CHAPTER IV. The Criteria of Political Types

THE CRITERIA OF POLITICAL TYPES

The free-fantasy method of exploring the mind is of very general application to the problems of life. In particular we are interested in examining the results of its use for the purpose of laying bare the natural history of personality growth and differentiation. All sorts of politicians are met with in society, and our special task is to relate the selection of these adult rôles to certain critical experiences in individual development. But before we can proceed farther, we need to examine the nature of the criteria which are currently used in identifying various political types.

The popular speech of every state and neighborhood swarms with names for varieties of political behavior and types of politicians. The study of political differences may very well begin by sifting the common vocabulary. Some of the popular images are derived from experience with government officials. Within the last hundred years the policeman has appeared over Western Europe, and a history of the popular conception of his rôle could be written around terms like “bobby,” “cop,” and “Schupo.” Whatever differences in dress, manner, social position, and common humanity are supposed to exist between a “civil servant,” a “Beamter,” and a “fonctionnaire,” there are common lineaments in the composite stereotype. A thick chapter in human experience could be entitled “The Bureaucrat,” wherein would be recorded the innuendo of popular comment on a necessary evil. The “legislator” is identifiable through all the detailed contrasts between the “congressman,” the “M.P.,” and the “M.d.R.”

The popular tongue is rich in expressions which fill out the official cast of characters in the political drama by peopling the public stage with figures whose traits are essentially irrelevant to their office. There are men of ideas--“anarchist,” “socialist,” “liberal,” “communist,” “conservative.” There are men of ideas and of action--“reformer,” “revolutionary,” “martyr.” The history of American, British, French, German, medieval, Graeco-Roman, and every civilization could be written for the sake of showing how the carriers of public power figured in the eyes of the various groups within and without the culture.

This profusion of types in the popular firmament of politics is supplemented by the types which have been isolated by serious students of culture, who have sought to impose order upon the life of the past. Among the political forms which have been described by the historians, the “benevolent despot” of the eighteenth century, the “demagogue” of Athenian democracy, the “prince” of the Italian Renaissance, and the “despot” of the oriental empires spring at once to mind. The masterly sketch of the evolution of the public official with which Max Weber has enriched social science is, it is to be hoped, the forerunner of many elaborate studies. The traits and arts of political leaders have been most systematically handled by Aristotle, Machiavelli, Robert Michels, Christensen, and Charles E. Merriam.

These typologies, whether popular or scientific, possess several features in common. They may converge to what is practically the same picture. When W. B. Munro described the “reformer,” he filled out the popular image which arose in the American mind at a certain phase of American political evolution. Practically every scientific conception is a refinement and generalization of some term in general circulation, though with local connotations.

The scientific and the popular typologies may include the same kinds of fact as their starting-points. The fact of supposed political conviction gave rise to the “liberal,” but it is a far cry from the rather shadowy lines of the popular image to the finely wrought lineaments of Ruggiero. The means employed in encompassing political objectives christen the “lobbyist,” “propagandist,” and “agitator.” The idea that private motives are not merged in public motives is carried in “renegade,” “sorehead,” and “tyrant.” The idea that private motives have been firmly fused into public purposes is one connotation of the “martyr.” The fact of informal ascendancy is celebrated in the “boss.” In the “bureaucrat” it is implied that the office has molded the man, and that the office tends to attract those especially likely to develop such qualities. The Western European idea of a judge almost necessarily refers to a functionary who carries certain paraphernalia and proceeds with ceremony. The leanness of the “fanatical agitator” figured in the popular mind long before Kretschmer gave it his scientific blessing.

Both popular and scientific conceptions range from the particular to the general. The British “election agent” is closely bound to a recent, special social setting. The “leader” keeps a stable nucleus of meaning for the description of a social rôle among widely separated peoples in widely separated periods.

Popular and scientific conceptions are at one in that they may present developmental and not merely descriptive implications. The notion of a lean and bitter agitator is not entirely a static, cross-sectional description of a fortuitous juxtaposition of traits, but a hypothesis that bodily irritations operate dynamically to foster the selection of forms of activity which enable the individual to give rather free vent to his animosities.

