Analyzing Character by Arthur Newcomb (best ereader for epub .txt) 📕

Such records as these are valuable in many ways. When you have collected a large number of them, they become the basis of statistics, averages, and other interesting and important collections of facts.

STICK TO THE PRINCIPLES

It has been our universal experience amongst practitioners of this science that those who adhere most closely and most faithfully to its principles are most successful. There is always a strong inclination, especially on the part of those who are just beginning and those who are unusually emotional and sympathetic, to make exceptions. It is very difficult for some people of exceedingly sympathetic and responsive natures to analyze correctly. The personality of the individual being analyzed appeals to them either favorably or unfavorably. Perhaps his words make a strong impression upon them. All these things cloud the analyst's judgment and, instead of applying the principles rigidly, he falls back upon the old, unreliable method of analyzing by means of his "intuitions."

The laws and principles of the science of character analysis are based upon scientific truths regarding the development, evolution, history, anatomy and psychology of the human race. They have been verified by hundreds of thousands of careful observations. They have stood the test of years of practical use in the business world. They are now being successfully applied in commerce, in industry, in education, and in the professions, by thousands of people. They can be relied upon, therefore, to give you an intimate knowledge of the ability, disposition, aptitudes, and character in general of every human being who comes under your careful observation.

The old-time farmer planted his potatoes "in the dark of the moon." He probably took good care not to plant them on Friday, never planted a field of thirteen rows, and would have been horrified at putting them into the ground on the same day when he has spilled salt or broken a mirror. By taking all of this superstitious care to insure a good crop, he probably counted himself lucky if he got 100 bushels to the acre. Eugene Grubb, out in Wyoming, by throwing superstition to the four winds and depending, instead, upon exact scientific knowledge, leaves luck out of the question and knows that he will net 1,000 bushels to the acre.

One thousand years ago or more, our educational methods stiffened and set in the rigid moulds of tradition. For nine hundred years civilization and progress stood still. Then here and there men began to break the moulds with hammers of scientific knowledge. Education, instead of blindly following traditional forms, began to shape itself more and more to exact knowledge of the child nature and its needs—very slowly, cautiously and tentatively at first, but, as knowledge grew, with more and more boldness and freedom. This is one of the reasons why the last one hundred years has seen greater progress toward our dominion over the earth than all of the thousand years before it.

For more than four thousand years—perhaps more than five thousand—men have been constructing buildings with bricks. Brick-laying was a trade, a skilled occupation, almost a profession, but its methods were based upon traditions handed down from father to son, from journeyman to apprentice, unbroken throughout that entire four-thousand-year period.

Then a bricklayer and his wife defied the heavens to fall, threw aside traditions and began to apply exact knowledge to brick-laying. As a result, they learned how to lay bricks three times as rapidly as the best workman had ever been able to before—and with less fatigue.

SCIENCE TAKES THE PLACE OF GUESSWORK

Fifty years ago, the merchant and the manufacturer guessed at their costs and fixed their prices with shrewd estimates as to their probable profits. They also guessed as to which departments of their business paid the most profit, how much and what kind of material they should buy, where the best markets were to be found, what would be the best location for their stores and factories, and many other important factors of profitable enterprise. Some of these old worthies were good guessers. They built up fairly large business institutions and made some very comfortable fortunes.

The business men of to-day—who are, indeed, of to-day and not a relic of yesterday and the day before yesterday—have an exact and detailed knowledge of their costs, determine prices scientifically, know definitely where are the best markets and what are the best locations for their factories, forecast with a reasonable degree of accuracy their need for materials, determine in a laboratory just which materials will best supply their needs, and in many other ways walk upon solid highways of exact information rather than upon the quaking bog of guesswork. Partly because of this, they have built up a multitude of institutions, each of them far larger than the largest of the olden days and have made fortunes which make the big accumulations of other days seem like mere pocket money. In making these fortunes for themselves, they have enabled millions not only to enjoy far larger incomes than people of their class and situation ever received before, but to enjoy conveniences and luxuries beyond even the dreams of the rich men and kings of olden days.

RANDOM METHODS YIELD TO SCIENTIFIC

In the old-time factories the various departments of work, machinery and equipment in each of the departments were arranged almost at random. Even a few years ago we sometimes saw factories in which the materials worked upon were moved upstairs, then downstairs, then back upstairs, hither and yon, until a diagram of their wanderings looked like a tangle of yarn. Even in offices, desks were placed at random and letters, orders, memoranda, and other documents and papers were moved about with all of the orderliness and method of a school-girl playing "pussy wants a corner." Modern scientific management, horrified at the waste of time and energy, makes accurate knowledge take the place of this random, helter-skelter, hit-or-miss basis of action and multiplies profits.

