by Elsie Lincoln Benedict
Available in 98 free installments
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¶ Thinking, contemplating, reflecting?all the mental processes coming under the head of "meditation"?constitute the keynote of this type.
The Alimentive lives to eat, the Thoracic to feel, the Muscular to act, the Osseous to stabilize, but the Cerebral lives to meditate.
¶ He loves to plan, imagine, dream day-dreams, visualize and go over and over in his mind the manifold possibilities, probabilities and potentialities of many things.
When he carries this to extremes?as the person with a huge head and tiny body is likely to do?he often overlooks the question of the practicability of the thing he is planning. He inclines to go "wild-catting," to dream dreams that are impossible of fruition.
¶ He will sit by the hour or by the day thinking out endless ultimates, for the sheer pleasure it gives him. Other men blame him, criticise him and ridicule him for this and for the most part he does fail of the practical success by which the efficient American measures everything.
But the fact must never be forgotten that the world owes its progress to the men who could see beyond their nose, who could conceive of things no one had ever actually seen.
This type, more than any other, has been the innovator in all forms of human progress.
¶ "Everything accomplished starts with the dream of it," is a saying we all know to be true. Yet we go on forever giving all the big prizes to the doers. But the man who can only dream lives in a very hostile world. His real world is his thoughts but whenever he steps out of them into human society he feels a stranger and he is one.
¶ The world of today is ruled by people who accomplish. "Putting it over," "delivering the goods," "getting it across," are a part of our language because they represent the standards of the average American today.
The Cerebral is as much out of place in such an environment as a fish is on dry land. He knows it and he shows it. He doesn't know what the other kind are driving at and they know so little of what he is driving at that they have invented a special name for him?the "nut."
Doing isn't his line. He prefers the pleasures of "thinking over" to all the "putting over" in the world. This type usually is a failure because he takes it all out in dreaming without ever doing the things necessary to make his dream come true.
¶ These predilections for overlooking the obvious, the tangible and the necessary elements in everyday existence tend to make of the Cerebral what he is so often called?a "visionary."
For instance, he will build up in his mind the most imposing superstructure for an invention and confidently tell you "it will make millions," but forget to inform himself on such essential questions as "will it work?" "Is it transportable?" or "Is there any demand for it?"
¶ "He was born ahead of his time" applies oftenest to a man of this type.
He has brains to see what the world needs and not infrequently sees how the world could get it. But he is so averse to action himself that unless active people take up his schemes they seldom materialize.
¶ Men in whom the Cerebral type predominated anticipated every step man has made in his political, social, individual, industrial, religious and economic evolution. They have seen it decades and sometimes centuries in advance. But they were always ridiculed at first.
¶ History is replete with the stories of unappreciated genius. In Washington, D. C., you will have pointed out to you a great elm, made historic by Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph. He could not make the successful people of his day give him a hearing, but he was so wrapped up in his invention that he used to sit under this tree whenever the weather permitted, and explain all about it to the down-and-outers and any one else who would stop. "Listen to the mutterings of that poor old fool" said the wise ones as they hurried by on the other side of the street. But today people come from everywhere to see "The Famous Morse Elm" and do homage to the great mind that invented the telegraph.
