Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-11-16
THE HASKIN LETTER
READING CHARACTER
fRv frederic ]. Haskinl

tBy Frederic J. Haskin)
NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 13-The
number of persons you can find in
a great city like this. who will tell
you all about your abilities and
possibilities, and the number of Diff
ferent methods by which they will
do IL, is bewildering.
The snaps of your head, the
bumps upon your skull, the form of
your features. the color of your hair
and eyes, the lines in the palms OF
your hand, your handwriting, are All
made the bases of systems for the
reading of your character. Likewise,
you can be put through scientific
tests and examinations which will
reveal the exact grade of YOUR intel
ligence, your powers Of memory,
concentration. perception, Invention
and many other things. Many of
| these syste MS of diagnosing .he hui
man personality are practiced by
ouacks and charlatans. mingled
with all sorts of superstition. but
they are also cultivated by persons
of real intelligence and scientific
attainment. They played a large
part In choosing men for the army.
The United States Navy employed a
handwriting expert as well as psy-
biologists. And many Industrial
plants now use some system OF test
ing the intelligence and studying
the characters of prospective EN-
ployees.
Theoretically, then, there is no
reason why you should be In
any ignorance of your W poten-
tialities-why you should go about
wondering what you are good for, or
cherishing any illusions about what
you can do. With all of these meth
DDS available. II should be as easy TO
have your abilities analysed as 1t Is
to have a case of measles diagnosed.
And likewise, there Is apparently no
| reason why you should not be able
to choose your friends and employees
with scientific precision, instead of
laundering about it the way you do;
for all of these methods are taught,
and many of them are taught by
| correspondence, and books have been
written about all of them.
We Blunder Still
And yet, somehow. we seem to go
on laundering about ourselves and
others, as Of yore. and even those
of US who have studied these sys-
TENS are not so ra:ch better OF than
those who have not. Can II DO that
there 4. nothing In them after all?
In the judgment of n character
reading fan, who has plodded
through the literature of many OF
these methods, and tried nightly to
apply their teachings, there Is some
thing in each of them, but no key to
the riddle of human personality in
any one of them or in all Of them
put together. There Is nothing more
terrible than to become a victim of
some one of these systems and to try
to apply it literally on all occasions.
Take the matter of head-form, for
instance. You learn that a man with
a. fine square brow has a dominating
intelligence. II he also has we'll
placed eyes,, a good chin and high
nose, he is the ideal type, the mast
er of civilization. Then you meet him
on the street. He is a traffic cop. And
the same day you meet a man who
has written a remarkable book, and
you find that he has a low retreat
ing forehead, a pug nose n ever
al of the stigmata OF degeneracy, and
that he ought to be a porch climber
or a pickpocket.
Does this prove that the system is
no good? Not exactly. The shape of
a mans head and features does not
reveal much about his caliber. The
traffic cop may indeed be a man OF
well-balanced intelligence and good
Characteristic kind who will han
die a bad traffic jam with a fine
sense of justice and without becom-
ing confused or angry. And the
writer with the bullet head may in
deed be an erratic. But his brain
cells are three or four times as
strong and active as those OF the
traffic cop. He is not such a we'll
balanced machine. but he Is M of
much higher horsepower and finer
quality.