Both popular and scientific types may be taken as objects of study to determine the factors in their formation. The popular idea of a “reformer” in America bears a certain photographic resemblance to actual personalities who figured as public advocates of restrictive laws. It is possible to study the process by which the stereotype of the lean and spinsterly kill-joy arose, and to see why it persisted. Every body politic has its gallery of political mummers, and political history needs to be rewritten to explain the unique and the typical qualities of these popularly conceived rôles. Stuart A. Rice has developed a technique for the identification of contemporary stereotypes of this kind. Rice took photographs of a senator, a bolshevik, and a bootlegger, and after obliterating the names asked various test groups to tell what designation best fitted each picture. By examining the erroneous identifications, it became possible to detect the mental pattern popularly associated with the class name.

An interesting contribution to social science would be the detailed examination of the factors affecting the rise and fall of those political typologies which have been seriously proposed by scholars. The exaggerated picture of the omnipotent leader drawn by Carlyle no doubt had something to do with Carlyle’s sexual impotence and his compensatory idealization of the potent; but the popularity which this exaggeration enjoyed among certain classes of English society was due to the dislocation of older economic institutions and the rise of threatening collective ideologies. The new business enterpriser felt the intoxicating vanity of the self-made man, and the decayed landlords felt the necessity of individualistic protests against the age of cities and machines.

Suppose we examine in more detail the intellectual structure of scientific political types. This requires special attention to the two terms involved, the “political” and the “types.” Two ways of defining the “political” are current in social science. I will speak of them as the “institutional” and the “functional” methods of definition. Within any community there are many patterns of activity whose form and whose magnitude may be singled out for study. There is the production and distribution of material goods and services; the main patterns by which these operations proceed can be called the economic institutions of the community. There is the settlement of disputes, and the defense and extension of interests which are believed to be collective; these are the political or governmental institutions of the community. In the same way religious, charitable, and a host of other institutions may be discerned.

These institutionally derived categories fall short of clarity and comprehensiveness. Some social processes occur within the framework of every institutional process. Thus the settlement of disputes is a prominent characteristic of government as we know it; but it is not, and never has been, and cannot by the nature of things be, a monopoly of government when government is defined as an institutional division of social labor. No institution ever quite monopolizes the function which it most distinctively exercises. But this need not lead to confusion. When the settlement of disputes is a prominent function of one group in society, and there is no other group which participates in the same function in the same degree, there is no hesitation in deciding to call the first group the “governors” and to call the patterns according to which they are selected and operate the “political or governmental” institutions of the community. If there is a rival adjuster of differences, the distinction is by no means clear, as when the “church,” “business,” and the “state” are rivals. Perhaps the governors can be identified by finding who it is who handles the coercion employed in defending or extending communal enterprises, though this criterion may from time to time fail to differentiate. But, on the whole, these doubts are marginal doubts. Ordinarily it is possible to find a division of labor and a set of sentiments which can be called the “government of the state.” The marginal instances call attention to the fact to which allusion has been made, the fact that no “institutional” process quite monopolizes the function which it most distinctively exercises. It is therefore advisable to describe communal processes by two sets of terms, one of which refers to “institutions” and the other to “functions” which are found within the various institutional frameworks. Much of the literature of social science consists in terminological quibbles about the “proper” words to use in this institutional or functional sense, often without appreciating the essential nature of the matter at issue. It is, of course, of the highest importance to understand the difference, and of minor importance to agree upon the words with which to describe the distinction.

From what has been said, it is clear that a word like “political” may be given an “institutional” or a “functional” meaning in a particular context, and that--and this is the most important consequence--any contribution to the understanding of the “institutional” process is a contribution to the understanding of the wider “functional” process, and the reverse. In this resides the unity of the social sciences. The apparent disunity arises from the differences in starting-point of particular inquiries. One begins with a series of phenomena which are selected from a single institutional process, and another begins with a series of phenomena which are selected from several institutional processes according to some functional conception.

This unity of destination and disunity of starting-point is abundantly manifested in the scientific study of human behavior. The specialist on some phase of the political process, institutionally conceived, who is asked to classify the types of political behavior, devises his categories on the basis of the institutional processes which he knew best. It would be possible, were it worth the effort, to pass in review the typologies which have been propounded from time to time by specialists in executive organization, public administration, judicial administration, legislation, political parties, propaganda and conspirative organizations, political revolution, nationalism, imperialism, interstate methods of adjustment (war, diplomacy, conference, adjudication, mediation, arbitration), and all the other topics in political science.

