Another achievement of the psychanalysts is the recognition of the influence of organic and functional inferiorities of the individual upon the history of his personality.  Gross organ inferiorities are those which are definite handicaps in the struggle for success in society, such as heart disease.  Such handicaps, however, are limited to relatively few of a population.  The raison d’etre of the greater number of minor mental inefficiencies the psychanalyst puts down to handicaps in the unconscious.  Again he mistakes figurative imagery for explanations.  The conception of endocrine diversity in the make-up supplies us with the rationale of the vast majority of organic and functional defects and inferiorities, in short, subnormalities of any group, large or small.

Moreover, how would the psychanalyst explain the occurrence and influence of organic and functional superiorities and their tremendous influence upon the individual and society?  We live in a generation which has acquired a flair for the pathologic.  Undoubtedly it is a soul-sick generation, and its interest in sickness of the mind is only natural.  Just the same, whatever advances, improvements, progress, have been made (and certainly a number of the changes in his environment, external and internal, must be admitted to be changes for the better) have been made, not by natural disability, but by natural ability.  What is the physiology of natural ability?

The finest study of natural ability that has as yet been composed is Francis Galton’s on Hereditary Genius.  It also remains the best study of the natural conditions of success.  He showed that of the type of man he classed as “illustrious” there occurred about one in a million, and of the type “eminent” about two hundred and fifty in a million.  Of the qualities which determine natural ability of this kind, he selected inherent capacity, zeal, and perseverance as the three prerequisites.  And he states that “If a man is gifted with vast intellectual ability, eagerness to work, and power of working, I cannot comprehend how such a man should be suppressed.”  “Such men (those who have gained great reputations) biographies show to be haunted and driven by an incessant, instinctive craving for intellectual work.”  “They ... work ... to satisfy a natural craving for brain work.”  “It is very unlikely that any conjunction of circumstances should supply a stimulus to brain work commensurate with what these men carry in their own constitutions.”

What is this inherent craving for brain work?  What is this zeal?  And what is power of endurance and perseverance, the quality of stamina?  How are they to be interpreted in terms of the internal secretions?