_why_.

DEMONSTRATE AND VERIFY

Having gained as complete as possible an understanding of the laws and
principles of the science of character analysis, the next step is to
demonstrate to your own satisfaction that they are sound. This process
will also enable you to understand them even more definitely and
specifically than before.

When you learn, for example, that a blonde is more volatile, more fond of
change and variety, more inclined to pioneering and government, than the
brunette, you have learned an important law. When you study carefully the
history of the evolution of the blonde and brunette races, you know why
the law is as it is. But when you have gone out and observed several
hundred blondes and several hundred brunettes and have seen them manifest
dispositions, aptitudes and characteristics in accordance with the law,
you have not only demonstrated the law to your own satisfaction, but you
understand it even better than before. Furthermore, you are far better
able than ever to determine the characteristics of the people you meet, as
indicated by their color.

ANALYZE YOURSELF

There are many good reasons why the very first application of the
knowledge of the principles and laws of character analysis should be to
yourself. While, in one sense, you know your own thoughts and feelings and
innermost desires and ambitions better than anyone else does, in another
and very important sense, your friends and relatives probably understand
you far better than you understand yourself. If you need any demonstration
of this truth, look for it amongst your relatives and friends. You may
have a relative, for example, who is very modest, retiring and diffident,
who lacks self-confidence, who imagines that he is unattractive,
unintelligent, and below the average in ability. You and all the rest of
his friends, on the other hand, know that he has genuine talent, that he
has an unusually attractive personality once his self-consciousness has
been laid aside, that he is intelligent and far above the average in
ability. Contrariwise, you may know someone who vastly over-estimates
himself, whose own opinion of himself is at least fifty per cent higher
than that of his relatives and immediate acquaintances. If other people,
therefore, do not understand themselves, is it not at least probable that
you do not understand yourself? So universal is this lack of self-under
standing that the poet expressed a real human longing whe