“There is one name,” says Elbert Hubbard, “that stands out in history like a beacon light after all these twenty-five hundred years have passed, just because the man had the sublime genius of discovering ability. That man is Pericles. Pericles made Athens and to-day the very dust of the street of Athens is being sifted and searched for relics and remnants of the things made by people who were captained by men of ability who were discovered by Pericles.”

The remark of Andrew Carnegie that he won his success because he had the knack of picking the right men has become a classic in current speech. Augustus Cæsar built up and extended the power of the Roman Empire because he knew men. The careers of Charlemagne, Napoleon, Disraeli, Washington, Lincoln, and all the empire builders and empire saviours hold their places in history because these men knew how to recognize, how to select, and how to develop to the highest degree the abilities of their co-workers. The great editors, Greeley, Dana, James Gordon Bennett, McClure, Gilder and Curtis, attained their high station in the world of letters largely because of their ability to unearth men of genius. Morgan, Rockefeller, Theodore N. Vail, James J. Hill, and other builders of industrial and commercial empires laid strong their foundations by almost infallible wisdom in the selection of lieutenants. Even in the world of sports the names of Connie Mack, McGraw, Chance, Moran, Carrigan and Stallings shine chiefly because of their keen judgment of human nature.

If the glory that was Greece shone forth because Pericles kindled its flame, then Pericles in any time and amongst any people would probably have ushered in a Golden Age. Had Carnegie lived in any other day and sought his industrial giants, he would no doubt have found them. If a supreme judge of latent talent and inspirer of high achievement can thus always find material ready to his hand, it follows that humanity is rich in undiscovered genius that, in the race, there are, unguessed and undeveloped, possibilities for a millennium of Golden Ages. Psychologists tell us that only a very small percentage of the real ability and energy of the average man is ever developed or used.

“Poor man!” says a reviewer, speaking of a contemporary, “he never discovered his discoverer.” The man who waits for his Pericles usually waits in vain. There has been only one Pericles in all history. Great geniuses in the discovery, development, and management of men are rare. Most men never meet them. And yet every man can discover his discoverer.

Self-knowledge is the first step to self-development. Through an understanding of his own aptitudes and talents one may find fullest expression for the highest possibilities of his intellect and spirit. A man who thus knows himself needs no other discoverer. The key to self-knowledge is intelligent, scientific self-study.

In the year 1792, Mahmoud Effendi, a Turkish archer, hit a mark with an arrow at 482 yards. His bow, arrows, thumb-ring and groove are still on exhibition in London as proof of the feat. His prowess lay in his native gift, trained by years of practice, to guess the power of his bow, the weight and balance of his arrow, and the range and direction of his target; also, the sweep of the wind. This he gained by observations repeated until the information gathered from them amounted to almost exact knowledge. Thousands of gunners to-day hit a mark miles away, with a 16-inch gun, not because they are good guessers, but because, by means of science, they determine accurately all of the factors entering into the flight of their projectiles. Pericles judged men by a shrewd guess the kind of guess called intuition. But such intuition is only a native gift of keen observation, backed by good judgment, and trained by shrewd study of large numbers of men until it becomes instinctively accurate.

In modern times we are learning not to depend upon mere guesses no matter how shrewd. Mahmoud Effendi could not pass on to others the art he had acquired. But the science of gunnery can be taught to any man of average intelligence and natural aptitudes. Pericles left posterity not one hint about how to judge men how to recognize ability. Humanity needs a scientific method of judging men, so that any man of intelligence can discover genius or just native ability in himself and others.

As the result of our ignorance, great possibilities lie undeveloped in nearly all men. Self-expression is smothered in uncongenial toil. Parents and teachers, groping in the dark, have long been training natural-born artists to become mechanics, natural-born business men to become musicians, and boys and girls with great aptitudes for agriculture and horticulture to become college professors, lawyers, and doctors. Splendid human talent, amounting in some cases to positive genius, is worse than wasted as a result.

In our experience, covering years of careful investigation and the examination of many thousands of individuals, we have seen so much of the tragedy of the misfit that it seems at times almost universal. The records of one thousand persons taken at random from our files show that 763, or 76.3 per cent, felt that they were in the wrong vocations. Of these 414 were thirty-five years old or older. Most of these, when questioned as to why they had entered upon vocations for which they had so little natural aptitude, stated that they had either drifted along lines of least resistance or had been badly advised by parents, teachers, or employers.

