nce 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