But it must be treated with consideration and the first consideration is not to overwork it. A Ford engine is large enough for a Ford car, for Fords are light weight. As long as you do not weigh too much your engine will carry you up the hills and down the dales of life with good old Ford efficiency and at a pretty good gait.
Making a Truck out of Your Ford
But when you take on fat you are doing to your engine what a Ford driver would be doing to his if he loaded his car with brick or scrap iron.
A Ford owner who intended to transport bricks the rest of his life could get a big-cylinder engine and substitute it for the original
but you can't do that. This little four-cylinder affair is the only one you will ever have and no amount of money, position or affection can buy you a new one if you mistreat it. Like the Ford engine, it will stand for a good many pounds of excess baggage and still do good work. But if you load on too much and keep it there the day will come when its cylinders begin to skip.
You may take it to the service station and pay the doctors to grind the valves, fix your carbureter and put in some new spark plugs.
These may work[Pg 55] pretty well as long as you are traveling the paved highway of Perfect Health; you may keep up with the pro-
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cession without noticing anything particularly wrong.
But come to the hill of Pneumonia or Diabetes and you are very likely not to make the grade.
Don't "Kill Your Engine"
The records in America show that thousands of men and women literally "kill their engines" every year when they might have lived many years longer.
How Each Finds Happiness
We live for happiness and each type finds its greatest happiness in following those innate urges determined by the most highly-devel- oped system in its makeup.
The Alimentive's disposition, nature, character and personality are built by and around his alimentary system. He is happiest when gratifying it and whenever he thwarts it he is miserable, just as the rest of us are when we thwart our predominant system.
The World Needs Him
This type has so many traits needed by the world, however, and has such extreme capacity for[Pg 56] enjoying life that the race, not
to mention himself, would profit greatly by his denying himself excessive amounts of food.
Enjoyment the Keynote of This Type
The good things of life--rich, abundant food and everything that serves the personal appetites--are the cravings of this type.
He purchases and uses more of the limousines, yachts and chefs than any other three types combined, and gets more for his money out of them than others do. The keynote of his nature is personal enjoyment. His senses of touch and taste are also especially acute.
The Fat Man Loves Comfort
You can tell a great deal about a man's type by noting for what classes of things he spends most of his extra money.
The Alimentive may have no fire insurance, no Liberty bonds, no real estate but he will have all the modern comforts he can possibly
afford.
Most of the world's millionaires are fat and Human Analysis explains why. We make few efforts in life save to satisfy our most urgent demands, desires, and ambitions. Each human type differs in its crav[Pg 57]ings from each of the others and takes the respective means necessary to gratify these cravings.
The Alimentive craves those luxuries, comforts and conveniences which only money can procure for him.
The Fat Millionaire
When the Alimentive is a man of brains he uses his brains to get money. No fat person enjoys work but the greater his brain capacity the more will he forego leisure to make money.
When the Fat Man is in Average Circumstances
Any man's money-making ambitions depend largely on whether money is essential to the satisfaction of his predominating instincts.
If he is fat and of average brain capacity he will overcome his physical inertia to the point of securing for himself and his family most of the comforts of modern life.
The average-brained fat man composes a large percentage of our population and the above accounts for his deserved reputation as a generous husband and father.
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The Fat Man a Good Provider
The fat man will give his last cent to his wife[Pg 58] and children for the things they desire but he is not inclined as much as some other types to hearken to the woes of the world at large. The fat man is essentially a family man, a home man, a respectable, cottage-owning, tax-paying, peaceable citizen.
Not a Reformer
He inclines to the belief that other families, other communities, other classes and other countries should work out their own salva-tion and he leaves them to do it. In all charitable, philanthropic and community "drives" he gives freely but is not lavish nor sentimental about it. It is often a "business proposition" with him.
When the Fat Man is Poor
Love of ease is the fat man's worst enemy. His inherent contentment, accentuated by the inconvenience of moving about easily or quickly, constantly tempts him to let things slide. When he lacks the brain capacity for figuring out ways and means for getting things easily he is never a great success at anything.
When the extremely fat man's mentality is below the average he often refuses to work--in which case he becomes a familiar figure around public[Pg 59] rest rooms, parks and the cheaper hotel lobbies. Such a man finally graduates into the class of professional chair-warmers.
Fat People Love Leisure
A chance to do as we please, especially to do as little hard work as possible, is a secret desire of almost everybody. But the fat man takes the prize for wanting it most.
Not a Strenuous Worker
He is not constructed to work hard like some of the other types, as we shall see in subsequent chapters. His overweight is not only a handicap in that it slows down his movements, but it tends to slow down all his vital processes as well and to overload his heart. This gives him a chronic feeling of heaviness and inertia.
Everybody Likes Him
But Nature must have intended fat people to manage the rest of us instead of taking a hand at the "heavy work." She made them averse to toil and then made them so likable that they can usually get the rest of us to do their hardest work for them.[Pg 60]
The World Managed by Fat People
When he is brainy the fat man never stays in the lower ranks of subordinates. He may get a late start in an establishment but he will soon make those over him like him so well they will promote him to a chief-clerkship, a foremanship or a managership. Once there he will make those under him so fond of him that they will work long and hard for him.
Fat Men to the Top
In this way the fat man of real brains goes straight to the top while others look on and bewail the fact that they do most of the
actual work. They fail to recognize that the world always pays the big salaries not for hand work but for head work, and not so much for working yourself as for your ability to get others to work.
The Popular Politician
This capacity for managing, controlling and winning others is what enables this type to succeed so well in politics. The fat man knows how to get votes. He mixes with everybody, jokes with everybody, remembers to ask how the children are--and pretty soon he's the head of his ward. Almost every big political boss is fat.[Pg 61]
Makes Others Work
One man is but one man and at best can do little more than a good man-size day of work. But a man who can induce a dozen other