The type group which we have just considered is one of the most clearly marked and easily recognized. It is a type which we often meet with among the so-called criminal classes, where its characteristic features can be seen in exaggerated proportions. Without attempting to analyze any additional types (a task of great delicacy and difficulty), the truth that the underlying fault of character is often unlike the symptoms which appear most conspicuously on the surface may be further illustrated by the following example. I have known of a person who made himself obnoxious to his friends by his overbearing manners and apparent arrogance. Casual observers condemned him on account of what they believed to be his overweening self-confidence, and expressed the opinion that his self-conceit ought to be broken down. But the real trouble with him was not that he was too self-confident, but that he had not self-confidence enough. His self-confidence needed to be built up. He was overbearing in society because he did not trust himself, because he was always afraid of not being able to hold his own, and hence he exaggerated on the other side. Those who take such a person to be in reality what he seems to be will never be able to influence him. If we find such a trait in a child, and simply treat it as if it were arrogant, we shall miss the mark entirely. We must find the underlying principle of the character the occult cause of which the surface symptoms are the effects.
Our knowledge of the great type groups is as yet extremely meager. Psychology has yet to do its work in this direction, and books on education give us but little help. But there are certain means by which the task of investigation may possibly be assisted. One means is the study of the plays of Shakespeare. That master mind has created certain types of character which repay the closest analysis. The study of the best biographies is a second means. The study of the moral characteristics of the primitive races--a study which has been begun by Herbert Spencer in his work on Descriptive Sociology, and by Waitz in his Anthropologie der Naturvölker--is perhaps another means; and honest introspection, when it shall have become the rule among intelligent persons, instead of being the exception, will probably be the best means.