We knew a wealthy father, deaf to all pleas from his children, who spent thousands of dollars upon what he thought was a musical education for his daughter, including several years in Europe. The young lady could not become a musician. The aptitude for music was not in her. But she was unusually talented in mathematics and appreciation of financial values, and could have made a marked success had she been permitted to gratify her constantly reiterated desire for a commercial career. This same father, with the same obstinacy, insisted that his son go into business. The young man was so passionately determined to make a career of music that he was a complete failure in business and finally embezzled several thousand dollars from his employer in the hope of making his escape to Europe and securing a musical education. Here were two human lives of marked talent as completely ruined and wasted as a well-intentioned but ignorant and obstinate parent could accomplish that end.

A few years ago a young man was brought to us by his friends for advice. He had been educated for the law and then inherited from his father a considerable sum of money. Having no taste for the law and a repugnance for anything like office work, he had never even attempted to begin practice. Having nothing to do, he was becoming more and more dissipated, and when we saw him first had lost confidence in himself and was utterly discouraged. “I am useless in the world,” he told us. “There is nothing I can do.” At our suggestion, he was finally encouraged to purchase land and begin the scientific study and practice of horticulture. The last time we saw him he was erect, ruddy, hard-muscled, and capable looking. Best of all, his old, petulant, dissatisfied expression was gone. In its place was the light of worthy achievement, success, and happiness. He told us there were no finer fruit trees anywhere than his. Such incidents as this are not rare indeed, they are commonplace. We could recount them from our records in great number. But every observant reader can supply many from his own experience.

Thousands of young men and women are encouraged, every year, to enroll in schools where they will spend time and money preparing themselves for professions already overcrowded and for which a large majority of them have no natural aptitudes. A prominent physician tells us that of the forty-eight who were graduated from medical school with him, he considers only three safe to consult upon medical subjects. Indeed, so great is the need and so increasingly serious is it becoming, as our industrial and commercial life grows more complex and the demand for conservation and efficiency more exacting, that progressive men and women in our universities and schools and elsewhere have undertaken a study of the vocational problem and are earnestly working toward a solution of it in vocational bureaus, vocational schools, and other ways, all together comprising the vocational movement.

Roger W. Babson, in his book, “The Future of the Working Classes: Economic Facts for Employers and Wage Earners,” says: “The crowning work of an economic educational system will be vocational guidance. One of the greatest handicaps to all classes to-day is that 90 per cent of the people have entered their present employment blindly and by chance, irrespective of their fitness or opportunities. Of course, the law of supply and demand is continually correcting these errors, but this readjusting causes most of the world’s disappointments and losses. Some day the schools of the nation will be organized into a great reporting bureau on employment opportunities and trade conditions, directing the youths of the nation so far as their qualifications warrant into lines of work which then offer the greatest opportunity. Only by such a system will each worker receive the greatest income possible for himself, and also the greatest benefits possible from the labors of all, thus continually increasing production and yet avoiding overproduction in any single line.” That the main features of the system suggested by Mr. Babson are being made the basis of the vocational movement is one of the most hopeful signs of the times.

Dr. George W. Jacoby, the neurologist, says: “It is scarcely too much to say that the entire future happiness of a child depends upon the successful bringing out of its capabilities. For upon that rests the choice of its life work. A mistake in this choice destroys all the real joy of living it almost means a lost life.”

Consider the stone wall against which the misfit batters his head:

He uses only his second rate, his third rate, or even less effective mental and physical equipment. He is thus handicapped at the start in the race against those using their best. He is like an athlete with weak legs, but powerful arms and shoulders, trying to win a foot race instead of a hand-over-hand rope-climbing contest.

Worse than his ineptitude, however, is the waste and atrophy of his best powers through disuse. Thus the early settlers of the Coachela Valley fought hunger and thirst while rivers of water ran away a few feet below the surface of the richly fertile soil.

No wonder, then, that the misfit hates his work. And yet, his hate for it is the real tragedy of his life.

Industry, like health, is normal. All healthy children, even men, are active. Activity means growth and development. Inactivity means decay and death. The man who has no useful work to do sometimes expresses himself in wrong-doing and crime, for he has to do something industriously to live. Even our so-called “idle rich” and leisure classes are strenuously active in their attempts to amuse themselves.