At first glance, the functional method of defining political types would seem to lead to even greater congeries of categories than the institutional method. From the functional standpoint politics is found wherever, to use the older terminology, “wills” are in conflict. This implies that intensely political manifestations in society are not confined to government officials and parties, but to banking houses, manufacturing enterprises, distributing services, ecclesiastical organizations, fraternal associations, and professional societies. It is probable that the most aggressive, power-lusting individuals in modern society find their way into business, and stay out of the legislature, the courts, the civil service, and the diplomatic service. If this be true, the student of political personalities will find the most interesting objects of study in J. P. Morgan and Company, in the United States Steel Corporation, and among the clerical or educational or medical politicians.

It follows from what has been said that the study of politicians who are chosen from a single institutional process makes a contribution to the general study of politicians in every institutional process, and that the conscious abstraction of categories until they are comprehensive opens a wider range of exact comparison. This may eventuate in an actual simplification of some fundamental conceptions. Of course, institutional processes differ in the scope which they give to certain human drives. Today the church offers less opportunity for the use of physical violence than it did in the sixteenth century, and very much less opportunity than the police force, the private detective agency, or the political gang.

The advantages of comprehensiveness and possible simplification have been sacrificed by the political scientists of the schools because they have conceived their task in too narrow a spirit. They have been slow in studying the manifestations of human nature in politics because they have been saturated with sectarian pride in legal and philosophical distinctions; or they have checked their theories with their coats, and plunged into technical work. A body of theory which interacts fruitfully with philosophy, law, and technology is still very poorly developed. The formal sociological systems have been sacked for “premises” but neglected for hypotheses. (Witness the exploitation of the concept of “solidarity” in recent juridical theory.) The task of the hour is the development of a realistic analysis of the political in relation to the social process, and this depends upon the invention of abstract conceptions and upon the prosecution of empirical research. It is precisely this missing body of theory and practice which Graham Wallas undertook to supply in England and which Charles E. Merriam has been foremost in encouraging in the United States. It is the deficiency which led Catlin to propose to substitute what I would call the “functional” for the “institutional” definition of the field of political science. This necessarily implies a new respect for the possibilities of using the ingenious suggestions to be found in the sociological systematists, a new curiosity about diverse ways of approaching events, and a new sympathy for parallels to institutional phenomena.

Various obscurities can be removed if we generalize our terms from the narrowly institutional to the broadly functional plane. Terms like “statesman” and “despot” were minted of the metal of political experience in communities where the high road to power was governmental. It is true that in Athens it was difficult to draw very sharp lines between governmental and other forms of communal activity, on account of the intimate interlacing of all institutional processes. Nevertheless, terms like “statesman” and “despot” came to refer to forms of political activity in a narrowly institutional sense, and such is their connotation today.

But this connotation requires generalization and revision. The road to power in our civilization is by no means an exclusively governmental highway, for technical implements have scattered authority and created an industrial feudality. The directors of large corporations have to make decisions which are far more important for the daily happiness of mankind than most of the decisions of governments. Since government is so largely the agent of corporations, the government is hardly master in its own house.

The concept of the statesman has long carried the implication that anyone who exercises social power outside the government is in hot pursuit of an exclusively private advantage. Is this any longer tenable? Is there not such a thing as the “institutionalization of business” which arises when a given enterprise plans to operate indefinitely and is thus forced to calculate its interests over long periods of time? One of the major elements in this calculation is the necessity of taking precautions against a withdrawal of favor on the part of the community at large. This is the core of the political way of thinking, and assimilates the policy of aggregations of private power to that of the state which is guided by statesmen. It is timely, therefore, to disentangle the concept of statesmanship from its historical association with a single institution.

