4o8 THE FACTORS OF THE MIND

more technical name, we may call it a factor for euphoria. Actually
however, the only coefficient of any considerable size Is that for
£ sorrow ' ; and I believe the true inference to be drawn is that two
persons labouring under recent grief happened to find a place in
this group at the time the estimates were made.

Since the group here described was small and deliberately chosen
for illustrative purposes, no great weight could be attached to these
points of agreement if they stood alone. Miss Knowles and others,
however, have correlated and factorized assessments for much larger
groups of our students, and have apparently reached very similar
conclusions. Their larger tables will be found in their theses.

It will be as well to repeat that the factors thus demonstrated are,
in the first instance, statistical components only : they are not
psychological, physiological, or biological causes as such. It is
perhaps possible that (as the more enthusiastic advocates of the
method have claimed) the * types discovered by factor-analysis '
may be * at bottom constitutional types, part of the individual's
glandular inheritance ?; but if so, factor-analysis alone could not
demonstrate it. It has even been suggested that ' the extraverted
temperament? may be c due possibly to one gene and the intro-
verted to its absence ' : I agree that the underlying conditions may,
in part, be inherited as a c Mendelian factor/ and have, indeed, given
reasons for the belief ; *• but the characteristics of individuals as we
observe them can be related to * Mendelian factors ' only in a very
indirect and complex way : our statistical6 factors ' are factors of a
very different kind. Whether or not the groupings suggested by
our crude data are at bottom partly the outcome of simple biological
or biochemical causes, the statistical factors that express those
groupings are, as we have seen, descriptive and predictive factors
rather than causal factors : they seek merely to offer a quantitative
picture of an individual personality, and to forecast his probable
behaviour under various emotional stimuli. A different set of
factors could easily be extracted which would describe the data
almost as well: but for purposes of prediction they would be less
simple, less convenient, less economical, and less accurate. What
James wrote nearly forty years ago still remains true : " If we seek
to place the emotions thus enumerated into groups, according to
their affinities, all sorts of groupings would be possible—equally
real and true. The reader may class the emotions as he will—as
sad or joyous, sthenic or asthenic, natural or acquired, egoistic or
non-egoistic, organismally or environmentally initiated, and what
more besides. The only question would be—does this grouping or

1 Eugtnics Review, IV (1912), ii, pp. 189 et se^ Cf. pp. 8, 377, above.