3. The hyperkinetic, uncontrolled or shallow. This type, although quick and apparently energetic, is deficient in a fundamental of the personality, in the organizing energy. This deficiency may extend into all phases of the mental life or in only a few phases. Thus we see people whose thinking is rapid, energetic, but they cannot "stick" to one line of thought long enough to reach a goal. Others are similarly situated in regard to purposes; they are enthusiastic, easily stirred into activity, but rarely do their purposes remain fixed long enough for success. As a rule this class is inconstant in affections, though warm and sympathetic. They gush but never organize their philanthropic efforts, so that they rarely do any real good.
Often the most lovable of people, they are at the same time the despair of those who know them best.
M. is a woman who makes a fine first impression, is very pretty, with nice manners and a quick, flattering interest in every one she meets. She is usually classed as intelligent because she is vivacious, that is, her mind follows the trend of things quickly, and she marshals whatever she knows very readily. As one who knows her well says, "She shows all her goods the first time. You really do not know how slender her stock in trade is until you see the same goods and tricks every time you meet her." Needless to say her critic is a woman.
M. is interested in something new each week. The "new" usually fascinates her, and she becomes so extraordinarily busy that she hardly has time to eat or sleep. She is always put on committees if the organization heads do not know her, but if they do, she is carefully slated for something of no importance. After a short time her interest has shifted to something else. Thus she passes from work in behalf of blind babies to raising funds for a home for indigent actors; from energy spent in philanthropy to energy spent in learning the latest dances. Her enthusiasm never cools off, though its goal always changes.
Fortunately she is married to a rich man who views her with affection and a shrug of his shoulders. Her children know her; now and then, she becomes extraordinarily interested in their welfare, much to their disgust and rebellion, for they have long since sized her up.
She has often been on the verge of a love affair with some man who is professionally interested in something into which she has leaped for a short time. She raves about him, follows him, flatters and adores him, and then, before the poor fellow knows where he is at, she is out of love and off somewhere else. This mutability of affection has undoubtedly saved her from disaster.
Were she not rich, M. would be one of the social problems that the social workers cannot understand or handle, e. g., there is a type who never sticks to anything, not because he is bored quickly, or is inefficient, but because he is at the mercy of the new and irrelevant. Without sufficient means he throws up his job and tries to get the new work he longs to do. Sometimes he fails to get it, and then he becomes an unemployed problem.
This type of uncontrolled energy reaches its height in the manical or manic phase of the disease already described as manic depressive insanity. The "manic personality," which need not become insane, is characterized by high energy, vivacious emotions, rapid flow of thought and irrelevant associations.
4. The mesokinetic--medium or average in their energy (feeling and power)--run the range of the vast groups we call the average.
This type is spurred on by necessity, custom and habit to steady work and steady living. Possessed of practical wisdom, their world is narrow, their affections only called out for their kindred and immediate friends. Their interests are largely away from their work and as a rule do not include the past or future of the race. Usually conservative, they accept the moral standards as absolute and are quick to resent changes in custom.
They follow leaders cheerfully, are capable of intense loyalty to that cause which they believe to stand for their interests. Yet each individual of the mass of men, though he never rises above mediocrity, presents to his intimates a grouping of qualities and peculiarities that gives him a distinct personality.
C. is one of those individuals whose mediocre energy has stood between him and so-called success. At present he is forty and occupies about the same position that he did at twenty. As a boy he was fond of play but never excelled in any sport and never occupied a place of leadership. He had the usual pugnacious code of boys, but because he was friendly and good-natured rarely got into a fight. He liked to read and was rather above the average in intelligence, but he never tackled the difficult reading, confining himself to the "interesting" novel and easy information. He left high school when he was sixteen and immediately on leaving he dropped all study. He entered an office as errand boy and was recognized as faithful and industrious, but he showed no especial initiative or energy. In the course of time he was promoted from one position to another until he became a shipper at the age of twenty. Since this time he has remained at this post without change, except that when he got married and on a few occasions afterward, when the cost of living rose, his salary was raised.
