?</p>
<p>Will you ever forget the almost human perversity with which that stove
and that trunk resisted him; or how amusing it looked to see a grown man
outwitted at every turn by an inert mass?</p>
<p>"I have carried on a life-long feud with inanimate things," a pure
Cerebral friend remarked to us recently. "I have a fight on my hands
every time I attempt to use a pair of scissors, a knife and fork, a
hammer or a collar button."<br/><br/></p>
<h4>His Jerky Walk</h4>
<p>� Because he is short the Cerebral takes short<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></SPAN></span> steps. Because he lacks
muscle he lacks a powerful stride. As a result he has a walk that is
irregular and sometimes jerky.</p>
<p>When he walks slowly this jerk is not apparent, but when hurried it is
quite noticeable.<br/><br/></p>
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