THE "STUNT" MIND.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 192, 16 August 1927, Page 6

THE "STUNT" MIND.

What is it that eggs men on—and women, 100, for that matter —to attempt the unusual, to explore outlandish places, to perform sensational feats, to endure hardships, simply to go one better than the other fellow* Why are they so anxious to excel, one might almost*say to "show off," to play to the gallery? In other words, what is behind the "stunt" mind? It may 1h» a Segravc roaring down Daytona Beach in his* 1000 h.p. "mystery-S." a Lindbergh groping his way over the .Atlantic, or a movie actor risking "his neck to provide a super-thrill. But they are all tarred with the same brush: and the answer is—ambition —the desire to assert superiority and win the world's applause. These men seem Poles apart from us humdrum stay-at-homes. In reality we are all more or less alike. We all have one secret dread—to l>e lost in the. crowd —to remain nonentities. We long to do something big, to be famous. The only difference is we continue to dream about it, they tackle it. The people who are particularly prone to fight for a place in the limelight arc those who have been unduly teased, bullied or sat on in childhood. The undersized, the misshapen, the lame, cross-eyed, red-hnired, delicate —individuals with some "organ-inferiority," as Adler calls it. By way of over-compensation they may develop inordinately ambitious natures. While it may not apply to every case, it is nevertheless a "fact that the vast majority of outstanding performances and superior human gifts can bo traced to "organ-inferferity," and the effort to make up for it. Is it onlv coincidence that so many famous generals—Caesar, Napoleon, Prince Eugene, Roberts —were little men? Napoleon, too, was plump, pale, and in many respects physically effeminate. Caesar was as fussy as any woman about his complexion and hair—bath attendants polished his skin until it resembled alabaster or marble. Mahouimed, Byron, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Nietzsche are a few of the men of transcendent ability who suffered from epilepsy. Bernard Shaw had joint-tuberculosis as a child— "the rottenness of the. English drama got into my bonflfc" he said. Mozart and Beethoven suffered Am ear trouble; Demosthenes was a stutterer, and Moses, orator and leader of men, was said to have a "heavy tongue. ,. These men came out on top because of their handicaps, not in spite of them. They possessed the "will to win," and refused to be beaten. Can you blame them if they are occasionally egotistical, vain—even conceited? Hardly. —A.D.