nès poise in co A boy who has been brought up to regard smoking and drinking as sinful cannot satisfy his longing to be a "good fellow" without sacrificing ideals that have been bred into the very soul of his nature. Without using tobacco and liquor he cannot even smell like a man. Often the conflict between his standards and his desires issues in hypocrisy-preaching one thing and doing another. Where the idealist does insist upon living up to his code he is embarrassed by the fear that his companions will misinterpret his conduct for a "better than thou" attitude. He wants love and all he gets is respect. Although he has the compensation of joy that goes with being true to what he believes is right, nevertheless he does lose a certain contact with his fellows, for those who err like company. The range of sins is increased in proportion to the strictness of the individual's ethical code, thus giving wider scope to the sense of sin which involves moral shame. Han individua he will fear not become so reti Then there are the social inferiorities, into which class we may assemble, along with the distinctly social defects, all the "left-overs" from the other types—the miscellaneous on the budget, as it were-for deficiencies become sore spots only through their social consequences. It is important to note that an inferiority which a person imagines he possesses has the same effect, for him, as though it were real. If a boy is mistaught that he has a weak heart, he will act as if he were so afflicted. Similarly, if a man thinks that he is making a poor impression, that he is not wanted, that is enough as far as he is concerned. Social suggestion may induce in him groundless apprehensions in regard to his undesirability. Unfortunate habits, such as nose picking, thumb sucking, or nail biting, disturb every jester boy is apt to and more c in itself soc self-conscio The bearin stands in c scribes, wh with that speak free their grow of man poise in company. If we may believe the adverents, even a small thing like halitosis may render an objectionable. How much more unhappy it is e slobbers on his listeners while he talks and there ws a cry for towels. Let a man once spoil a joke he may never be able to tell one gracefully again. n individual has a markedly noticeable peculiarity, ill fear notice and ridicule. For this reason he may me so retiring, timid, and bashful as to leave him t ease in any company. A quiet person is apt to randed as stupid. He may be so worried about ng the wrong thing that he does not say the right g. The hardest thing in the world is to join others leheartedly in a laugh on yourself. The man who not take a "kidding" in the right way, and who -s himself too seriously to regard himself as the appriate subject for a joke, soon becomes the butt of y jester who discovers a ready victim in him. A is apt to feel inferior if his playmates are all older more clever than he. The sense of inferiority is Eself socially paralyzing, for it makes a person too -conscious to be himself in the presence of others. bearing in society of such an awkward individual ds in contrast to those gentlemen whom Irving debes, whose "whole demeanor was easy and natural, that lofty grace, and noble frankness, which beak free-born souls that have never been checked in r growth by feelings of inferiority." 4 The male finds as he matures that his social life ries him into another half of the world to which must adjust himself-the female. There is a type nan who feels at home among men but who cannot V. Irving: Sketch Book, p. 94. picture himself as "a lady's man." For a boy who has had no sisters it is quite likely that a girl is a being of whom he has little sympathetic understanding. He may feel like Gogol who sighed, "There is already so much trouble, why didst thou also send women into the world?" 5 There are men who would actually rather face a cannon than a woman. It is not unusual for men of brain and brawn to become mere puppets in the hands of their henpecking wives. The wily female, in fact, has stealthily succeeded in domesticating the male who has learned to fear the power behind the throne in the person of "the better half." Adjustment to the opposite sex is especially difficult for the "funny-looking" man who realizes he does not appeal so much to the ladies as does the handsome man. The disadvantage bothers him. Embarrassed by girls, he blushes profusely, thus adding to his discomfort and humiliation. The suitor whose advances are rejected is bound to react with a sense of defeat. Love presents a problem which hits some men harder than others. ly defend th er threate resents the a evitably div envy those other secret worth where as we see a cieties are Social position also affects inferiority. Racial pride sets off one race as superior to others. Immigrants are considered inferior by natives. Occupation marks a man for a certain class. The manual laborer ranks lower than the bond salesman, no matter how efficient a laborer the former may be, or how inefficient the latter. Economic status has a distinct effect. Poverty is compelled to bow before wealth. Money, with all its advantages in providing education and an abundance of material possessions, does confer social prestige. The social ladder has many rungs and those on top anxious'O. Kaus: The Case of Gogol. 1912. may have lodges, ead negroes bel nature to sequently, pears in it dividuals to upholst The va that the s Take the poverty weak bod by his la formed defend their upper positions from climbers who are er threatening to dismount them. The upper crust sents the advances of the nouveau riche. Society initably divides into layers. Those in lower stations vy those more favored by fortune. Fraternities and her secret organizations serve to confer a sense of orth where the social sanctions for self-esteem are few, we see among the Southern negroes where secret soeties are very popular. A single town in the South ay have as many as fifteen or twenty subordinate lges, each representing a different order. Many groes belong to from three to five each. It is human ture to want most that which we cannot have. Conquently, the eagerness for good social standing ap-ars in its greatest intensity among those sensitive inviduals who feel their station and who need privileges upholster their self-respect. The various types of inferiority are so interrelated at the situation for any individual is a complex one. ake the hypothetical case of a man brought up in overty (social). Undernourishment has left him a eak body (physical). Excluded from good society his lack of funds, unfortunate friendships have been rmed which have led to immorality (moral). This ung man's father, let us suppose, is a gifted man of gh intellectual ability, whose devotion to cultural inrests has caused his economic welfare to suffer. The n has a brilliant mind (intellectual superiority). In at direction will his urge for power drive him? Conntration on scholarship where his talents will count ost. We have a similar case in Lord Byron who H. W. Odum: The Social and Mental Traits of the Negro, pp. 3, 109. 1910. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN TIRRARIES suffered from all four kinds of inferiority. He was sensitive about his clubfoot (physical). He was considered a dullard in school (intellectual). Byron's moral indiscretions (moral) led to social ostracism (social). But in spite of weakness in most other aspects of his nature, he was strong in one respect-in his poetical genius, which was brought to its highest fruition under the stress of the adversity occasioned by his unhappy shortcomings. Although several classes of inferiority may be present in a particular individual, there is usually one outstanding inadequacy by which his personality may be characterized and assigned to a specific type. Evidence is found in abundance in biography for each kind of deficiency. Many cases can be cited of men who, in spite of bodily infirmities, have accomplished a prodigious amount of work. Charles Darwin suffered so much from ill health, after his voyage on the Beagle, that he could work only a few hours a day. Yet witness the vast scientific labor he crowded into those few hours. Gamaliel Bradford, the well-known biographer, is so bedridden that he can spend only two hours a day in writing. Robert Louis Stevenson moved from one health resort to another in quest of a cure for his consumption. Though handicapped, he worked incessantly. The appeal of his stories, in fact, lies in the courage with which he faced his own hard times so optimistically. Biography abounds with examples of men who were failures in school, only to prove noteworthy successes THE afterward. privately a Harvard" and recitati account of school curr the scholas 'The reader will find many illustrations in Sophia Shaler: Masters of Fate. 1906. a wide rang no interest. his own pa pension, w honorable demands o have a ha One of Go one of the said he wa edly repre His final Hegel wa serted the but esper indictme liant car idleness in const Napole son's st the int is just E. J |