When, therefore, a man hates his work, when he is dissatisfied and discontented in it, when his work arouses him to destructive thoughts and feelings, rather than constructive, there is something wrong, something abnormal, and the abnormality is his attempt to do work for which he is unfitted by natural aptitudes or by training.

The man who is trying to do work for which he is unfitted feels repressed, baffled and defeated. He may not even guess his unfitness, but he does feel its manifold effect. He lacks interest in his work and, therefore, that most vital factor in personal efficiency incentive. He cannot throw himself into his work with a whole heart.

When Thomas A. Edison is bent upon realizing one of his ideas, his absorption in his work exemplifies Emerson’s dictum: “Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful it is by abandonment.” He shuts himself away from all interruption in his laboratory; he works for hours oblivious of everything but his idea. Even the demands of his body for food and sleep do not rise above the threshold of consciousness.

Edison himself says that great achievement is a result, not of genius, but of this kind of concentration in work and, until the mediocre man has worked as has Edison, he cannot prove the contrary. Mr. Edison has results to prove the value of his way of working. Even our most expert statisticians and mathematicians would find it difficult to calculate, accurately, the amount of material wealth this one worker has added to humanity’s store. Of the unseen but higher values in culture, in knowledge, in the spread of civilization, and in greater joy of living for millions of people, there are even greater riches. Other men of the past and present, in every phase of activity, have demonstrated that such an utter abandonment to one’s tasks is the keynote of efficiency and achievement. But such abandonment is impossible to the man who is doing work into which he cannot throw his best and greatest powers which claims only his poorest and weakest.

This man’s very failure to achieve increases his unrest and unhappiness. Walter Dill Scott, the psychologist, in his excellent book, “Increasing Human Efficiency in Business,” gives loyalty and concentration as two of the important factors in human efficiency. But loyalty pre-supposes the giving of a man’s best. Concentration demands interest and enthusiasm. These are products of a love of the work to be done.

The man employed at work for which he is unfit, therefore, finds it not a means of self-expression, but a slow form of self-destruction. All this wretchedness of spirit reacts directly upon the efficiency of the worker. “A successful day is likely to be a restful one,” says Professor Scott, “an unsuccessful day an exhausting one. The man who is greatly interested in his work and who finds delight in overcoming the difficulties of his calling is not likely to become so tired as the man for whom the work is a burden.

“Victory in intercollegiate athletic events depends on will power and physical endurance. This is particularly apparent in football. Frequently it is not the team with the greater muscular development or speed of foot that wins the victory, but the one with the more grit and perseverance. At the conclusion of a game players are often unable to walk from the field and need to be carried. Occasionally the winning team has actually worked the harder and received the more serious injuries. Regardless of this fact, it is usually true that the victorious team leaves the field less jaded than the conquered team. Furthermore, the winners will report next day refreshed and ready for further training, while the losers may require several days to overcome the shock and exhaustion of their defeat.

“Recently I had a very hard contest at tennis. Some hours after the game I was still too tired to do effective work. I wondered why, until I remembered that I had been thoroughly beaten, and that, too, by an opponent whom I felt I outclassed. I had been in the habit of playing even harder contests and ordinarily with no discomfort especially when successful in winning the match.

“What I have found so apparent in physical exertion is equally true in intellectual labor. Writing or research work which progresses satisfactorily leaves me relatively fresh; unsuccessful efforts bring their aftermath of weariness.

“Intellectual work which is pleasant is stimulating and does not fag one, while intellectual work which is uninteresting or displeasing is depressing and exhausting....

“To restore muscular and nerve cells is a very delicate process. So wonderful is the human organism, however, that the process is carried on perfectly without our consciousness or volition except under abnormal conditions.

“Food and air are the first essentials of this restoration. In-directly the perfect working of all the bodily organs contributes to the process especially deepened breathing, heightened pulse, and increase of bodily volume due to the expansion of the blood vessels running just beneath the skin.

“Here pleasure enters. Its effect on the expenditure of energy is to make muscle and brain cells more available for consumption, and particularly to hasten the process of restoration or recuperation.

“The deepened breathing supplies more air for the oxidation of body wastes. The heightened pulse carries nourishment more rapidly to the depleted tissues and relieves the tissues more rapidly from the poisonous wastes produced by work. The body, the machine, runs more smoothly, and few stops for repairs are made necessary.

