Man has learned much about the material universe.  Nearly everything has been analyzed and classified.  Man weighs, measures, tests, and in others ways scrupulously determines the fitness of every bit of material that goes into a machine before it is built.  There are scientific ways of selecting cattle, horses, and even hogs for particular purposes.  Purchasing departments of great commercial and industrial institutions maintain laboratories for the determination, with mathematical exactitude, of the qualifications and fitness to requirements of all kinds of materials, tools and equipment.  And yet, when it comes to the choice of his own life work, the guidance of his children in their vocations, or the selection of employees and co-workers, the average man decides the entire matter by almost any other consideration than scientifically determined fitness.  He takes counsel with personal prejudices, with customs and traditions, with pride, or with fear—­or he leaves the decision to mere guess-work, or even chance.

It is time, therefore, that man should learn about himself and others, and especially about those things which are vital to even a moderate enjoyment of the good things of life.

Two diametrically opposite states of mind have been responsible for this lack of careful study of the aptitudes, characteristics, and qualifications of man and the ways of determining them in advance of actual performance.  The first of these has been characterized by loose thinking, unscientific methods, arbitrary and complicated systems—–­ such as palmistry, astrology, physiognomy, phrenology, and others of the same ilk.  In these systems, some truth, patiently learned by sincere and able workers, has been befogged and contaminated by hasty conclusions of the incompetent and clever lies of charlatans.  Thus the whole subject has fallen into disrepute with intelligent people.  Ever since 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.