Pedagogical Anthropology by Maria Montessori (best novels of all time TXT) 📕

Fig. 17

Let us begin by considering the middle circle, that of the abnormals. Here we have inscribed, as psycho-moral and physio-pathological traits, abstemiousness, anti-social tendency, predisposition to disease. Abstemiousness represents a corrective, without which the individual tends toward an anti-social line of action and contracts diseases. Abstemiousness is present within the circle of abnormal human beings, as a more or less attainable ideal; but it must be regarded as the pedagogic goal, when the problem arises of educating an untypical class of individuals. In other words, there are certain abnormal individuals who, if they are not to turn out criminals, must exercise a violent corrective influence over their psycho-physical personality, and they must be trained to do so; for it is an influence unknown to the normal man, who not only has no inclination to commit a crime, but recoils from doing so, and on the contrary may arise to degrees of moral perfection that are inconceivable to the abnormal man. Consequently, in order to maintain a relatively healthy condition, certain abnormal individuals are constrained to submit themselves to a severe hygienic régime throughout their entire life; a régime useless to the normal man, who indulges naturally in all the pleasures which are consistent with the full measure of physical health, and which remain forever unknown, and unattainable, to the abnormal individual organically predisposed to disease.

Such self-restraint we may call the culte of virtue, a necessity only to certain categories of men; and we may also call it the virtue of inferior individuals. It applies and is limited almost wholly to the individual.

Meanwhile, there is the normal man's high standard of virtue, which is an indefinite progress toward moral perfection; but the path it follows lies wholly in the direction of society collectively, or toward the biological perfectionment of the species. In life's attainment of such a triumph, man both feels and is happy rather than virtuous.

The separation between the circles, or rather between the different categories of individuals, the normal and the abnormal, is not clear-cut. There always exist certain imperceptibly transitional forms, between normality and abnormality; and furthermore, since no one of us is ideally normal, no one who is not abnormal in some one thing, it follows that this "some one thing" must be corrected by the humbling practice of self-discipline. At the same time it is rare for a man to be abnormal in all parts of his personality; in such a case he would be outside the social pale, a monstrosity; the high, collective virtues can, therefore, even if in a limited degree, illuminate the moral life of the abnormals. St. Paul felt that it "is hard to kick against the pricks"; and the picciotto of the Camorra feels that he is obeying a society that protects the weak.

It is a question of degree. But such a conception must lead to a separation in school and in method of education, for the two categories of individuals.

Certain very important pathological types have been distinguished and established in Italy by De Giovanni, the Paduan clinical professor who introduced the anthropological method into clinical practice. Through his interesting studies, he has to-day fortunately revived the ancient theory of temperaments, explaining them on a basis of physio-pathological anthropology.

De Giovanni distinguishes two fundamental types; the one hyposthenic (weak), the other hypersthenic (over-excitable); these two types obey the following rules: morphologically considered, the hyposthenic type has a total spread of arms greater than the total stature and a chest circumference of less than half the stature: these data alone are enough to tell us that the type in question is macroscelous; as a matter of fact, the chest is narrow and the abdomen narrower still. De Giovanni says that, owing to the scant pulmonary and abdominal capacity the organs of vegetative life are inadequate; the heart is too small and unequal to its function of general irrigator of the organism; the circulation is consequently sluggish, as shown by the bluish network of veins, indicating some obstacle to the flow of blood.

The type is predominantly lymphatic, the muscles flaccid, with a tendency to develop fatty tissues, but very little muscular fibre; there is a predisposition to bronchial catarrh, but above all to pulmonary tuberculosis. This hyposthenic type, which corresponds to the lymphatic temperament of Greek medicine, is in reality a macroscelous type somewhat exceeding normal limits and therefore physiologically inefficient and feeble.

The following is De Giovanni's description:

Morphologically.—Deficient chest capacity, deficient abdominal capacity, disproportionate and excessive development of the limbs; insufficient muscularity.

Physiologically.—Insufficient respiration, and consequent scanty supply of oxygen (a form of chronic asphyxia of internal origin), insufficient circulation, because the small heart sends the blood through the arteries at too low a pressure; and this blood, insufficiently oxygenated, fails to furnish the tissues with their normal interchange of matter, and therefore the assimilative functions in general all suffer; finally, the venous blood is under an excessive pressure in the veins, the return flow to the heart is rendered difficult and there results a tendency to venous hyperemia (congestion of the veins), even in the internal organs. This is accompanied by what De Giovanni calls nervous erethism (in contradistinction to torpor), which amounts to an abnormal state of the central nervous system, causing predisposition to insanity and to various forms of neurasthenia (rapid exhaustion, irritability).

This type is especially predisposed to maladies of the respiratory system, subject to bronchial catarrh recurring annually, liable to attacks of bronchitis, pleurisy, and pneumonia, and easily falls victim to pulmonary tuberculosis.

Here are a few cases recorded by De Giovanni.[9] (It must be borne in mind that the total spread of the arms, Ts, ought to equal the total stature, St. The measurements are given in centimetres.)