“In addition to these specific functions, pleasure hastens all the bodily processes which are of advantage to the organism. The hastening may be so great that recuperation keeps pace with the consumption consequent on efficient labor, with the result that there is little or no exhaustion. This is, in physiological terms, the reason why a person can do more when he ‘enjoys’ his work or play, and can continue his efforts for a longer period without fatigue. The man who enjoys his work requires less time for recreation and exercise, for his enjoyment recharges the storage battery of energy.”

But the misfit can take none of this pleasure in his work. He is unhappy because he cannot do his best; he is wretched because he feels that he is being defeated in the contest of life; he is miserable because he hates the things he has to do; he can take no satisfaction in his work because he feels that it is poorly done; and, finally, all of his joylessness reacts upon him, decreasing his efficiency and making him a more pitiable failure.

So this is the vicious circle:

Misfit;
Inefficient;
Unhappy;
More inefficient.

Rather is it a descending spiral, leading down to poverty, disease, crime and death.

Now, consider the man who has found his work. To him the glorious abandonment which is the way to achievement is possible. Such a man does not merely exist he lives, and lives grandly. His work gives him joy, both in its doing and in its results. It calls out and develops his highest and best talents. He therefore grows in power, in wisdom, in health, in efficiency, and in success. All his life runs in an ascending spiral. No task appalls him. No difficulty daunts him. He may work hard terribly hard. He may tunnel through mountains of drudgery. He will shun the easy ways and leave the soft jobs to weaker men. But through it all there will be a song in his heart.

Work to such a man is as natural an expression as hunger, or love, or pleasure, or laughter. He returns to it with zest and eagerness. Such a man’s work flows out from his soul. It is an expression of the divine in him.

The almost universal cry for leisure is due to the almost universal unfitness of men and women for their tasks. The wise man knows that there is no happiness in leisure. The only happiness is self-expression in useful work. And so we come again to the problem of fitting the man to his work. Every man is a bundle of possibilities. Every man has a right to usefulness, prosperity and happiness. These are possible only through knowledge of self, knowledge of others, knowledge of work, and the ability to make the right combination of self and others and work.

Man has learned much about the material universe. Nearly everything has been analyzed and classified. Man weighs, measures, tests, and in others ways scrupulously determines the fitness of every bit of material that goes into a machine before it is built. There are scientific ways of selecting cattle, horses, and even hogs for particular purposes. Purchasing departments of great commercial and industrial institutions maintain laboratories for the determination, with mathematical exactitude, of the qualifications and fitness to requirements of all kinds of materials, tools and equipment. And yet, when it comes to the choice of his own life work, the guidance of his children in their vocations, or the selection of employees and co-workers, the average man decides the entire matter by almost any other consideration than scientifically determined fitness. He takes counsel with personal prejudices, with customs and traditions, with pride, or with fear or he leaves the decision to mere guess-work, or even chance.

It is time, therefore, that man should learn about himself and others, and especially about those things which are vital to even a moderate enjoyment of the good things of life.

Two diametrically opposite states of mind have been responsible for this lack of careful study of the aptitudes, characteristics, and qualifications of man and the ways of determining them in advance of actual performance. The first of these has been characterized by loose thinking, unscientific methods, arbitrary and complicated systems –­ such as palmistry, astrology, physiognomy, phrenology, and others of the same ilk. In these systems, some truth, patiently learned by sincere and able workers, has been befogged and contaminated by hasty conclusions of the incompetent and clever lies of charlatans. Thus the whole subject has fallen into disrepute with intelligent people. Ever since the earliest days of recorded history there have been attempts at character reading. Many different avenues of approach to the subject have been opened; some by sincere and earnest men of scientific minds and scholarly attainments; some by sincere and earnest but unscientific laymen; and some by mountebanks and charlatans. As the result of all this study, research and empiricism, a great mass of alleged facts about physical characteristics has been accumulated. When we began our research seventeen years ago, we found a very considerable library covering every phase of character interpretation, both scientific and unscientific. A great deal has been added since that time. ’Much of this literature is pseudo-scientific, and some of it is pure quackery.

