by Elsie Lincoln Benedict
Available in 98 free installments
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¶ Clear thinking demands a clear stomach because an empty stomach means that the blood reserves so necessary to vivid thinking are free to go to the brain. Without good blood coursing at a fairly rapid rate through the brain no man can think keenly or concentratedly. This explains why you think of so many important things when your stomach is empty that never occur to you when your energy is being monopolized by digestion.
¶ All public speakers have learned that a heavy dinner means a heavy speech.
Elbert Hubbard's rule when on his speaking tours was one every orator should follow. "Ten dollars extra if I have to eat," said Fra Elbertus?a far cry from the days when we "fed up" the preacher at Sunday dinner with the expectation of hearing a better sermon!
¶ Just as assimilation is the favorite activity of the Alimentive type, head work is the favorite activity of the large-headed Cerebral. He is so far removed, evolutionally, from the stomach stage that his stomach is as much a remnant with him as the brain is a rudiment with the extreme Alimentive.
The extra blood supply which nature furnishes to any over-developed part of the body also tends to encourage him in thinking, just as the same condition encourages the fat man in eating.
¶ An Alimentive never forgets dinner time.
But the Cerebral is so much more interested in food for his brain than food for his body that he can go without his meals and not mind it. He is likely to have a book and a cracker at his meals?and then forget to eat the cracker!
¶ We are "mental" in proportion to the sensitiveness of our mental organization. The Cerebral possesses the most highly developed brain center of any type and is therefore more sensitive to all those stimuli which act upon the mind.
His whole body bespeaks it. The fineness of his features is in direct contrast to some of the other types. The unusual size of his brain denotes a correspondingly intricate organization of nerves, for the nerves are tiny elongations of the brain.
The intellectual sensitiveness of any individual can be accurately estimated by noting the comparative size of his brain and body.
¶ A triangle is the geometrical figure approximated by the Cerebral's front face and head.
If he is a pure, extreme Cerebral a triangle is again what you are reminded of when you look at his head from the side, for his head stands on a small neck, his forehead stands out at the top, while his back head is long. These bring the widest part of his head nearer the top than we find it in other types.
¶ A thin, delicate hand denotes a larger-than-average Cerebral element. (See Chart 10)
¶ What have long been known as "smooth fingers" are typical of the Cerebral. These are not to be confused with the fat, pudgy babyish fingers of the Alimentive, for though the latter's fingers are smooth around, they do not present straight outlines at the sides. They puff out between the joints.
Smooth fingers are characteristic of the extreme Cerebral type. They are called this because their outlines run straight up and down.
The joints of the Alimentive finger (See Chart 2) mark the narrowest places owing to the fact that the joints are not changeable. In the Osseous fingers (See Chart 8) the opposite is true. The joints mark the widest spots and the spaces between are sunken.
The fingers of the Thoracic are inclined to be pointed like his head, while the Muscular's fingers are square at the end and look the power they possess.
¶ But the Cerebral has fingers unlike any of these. There is no fat to make them pudgy and no muscle to make them firm. Neither are there large joints to make them knotty. Their outlines therefore run in almost straight lines and the whole hand presents a more frail, aesthetic appearance.