Some of the many senses in which the “politician” is used may be disposed of by drawing a clean distinction between the “business man” and the “politician.” The business man may be defined as one who pursues a private advantage with little regard for conceptions of public right. The politician, in the here-selected “best” sense of the word, uses persuasion on behalf of his conception of public right. The politician pursues a genuine integration of interests in the community; the business man is satisfied with a compromise among competing private interests. The importance to political theory of the distinction between integration and compromise has quite properly been stressed by Mary L. Follett. An integration of interests is the solution of a conflict in such a way that neither “party” recognizes that so much has been won and so much has been lost in the outcome. It represents a reinterpretation of the situation in a sense which renders the old line of battle, the older definition of interest, irrelevant. It is illustrated when a wage controversy is disposed of by the decision to try to divide the advantages of economies in production which may be brought about through new co-operative procedures. The essence of the contrast between integration and compromise is that between a synthesis and a trade. The politician is a discoverer of inclusive advantages, and the business man is a higgler for special advantages. Whether, as Adam Smith said, an invisible hand shapes a social synthesis from the general pursuit of private profit, we do not have to decide upon here. The contrast is between the conscious objectives of the individuals concerned. It should be observed that politicians are not limited to government and that business men are not limited to private ventures. The “boss” is one form of the business man in government; the director of a large private concern may be a politician in the sense used here.

Having drawn a necessary distinction between the institutional and the functional meaning of the “political,” we are in a position to discuss the “type” concept. A “type” is a relation, and we may classify types according to the relations chosen. Political types may be set up on a three-fold basis: by specifying a nuclear relation, a co-relation, and a developmental relation.

What is meant by the choice of a nuclear relation may be illustrated by the concept of the Machtmensch as elaborated by Eduard Spranger in his Lebensformen. Spranger, the distinguished educational psychologist of the University of Berlin, has developed a morphology of personality on an original basis. Dilthey, it will be recalled, ushered in the modern era of typological inquiry in his famous address before the Berlin Academy of Science. Dilthey selected forms of distinguished cultural activity and posited trait-constellations to fit. By the process of abstracting from many concrete fields of achievement, he finally built up his description of the sensual, heroic, and contemplative types. Most eminent political figures naturally fall in the second category. Spranger’s approach has much in common with that of Dilthey. He proceeds on the hypothesis that all possible valuational dispositions are shared by all men. By inspecting human culture, Spranger comes to the conclusion that six distinctive cultural fields have materialized six valuational dispositions in man. Thus the cultural activities having to do with wealth production correspond to the economic value tendency. Science corresponds to the theoretical, art to the aesthetic, religion to the religious, the state to the power tendency, and society to the love tendency. Spranger goes on to deduce the attributes of each personality in which one value tendency predominates, and traces out the implications for each field of activity of the predominance of this tendency. Thus the political man is the one whose principal value is the pursuit of power. The essence of power is understood to be the capacity, and usually the will, to impose one’s own values as permanent or transitory motives upon others. The political man in science tends to substitute rhetoric for truth and to use ideas as forces (in the sense of Fouillée). In economics the political man tends to reach his ends by diplomacy and negotiation, by intimidation or violence, or by other political means. In art the political motive leads to efforts to impress by flamboyant decorative display. In social life the political motive, with its forcible urge toward self-aggrandizement, must usually disguise itself in fostering the interests of some collectivity. The god of the political man in religion is a god of might who requires mighty men to serve him.

In developing his image of the homo politicus, Spranger is fully aware that his “pure” type seldom exists. The bold, frank aggrandizement of self is rarely tolerated in society, for “the greatest power manifests itself as collective power,” and the man who cherishes power must achieve some measure of socialization or he is outlawed. Although in principle no warm-hearted lover of his fellow-men, he must keep his contempt to himself or feign expansive sentiments of group loyalty. Indeed, self-deception is perhaps the rule, for the political personality with a strong artistic component possesses a florid imagination which dramatizes his personal history and subordinates all reality to ambitious plans. It seems to me that Spranger does not sufficiently stress this aspect of the political man, this large capacity for playing the impostor upon himself and others.

The gist of Spranger’s generalization of the political man is schematically expressible in terms of desire-method-success. The political man desires to control the motives of others; his method may vary from violence to wheedling; his success in securing recognition in some community must be tangible. These are the nuclear relations which are essential to the type definition.

