How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
143/400

disposition, feeling, and response bear to that dynamic pattern of the individuality which we call the style of life. In the case of John C. we see an unbroken dynamic pattern of unsocial traits growing put of his original situation as a hated, oppressed child, isolated from his fellows because of physical inferiorities and the pressure of competition with three older, better prepared, sisters. We see the appropriateness of all his activities, from his childhood cruelty to cats and younger children, to his adult interest in wholesale destruction by gas and explosives. His character demonstrates an unbroken unity of conduct leading directly toward his goal : If I cannot be admitted to society, I will destroy it.” A further study of John C. would demonstrate the unity of this dynamic pattern in his dreams, his dress, his choice of sports and recreation, as well as in his favourite characters in fiction and history. As we might have expected, those greatest of antisocial geniuses, Alexander the Great and Napoleon, are his idols, and as we might have expected, he cares little for the amenities of dress or manners which are entirely social in their purpose. A recurrent dream of the last few years beautifully epitomizes his style of life. He finds himself, in the dream, “ alone in a world which has been completely destroyed by a poisonous gas emanating from the tail of a passing comet. I alone, of all the people in the world, have survived because I predicted the advent of the comet and prepared myself secretly by building a gas-proof chamber lined with oxygen tanks and carbon-dioxide absorbing sponges which are capable of sustaining my life for several weeks. In the dream I open my chamber when I am certain that the comet has passed out of the earth’s atmosphere. I step out into a desolate world. Dead bodies are strewn all around, many of them bearing the traces of their last agony. I am not in the least concerned about the fact that I am the only man left in the world.” One could hardly desire a more definite proof than the case of John C. of the thesis that character and personality