The second state of mind is a reaction from the first. Some men of science are timid about accepting or stating anything in regard to character analysis. They demand more than conclusive proof; what they insist upon is mathematical accuracy. Until a man can be analyzed in such a way as to leave nothing to common sense or good judgment, they hesitate to acknowledge that he can be analyzed at all. But in the very nature of the case, the science of character analysis cannot be a science in the same sense in which chemistry and mathematics are sciences. So far our studies and experiences do not lead us to expect that it ever can become absolute and exact. Human nature is complicated by too many variables and obscured by too much that is elusive and intangible. We cannot put a man on the scales and determine that he has so many milligrams of common sense, or apply the micrometer to him and say that he has so many millimetres of financial ability. Human traits and human values are relative and can be determined and stated only relatively. We shall, therefore, waste both time and human values if we wait until our knowledge is mathematically exact before we make it useful to ourselves and to others.

The sciences of medicine, agriculture, chemistry and physics are not yet exact. They are in a state of development. We have, however, the good sense to apply them so far as we know them, and to accept new discoveries, new methods, and new ways of applying them, as they come to us. And so, in the study of ourselves, let us throw aside traditions; let us forget the mountebanks and charlatans of the past; let us not wait for the final work of the mathematician; but, with plain common sense, let us apply such knowledge as we have at hand. This knowledge should be the result of careful observation, of a careful and prolonged study of all that science has discovered in regard to man, his origin, his development, his history, his body, and his mind. Every conclusion reached should be verified, not in hundreds, but in thousands of cases, before it is finally accepted.

The perfection of such a science requires the united efforts of many investigators, experimenters, and practical workers, such as teachers, employers, social workers, parents, and men and women everywhere, each in his own way and in the solution of his own problems. Were a uniform method adopted and made a part of the vocational work of our social settlements, our public schools, our colleges and universities, and other institutions, also by private individuals in selecting their own vocations; were uniform records to be made and every subject analyzed followed up, and his career studied, we should, in one generation, have data from which any intelligent, analytical mind could formulate a science of human analysis very nearly approaching exactitude.

As a result of the application of such a uniform method, the principles of human analysis would rapidly become a matter of common knowledge and could be taught in our schools just as we to-day teach the principles of chemical, botanical, or zoological analysis. In the industries, the scientific selection, assignment and management of men have yielded increases in efficiency from one hundred to one thousand per cent. The majority of people that were dealt with were mature, with more or less fixity of character and habits. Many of them were handicapped by iron-clad limitations and restrictions in their affairs and in their environments. What results may be possible when these methods, improved and developed by a wider use, are applied to young people, with their plastic minds and wonderful latent possibilities, we cannot even venture to forecast.

While we are accustomed to thinking of unfitness for our tasks as the one form of maladjustment due to our ignorance of human nature in general and individual traits in particular, there are other forms which, in their own way, cause much trouble and the remedying of which leads to desirable results. These are many and varied, but may be grouped, perhaps, most conveniently under two or three general headings.

First, there is the relationship between employers and employees. The disturbances and inharmony which mark this relationship, and have marked it throughout human history, are due as much, perhaps, to misunderstanding of human nature as to any one other cause. When employers select men unfitted for their tasks, assign them to work in environments where they are handicapped from the start, and associate them together and with executives in combinations which are inherently inharmonious, it is inevitable that trouble should follow.

The larger aspects of the employment problem are treated in the second part of this book. Inasmuch, however, as the subject has been more fully discussed in another volume, no attempt is made to go into details.

Adjustment to environment means very largely the ability successfully to associate with, cooperate with, and secure one’s way among one’s fellow men. In order to be successful in life, we must first live on terms of mutual cooperation with our parents; second, secure the best instruction possible from our teachers; third, make social progress; fourth, secure gainful employment, either from one employer, as in the case of the laborer and the executive, or from several, as in the cases of professional men. Having secured employment, our progress depends upon our ability to attain promotion, to increase our business or our practice, to add to our patrons. Salesmen must sell more, and more advantageously. Attorneys must convince judges and juries, as well as obtain desired testimony from witnesses. Preachers and other public speakers of all classes must entertain, interest, arouse, and convince their audiences. Writers must each appeal successfully to his particular public as well as to his publisher. Engineers must establish and sustain successful relationship with clients, employers, and employees.

In the third part of this book, therefore, we deal more or less at length with the psychological processes of persuasion and their application in various forms and to the varied personalities of those whom we wish to persuade.

Finally, in the fourth part, we devote three chapters to a consideration of the Science of Character Analysis by the Observational Method, the principles of which underlie all of the observations and suggestions appearing in the first three parts.

In presenting the material in this volume, our aim has been not to propound a theory, but merely to make practical, for the use of our readers, so far as possible, the results of our own experiences in this field.