Naturally there are a number of necessary annotations to be made on this formula. Sometimes the man with a thirst for power is unable to indulge and quench his thirst, for his physical and social equipment may be too meager. And how are we to appraise results? Wer regiert denn? Power over others is partially exercised by every living being; but in any hierarchy of the powerful, some are on the lowest tier, if current social criteria be applied. The bedridden, complaining wreck may be of no significance except as a burden upon the care of a single nurse. Accepting the current values of society, such an individual would be on the very bottom of the heap. And yet, as Alfred Adler has so often insisted as to make the point peculiarly his own, the hysteric may use his symptoms to win a high degree of submission from his immediate environment, and this may be all that he cares about. And some of those who give up the visible struggle for social influence may retire to distil their bile into poisoned darts against the pursuit of external pomp, and secure reputation and eminence by embodying the results in sparkling rhetoric.

The man who runs his village may become more acutely aware that he does not run the county; and when he runs the county, that he does not run the province; and so on up the ladder. His appurtenances of power may be deferred to by those about him, yet his own soul may smart with the shackles of a larger slavery. Thus, Spranger is right in saying that, when one succeeds in penetrating the psychology of the search for power, it becomes comprehensible that he whose nature is bound up in the pursuit of authority is most keenly sensible to the limits of his own freedom, and consequently suffers so keenly from nothing else in life than his own subordination. Sensing this, the Stoics long ago contended that the essence of liberty is the self-sufficiency which makes no demands on others. Ascendancy involves dependence, a reciprocal relationship which has been exhaustively described by Simmel. But there are some who combine easy success with indifference. These are no doubt recruited from among those who have natural suggestive power to certain groups--they possess the charisma of Max Weber.

Allowing for these annotations, the nucleus of Spranger’s thinking may be repeated. The homo politicus is characterized by the following relationship between desire, method, and success: desire to control the motives of others; methods varying from violence to wheedling; and success in securing communal recognition.

Spranger’s subtle comments in elaborating this simple, central conception are among the most valuable in the literature of society. Starting from bold simplifications, he succeeds in formulating pictures which give richer meaning to the details of political life in all the institutional processes of culture. Of course the literature of political science is full of types which are described as Spranger has described the political man. Michels and Merriam have listed the qualities which they find in political leaders as a class. Conway has propounded his familiar trichotomy: crowd-compellers, crowd-exponents, and crowd-representatives. The possibility of defining types according to the reactionary, conservative, liberal, or radical nature of the opinions championed has often been discussed.

The scheme which will be employed in presenting case materials stresses the capacity of political personalities to play rôles which are either specialized or composite. Hobbes was a theorist and an agitating pamphleteer; he is scarcely thinkable as an agitating orator and organizer like Garrison. The “pure-type” agitator is represented by the Old Testament prophets. Bodin combined a memorable contribution to political theory with the arduous duties of a successful administrator. Masaryk won his spurs in philosophy, sociology, cultural history, agitation, and organization. Numberless are those who have shown excellent organizing ability but who have been innocent of theoretical interests or of agitating power. Some political assassins and tyrants have enjoyed the use of violence as a ding an sich. The central point in deciding where to place a political figure is to discover the form of activity which means the most to him, and to modify the classification according to his success in combining this with other rôles. Marx wanted to impress himself upon mankind, certainly; and he craved the skill of a Lassalle, who could step on the platform and dominate the turbulent emotions of the crowd. But more: Marx wanted unreserved admiration for the products of his mind. He toiled through years of isolation and poverty to make his assertions impregnable. It was more important to attain theoretical completeness than to modify his technique of social intercourse. Lassalle was the composite leader who could woo an audience, organize activities all over Germany, write excellent books, and win a place for himself in many circles of life. Marx was the limited specialist who had to exact submission to the assertions of his mind, come what may.

Table I brings out the distinction between specialized and composite types.

TABLE I Political Rôles

Administrator Agitator Theorist Specialized types: Hoover * Old Testament prophets * Marx *

Composite types: Cobden * * Bodin * * Lenin * * *

Other combinations may be indicated. By adding a fourth column for those who resort to violence, the schematic possibilities are enlarged. Most theorists have been agitators in some measure, and it is often a matter of taste whether emphasis is to be placed on one or the other feature of their activity. Characteristically, the theorists have sought to appeal to the sentiments of their contemporaries by pamphleteering or by the direction of their speculative interests to immediate ends. Hobbes and Rousseau were shut off from oratory and organization, but no small part of their writing was intended to add fuel to the flames around them. Such men as Tom Paine are able to strike off excellent formulations of political theory in the heat of the fray.

