How to Analyze People on Sight. Elsie Lincoln Benedict

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      DEDICATED TO OUR STUDENTS

      Modern science has proved that the fundamental traits of every

      individual are indelibly stamped in the shape of his body, head, face

      and hands--an X-ray by which you can read the characteristics of any

      person on sight.

      The most essential thing in the world to any individual is to understand

      _himself_. The next is to understand the other fellow. For life is

      largely a problem of running your own car as it was built to be run,

      plus getting along with the other drivers on the highway.

      From this book you are going to learn which type of car you are and the

      main reasons why you have not been getting the maximum of service out of

      yourself.

      Also you are going to learn the makes of other human cars, and how to

      get the maximum of co-operation out of them. This co-operation is vital

      to happiness and success. We come in contact with our fellowman in all

      the activities of our lives and what we get out of life depends, to an

      astounding degree, on our relations with him.

      Reaction to Environment

       The greatest problem facing any organism is successful reaction to its

      environment. Environment, speaking scientifically, is the sum total of

      your experiences. In plain United States, this means fitting

      vocationally, socially and maritally into the place where you are.

      If you don't fit you must move or change your environment to fit _you_.

      If you can't change the environment and you won't move you will become a

      failure, just as tropical plants fail when transplanted to the Nevada

      desert.

      Learn From the Sagebrush

       But there is something that grows and keeps on growing in the Nevada

      desert--the sagebrush. It couldn't move away and it couldn't change its

      waterless environment, so it did what you and I must do if we expect to

      succeed. It adapted itself to its environment, and there it stands, each

      little stalwart shrub a reminder of what even a plant can do when it

      tries!

      Moving Won't Help Much

       Human life faces the same alternatives that confront all other forms

      of life--of adapting itself to the conditions under which it must live

      or becoming extinct. You have an advantage over the sagebrush in that

      you can move from your city or state or country to another, but after

      all that is not much of an advantage. For though you may improve your

      situation slightly you will still find that in any civilized country the

      main elements of your problem are the same.

      Understand Yourself and Others

       So long as you live in a civilized or thickly populated community you

      will still need to understand your own nature and the natures of other

      people. No matter what you desire of life, other people's aims,

      ambitions and activities constitute vital obstructions along your

      pathway. You will never get far without the co-operation, confidence and

      comradeship of other men and women.

      Primitive Problems

       It was not always so. And its recentness in human history may account

      for some of our blindness to this great fact.

      In primitive times people saw each other rarely and had much less to do

      with each other. The human element was then not the chief problem. Their

      environmental problems had to do with such things as the elements,

      violent storms, extremes of heat and cold, darkness, the ever-present

      menace of wild beasts whose flesh was their food, yet who would eat them

      first unless they were quick in brain and body.

      Civilization's Changes

       But all that is changed. Man has subjugated all other creatures and

      now walks the earth its supreme sovereign. He has discovered and

      invented and builded until now we live in skyscrapers, talk around the

      world without wires and by pressing a button turn darkness into

      daylight.

      Causes of Failure

       Yet with all our knowledge of the outside world ninety-nine lives out

      of every hundred are comparative failures.

       The reason is plain to every scientific investigator. We have failed

      to study ourselves in relation to the great environmental problem of

      today. The stage-setting has been changed but not the play. The game is

      the same old game--you must adjust and adapt yourself to your

      environment or it will destroy you.

      Mastering His Own Environment

       The cities of today _look_ different from the jungles of our ancestors

      and we imagine that because the brain of man overcame the old menaces no

      new ones have arisen to take their place. We no longer fear

      extermination from cold. We turn on the heat. We are not afraid of the

      vast oceans which held our primitive forebears in thrall, but pass

      swiftly, safely and luxuriously over their surfaces. And soon we shall

      be breakfasting in New York and dining the same evening in San

      Francisco!

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