The sanguine type means well, but seldom acts. No amount of prodding will hurt. The sanguine child says: "If I can't be in the class with Mary Jane I am not coming any more to Sunday school." Do not worry, she will pop up serenely the next Sunday. A sanguine man is in a tearing rage over an impudent street car conductor, threatening to report him. The likelihood is that he never will. The sanguine is usually the blond type. The phlegmatic, also of the blond type, is slow and deliberate. A domestic of the phlegmatic English type walked deliberately and slowly to open the front door when the bell rang. Her successor was a Scotch girl of the nervous type. When the door bell rang she dropped everything and ran. Treatment that would injure a nervous child will scarcely make any impression on the phlegmatic. While punishments of this kind are still indulged in by some parents, dependence upon them implies that such parents are yet in the crudest stage of ignorance as to the Elements of ChildTraining; nor can they plead the ignorance of a new development of this study; the works of Jacob Abbot, written about sixty years ago and widely circulated, contain implicitly enough about rewards, reproofs, and punishments to enable a capable parent to pass from his own age of barbarism to the age of Enlightenment. The nervous temperament, on the other hand, exhibits both great excitability and great after-effect. Nevous men are the ones who "make the world go." They are usually small. All great generals have been small in stature, energetic, always on the go. They are usually of the brunette type. Men tell them they will wear out if they don't stop working. They may remark, "It is better to wear out than to rust out." But, if they can keep from worrying, they will not wear out any faster than the less energetic sanguine or phlegmatic. It is not work that kills, but worry. It is noteworthy that rectors of small parishes seldom break down with nervous prostration, but those with wealthy vestries to send them to Europe are the ones to become affected in that way. No one ever heard of a hard working laboring man breaking down from his nerves. When the nervous man says he will do a thing, his nerves give him no rest until he does it. The nervous man always reports the conductor. The nervous man always redeems his gift pledge. One reason why Americans have so much push is because they are essentially of the nervous type. The nerves, as such, are a higher development in evolution than mere muscles. All races of men to-day are verging towards this higher type. Saddest of all and the most dangerous is that dark visaged, brunette, melancholy type. While the melancholy temperament is not melancholia, it is always apt to run into melancholia. Melancholia is an almost incurable disease of the brain. An inevitable rule with physicians is never to trust a melancholic. As soon as one is fully convinced that the victim has real melancholia, it is safest for those around him, as well as for himself, to place him in an asylum, or he will be apt to commit suicide. It is seldom that real melancholia is cured. Dr. Paul Du Bois in his new book, THE PSYCHIC TREATMENT OF NERVOUS DISORDERS, devotes five hundred pages to the consideration of Suggestion in functional nervous diseases. He holds out hope for the early stages of melancholia under proper hypnotic treatment, i. e., hypnotism as used by physicians; but the melancholic temperament as a whole is always looking at the gloomy side of life, pessimistic rather than optimistic. This temperament is, as it were, always on the verge, carrying a chip on the shoulder. Slight affronts are taken seriously and brooded over, or, as is often the case, an imaginary affront or slight works out serious results. Another peculiar thing is that the person of the sanguine temperament, with its low stability of will power, is apt to run into the melancholy temperament. In fact any temperament can be changed into another temperament by disease, or hypnotism, or one of the exanthemata. The best general type is a cross between the sanguine and the nervous, the nervous-sanguine, we might term it, which has the optimistic disposition of the sanguine and the energy of the nervous. It would be well for teachers to study very carefully in practical application the consequences of the above table. The Rev. Dr. Worcester's new work on RELIGION AND MEDICINE Covers this subject, and is one of the best books for the general reader. A Suggestion to Teachers. Look for these types and combinations in your classes, take out your note-book, write the child's name at the top of the page and watch his development for three months. Keep notes of your treatment of him and the result. The very fact that you are keeping biographical notes makes you interested as never before, and will be far more valuable than many a course in child study, for you are learning to engage in child study for yourself. Prof. Minot on Progress. the "As in every study of biological facts, there is in the study of senescent mental stability the principle of variation to be kept in mind. Men are not alike. The great majority of men lose power of learning, doubtless some more and some less, we will say, at twenty-five years. Few men after twenty-five are able to learn much. They who cannot, become day laborers, mechanics, clerks of a mechanical order. Others can probably go on somewhat longer, and obtain higher positions; and there are men who, with extreme variations in endowment, preserve the power of active and original thought far on into life. These of course are the exceptional men, the great men." QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 1. Explain how each man is "his own World Builder." 2. Name the chief Physical and Mental Characteristics of (a) Primary Age, (b) Childhood, (c) Adolescence, and compare them. 3. How far is the Sunday School Teacher concerned with the Physical Condition of Pupils? 4. Give some effects of Mind on Body. Of Body on Mind. 5. What do we mean by "Types of Children," and how can Typology aid us in teaching? 6. Discuss Temperament and its Value. |