So far we have been discussing types which are distinguished according to some nuclear relation among a few variables. The characteristic mode of elaborating such a type is to imagine a host of situations in which the type may be found, and to describe the resulting picture. This is the elaboration of the preliminary sketch on the basis of sophisticated experience with social life. For these impressionist methods it is possible to substitute a more formal procedure. Having chosen a central primary relation, is it possible to find, by reference to specific instances, the relative frequency with which other traits are associated with the nuclear ones. The starting-point may be either institutional or functional, of course: those who are “judges,” “legislators,” or “bosses” may be investigated, or those who are “statesmen,” “conciliators,” or “administrators.” We have already had occasion to stress the point that institutional definitions and functional definitions do not precisely coincide, although either is a valid point of departure for research.

The result of the formal procedure outlined is to define “co-relational” (correlational) types. A recent monograph by Fritz Giese may be used to illustrate the possibilities. This is a statistical treatment of the data available in the German Who’s Who of 1914. After Giese had eliminated those who were included on account of their hereditary position only, he had over ten thousand names left. He then distinguished thirty-three varieties of activity, which were grouped into the five major categories of art, social science, physical science, technology, and practical life. He also classified his subjects into those who were honored because of high-grade but essentially routine professional accomplishment, those who enriched their field of activity by some creative contribution, and those whose creativeness was unrestricted to their occupational field. The three types were the skilful, the productive, and the freely creative. Since the individual is not confined to one field of activity, the following scheme of connections was built up to show the relation between the person and the form of activity: (a) income source (the person regards a particular field as a “bread and butter” occupation); (b) successive activity field (the individual has deserted one field for another); (c) field of simultaneous double-production; (d) recreational activity. The relation of a person to a field of activity may show a splitting of his personality or a compensatory function. When a politician consciously decides to play golf or to collect pictures to relieve his mind from exclusive political preoccupations, he is realizing a compensatory value in this chosen field. When he finds himself impelled to try to live a double life of scientific investigation and political propaganda, he is exhibiting major, and contrasting, tendencies in his personality (splitting). Sometimes the tie between fields of activity which the same individual exploits is factual similarity, as when a politician becomes a literary man to the extent of writing the political history of a period. Sometimes the connection is a functional relationship, in that the same biopsychic dispositions are to be assumed to operate. Thus, business promotion and politics are intimately allied; sculpture and politics are not.

Giese’s detailed analysis showed that those engaged in politics reveal the most heterogeneous affiliations and backgrounds. He raised the question whether it was proper to think of a distinctive functional gift which would characterize all those in political positions. When compared with art, especially architecture, and engineering, the heterogeneity of the political population is very evident. Indeed, the manifold connections of politically active persons with other fields suggest that political life depends upon very widely dispersed capacities of human nature, as does teaching, history writing, and journalism. But there is one important exception which is clearly brought out by the figures. This was a group of politicians who rose from humble circumstances and devoted themselves assiduously to organization and agitation. They offer a sharp contrast to those for whom political life was a sport, hobby, or honorary distinction. For the organizing and agitating group we may postulate a functional disposition of some kind.

The results show how the institutional approach to a problem may eventuate in the isolation of one group which very probably coincides closely with a functional group in other institutional activities. Some of the agitating and organizing people weren’t yet in politics at the time the 1914 census was made, and some of them were so busy with private organizations that they never made the formal transition to politics in the institutional sense.

Another conclusion which bears on the same point is Giese’s discovery that those who were freely creative in politics had much more in common with those who were freely creative in other fields than they had with those who were merely productive in their own. Giese’s method of classifying his freely creative group is too ambiguous to justify one in considering his conclusion of more than suggestive value, but it is possible that he has isolated a functionally homogeneous group which cuts across all institutional lines.

