ve warning may be supplemented by
positive suggestions, as to the commercial industrial activities for
which the psychophysical dispositions promise particular success.

A real assumption of responsibility for success of course cannot be
risked by the psychologist, inasmuch as the man who may be fitted for
a task by his mental working dispositions may nevertheless destroy his
chances for success by secondary personal traits. He may be dishonest,
or dissipated, or a drinker, or a fighter, or physically ill. Finally,
we ought not to forget that all such efforts to adjust to one another
the psychological traits and the requirements of the work can never
have reference to the extreme variations of human traits. The
exceptionally talented man knows anyhow where he belongs, and the
exceptionally untalented one will be excluded anyhow. The
psychological aid in the selection of the fit refers only to the
remaining four fifths of mankind for whom the chances of success can
indeed be increased as soon as the psychological personal equation is
systematically and with scientific exactitude brought into the
calculation of the life development. How far a part of this effort
will have to be undertaken by the school is a social problem which
must be considered from various points of view. Its discussion would
lead us beyond the limits of our present inquiry, but it seems
probable that the real psychological laboratory experiment in the
service of vocational guidance does not belong in the schoolroom
itself, but ought to be left to special municipal institutions.

XII

INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS

One point here must not be overlooked. The effort to discover the
personal structure of the individual in the interest of his vocational
chance does not always necessarily involve a direct analysis of his
individuality, as material of some value can be gained indirectly.
Such indirect knowledge of a man's mental traits may be secured first
of all through referring the man to the groups to which he belongs and
inquiring into the characteristic traits of those groups. The
psychology of human variations gives not only an account of the
differences from person to person, but studies no less the psychical
inequalities of the races, of the nations, of the ages, of the
professions, and so on. If an economic activity demands a combination
of mental traits, we may take it for granted that an individual will
be fit for the work as soon as we fin