If the old-time farmer rotated his crops at all, he did it at random. He was, therefore, a little more likely than not, perhaps, to put a crop into a field which had been exhausted of the very elements that crop most needed. By this method and by other superstitious, guesswork, traditional, random, and neglectful methods, he struggled along on an average of about twenty bushels of corn to the acre, proudly defying anybody to teach him anything about farming out of books, or any white-collared dude from an agricultural college to show him anything about raising corn. Hadn't he been raising corn for nigh on forty years? How could there, then, be anything more for him to learn about its production?

But a little twelve-year-old boy down in what had always been supposed to be the poor corn lands of Alabama, by the painstaking application of a little simple knowledge, produced 232 and a fraction bushels of corn on one acre of land. Other boys in all parts of the South and of the corn belt began producing from 100 to 200 bushels of corn to the acre in the same way.

SCIENCE TAKES THE PLACE OF SUPERSTITION

Because man has lacked accurate knowledge about the world around him, he has been the credulous victim of countless generations of swindlers, fakers, fortune-tellers, mountebanks, and others experienced in chicanery. Speculators used to consult clairvoyants, crystal gazers, astrologists and card-readers for a forecast of business conditions. To-day, through accurate knowledge based upon statistics relative to fundamental factors in the business situation, they forecast the future with remarkable accuracy.

The practice of medicine was once a combination of superstition, incantation, ignorance and chicanery. In those days people were swept into eternity by the millions on account of plague, cholera, and other pestilences. To-day medical practice is based upon knowledge, and people who are willing to order their lives in accordance with that knowledge not only recover from their illnesses, but are scarcely ever ill. The ignorant man pays $1.00 for a small bottle of colored alcohol and water which some mountebank has convinced him is a panacea for all ills. In his blindness he hopes to drink health out of that bottle. The man who knows eats moderately, drinks moderately—if at all—smokes moderately—if at all—does work for which he is fitted and in which he can be happy, secures recreation and exercise according to his own particular needs, and almost never thinks of medicine. Should he need treatment, however, he goes to a man who has scientific knowledge of diagnosis and materia medica. The first man, in all likelihood, goes to an early grave, "stricken down by the hand of a mysterious Providence." The second man lives to a ripe old age and enjoys life more at eighty than he did at eight or eighteen.

Fifty years ago, mothers relied upon tradition and maternal instinct in the care of their babies. More than one-half of all the babies born died before they were five years old. The wise mother of to-day knows what she is doing, and, as a result, infant mortality amongst the babies in her hands becomes an almost negligible quantity.

NEGLECT YIELDS TO SCIENCE

Because we did not know how to take care of them, we neglected our forests until they became well nigh extinct. To-day, by means of the science of forestry, we are slowly winning back the priceless heritage we almost threw away. Because of our ignorance, we neglected the by-products of our fields, our mines, and our industries, and no one can compute the fortunes we lost. Through scientific knowledge, we have begun to utilize these by-products. Some of the greatest of modern industries, and the fortunes which have grown out of them, are the result.

Selling and advertising used to be done partly by tradition and partly by instinct, so called. To-day, while they have, perhaps, not been reduced to exact sciences, they are based more and more upon exact knowledge, so that merchandizing has become less and less a gamble and more and more a satisfaction.

Since, through scientific knowledge, man has wrought such miracles in agriculture, construction, education, commerce, industry, finance, medicine, war, mining, and practically all of his other activities, it is time he applied the same scientific methods to that without which all these wonderful things would never have been executed, namely, his mind and soul.

SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE OF SELF

In Part One of this book we have attempted to show the benefits which follow upon self-knowledge as to vocation. But this is only one phase, after all, of your life and activity. Obedience to the injunction, "know thyself," will help, also, to solve many of the hard problems you meet in education, social life, religion, morality, and family relations. The man who, through character analysis, has a scientific knowledge of himself, has therein a valuable guide to self-development and self-improvement. He knows which qualities to cultivate and which to restrain. He knows what situations and associations to avoid so that his frailties and weaknesses will handicap him as little as possible.

SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN EMPLOYMENT

In Part Two we have shown briefly the application of knowledge of human nature to the selection, assignment and management of employees. In common with so many other important matters, this has been left in the past very largely to superstitious traditions, guesswork, random, hit-or-miss methods, chicanery, and so-called intuition. Now, for the sake of his profits, and also for the sake of the fellow human beings with whom he deals, the wise employer is seeking for and, in many cases, using exact knowledge.

SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN PERSUASION

In Part Three we have referred to the use of character analysis in persuasion. Without this knowledge, it is the most natural thing in the world for the man who seeks to persuade others to present to them the arguments and suggestions which would appeal to him. Long ago some wise man said: "If you would persuade another, put