Some of the studies of political personalities have carried the quantitative method far enough to substitute scales for rank orders at various points. Various reaction tests have been used in the hope of discovering constant differences among those who play different political rôles. Henry T. Moore undertook to decide whether there is such a thing as a temperamental predisposition toward conservatism or radicalism. He defined radicalism as “an attitude favorable to sweeping changes in social institutions, especially changes along lines opposed to class interest,” and classified the opinion expressions of students according to the degree of radicalism or conservatism indicated. He then applied a series of reaction tests to the students and reached the following conclusion:

Our evidence so far as it goes points to some innate basis of difference. This basis does not seem to be the level of general intelligence or of emotional stability, nor in any general superiority or inferiority in learning or attention, but in such specific factors as greater speed of reaction, ease of breaking habits, readiness to make snap judgments, and independence in the face of majority influence. The last of these differences is the one most clearly indicated.... If one man is by nature more keyed up for speed and flexibility, and the other is more designed for regularity of function, we can hardly expect that government of the hyperkinetic by the phlegmatic and for the phlegmatic can fail to develop periods of stress and strain.

Floyd Allport classified students into typical and atypical members of the community, discovering whether they took up prevalent or minority positions on various political questions. He then applied a battery of tests to the students and found that certain traits of the atypical (whether the opinions were “radical” or “conservative”) proved to be homogeneous. Thus, not only do the “extremes” meet, but also those who hold minority positions along a hypothetical continuum of opinion distribution.

W. H. Cowley, at the instigation of Charles E. Merriam and L. L. Thurstone, undertook to compare leaders in chosen situations. He used twenty-eight tests of such traits as aggressiveness, self-confidence, intelligence, emotional stability, and speed of reaction. While his tests were differentiating within the same group between leaders and followers, he reports that they did not distinguish between leaders as a class and followers as a class. He thus felt justified in denying that leadership is a universal trait of particular persons, and criticized efforts to itemize “traits of leadership.” Further applications of the blanket-test technique are under way.

Gilbert J. Rich opened out a new field of investigation when he studied certain complex physiological and biochemical variables among leaders and followers. He measured the hydrogen-ion concentration of the saliva, the acidity of the urine, alkali reserve of the blood, and creatinine excretion of the urine. The least excitable subjects showed the most acid saliva and the most acid urine. The rating of the subjects was open to criticism, and was obviously much less refined than the biochemical techniques employed.

The types which we have just been considering show more than a cross-sectional picture of the adult personality. They have made the transition from itemizing the instantaneous pictures to the selection of features of the immediate picture which show how the type has come to be. They are thus more than co-relational types; they have made some progress toward developmental types. When Giese found the group of political personalities of humble origin and persistent organizing and agitating activity, he postulated a common dynamic of development, a homogeneous functional disposition toward this sort of thing. Moore wanted to extricate the formative influence of temperamental reactive sets, and the other investigators have likewise sought to ascertain developmental factors in the production of the adult picture of traits and interests.

Almost every nuclear and co-relational type carries developmental implications. The terms which are used to characterize motives have dynamic, genetic, formative coronas of meaning which, vaguely though they may be sketched, are emphatically present. When Michels says that a “Catonian strength of conviction” is one mark of the political leader, it is implied that if one pushed his inquiry into the adolescence, childhood, and even infancy of the individual that this ruling characteristic would be visible. Of course, Michels does not himself develop these implications; it is doubtful if he has tried to find the early analogues of the trait which he called “Cantonian strength of conviction” on the adult level. But the dynamic penumbra of the term can lead empirical investigators to scrutinize the behavior of children from a new point of view. Many of the terms which are used to describe adult traits are no doubt unpredictable from the less differentiated traits of infancy, childhood, and youth. But the growth of full-blown developmental types requires the sifting and refinement of terms until they are adequate to the description of sequences of growth. Developmental types will describe a set of terminal, adult reactions, and relate them to those critical experiences in the antecedent life of the individual which dispose him to set up such a mode of dealing with the world. Developmental types will not only include the subjective account of the history of the personality but will embrace the objective factors which were co-operating to produce the patterns described.

