ell-characterized class: they are clever; they
readily acquire accomplishments which do not need great application;
and agreeably to the recreative character of their occupations, their
natures are well developed on the artistic side. They draw, paint,
sing, play, write verses and make various pretty things with easy
dexterity. Their lack of industry prevents them ever mastering the
technique of any art; they have artistic tastes, but are always
amateurs.

"With the vice of busy idleness they display other vices. The same
inability to forgo immediate enjoyment, at whatever cost, shows itself
in other acts. They are nearly always spendthrifts, usually drunkards,
often sexually dissolute. Next to their lack of industry, their most
conspicuous quality is their incurable mendacity. Their readiness,
their resources, their promptitude, the elaborate circumstantiality of
their lies are astonishing. The copiousness and efficiency of their
excuses for failing to do what they have undertaken would convince
anyone who had no experience of their capabilities in this way.

"Withal, they are excellent company, pleasant companions, good-natured,
easy-going, and urbane. Their self-conceit is inordinate, and remains
undiminished in spite of repeated failures in the most important
affairs of life. They see themselves fall immeasurably behind those who
are admittedly their inferiors in cleverness, yet they are not only
cheery and content, but their confidence in their own powers and
general superiority to other people remains undiminished.

"_The lack of self-restraint is plainly an inborn character_, for it
may show itself in but one member of the family brought up in exactly
the same circumstances as other members who do not show any such
peculiarity. The victim is born with one important mental faculty
defective, precisely as another may be born with hare-lip."

In neuropaths the mental mechanism of _projection_, which we all show, is
often marked.

Any personal shortcoming, being repugnant to us causes self-reproach, which
we avoid by "projecting" the fault (unconsciously) on some one else.

Readers should get "The Idiot" by Fedor Dostoieffsky, an epileptic genius
who saw that for those like him, happiness could be got through peace of
mind alone, and not in the cut-throat struggle for worldly success. He
projected his