The notion of a developmental type may be illustrated by examining the place which is assigned to the political man in the chief modern characterological systems. Hans Apfelbach has used five dimensions for the description of characters. Each one is described as a gamut between two polar opposites, and a sixth pair of polar opposites is introduced into the system. The scheme is indicated in Table II.

This gives a formal range of sixty-four types of character formation without allowing for subtle variations in quantity. The first combination which Apfelbach specifies is, symbolically, ABCDEF. This is a very masculine, sadistic, hyperemotional, moral, intellectually keen, and upright character. Among men this is the type of the organizers, politicians, the great preachers, generals, dictators, and the like. Among women, this is the type of the organizer of every description, especially the political or patriotic enthusiast, like Joan of Arc. It should be observed that the terms “masculine” and “feminine” are not used in a mutually exclusive sense. Carrying on the tradition of Weininger and Fliess, these terms are employed to designate traits which may be present in different proportions in the same person.

TABLE II

Dimension Polar Elements

Sexuality Masculine A Feminine a Psychomotility Psychosadistic B Psychomasochistic b Emotionality Hyperemotional C Hypo-emotional c Morality Moral D Immoral d Intellectuality Superior E (specialized) Inferior e Accessory elements Altruistic F Egotistic f

The political man appears in Jung’s system at various intersections of his underlying scheme. The essential cleavage in Jung’s classification is between those whose psychic energy (libido) flows outward toward objects (extraversion) and those whose libido flows inward (introversion). The former enter into full affective relations with the world around; the latter are mainly focused on their private interpretations of experience. In addition to these fundamental dynamic relationships, Jung sub-classifies with reference to our fundamental psychological functions: thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition. These functions may operate against one another consciously or unconsciously. So, when thinking predominates in consciousness, feeling is repressed; and the reverse. Intuition is understood to be a kind of instinctive comprehension, a function peculiarly dependent upon the unconscious. According to the predominance of one or another of these basic functions, Jung constructs four special types of extraversion and introversion.

Certain conspicuous political types belong to Jung’s category of extraverted thinkers. These individuals try to bring their whole life-activity into relation with intellectual conclusions, which in the last resort are always oriented by objective data, whether objective facts or generally valid ideas. By his formula are good and evil measured: all is wrong that contradicts it, and all is right that corresponds to it; all is accidental that is neutral toward it. Just as the extraverted thinking type subordinates himself to his formula, he seeks to subordinate all others to it, as a manifestation of a universal inspiration. His moral code forbids him to tolerate exceptions, and he would bend all to suit the scheme. “One really should” or “one must” figure largely in his program. If the formula is wide enough, Jung remarks that the extraverted thinker may figure as a reformer, a ventilator of public wrongs, and a propagandist. But the more rigid his formula, the more likely he is to grow into a grumbler, a crafty reasoner, and a self-righteous critic.

Many politicians answer to the general description which Jung gives of the extraverted, intuitive type. The intuitive is unattracted by the established values; he is drawn to the possible rather than to the actual. He seizes hold of new objects and ways of doing things with eager intensity, only to abandon them cold-bloodedly, when their implications become obvious. The irresistible magnet of the rising sun fires his imagination and guides his activity. For the risen sun and the setting sun there is no enthusiasm, no special hostility, only indifference. Here is the facile promoter, who senses the dawning future and speeds from project to project, bored with routine and detail after projects have been accepted and the blueprints finished.

The types of Apfelbach and Jung are based upon a small number of reactive mechanisms which are supposed to influence in different degree the growth of the personality. These “mechanism” types may contain many useful leads, but the methodological problem in isolating these hypothetical mechanisms is unsettled. A “stable” reaction in adulthood may be far from stable when viewed at successive growth periods. These “mechanism” types seem to encourage endless classificatory ventures at the expense of detailed reporting of life-histories. For reasons which have been set forth, subjective histories are of the greatest importance to social science; and any excessive interest in “mechanism” which minimizes the importance of elaborate individual records is to be deplored. Jung and Apfelbach say very little about the principal epochs of individual development, and distract attention from the career as a whole, as this career is structuralized in successive phases.

Before outlining our developmental conception of the homo politicus, we return to the work of Freud, for his method has enabled him to keep close to the subjective sequence and to use classificatory terms in relation to the successive phases of impulse organization in the developing personality.