With the day of experimental psychology has come the importance of the individual self as a subject of study,[2] and psychology has come to be defined, as Calkins defines it, as a “science of the self as conscious."[3]

We hear much in the talk of today of the “psychology of the crowd,” the “psychology of the mob,” and the “psychology of the type,” etc., but the mind that is being measured, and from whose measurements the laws are being deduced and formulated is, at the present the individual mind.[4]

The psychology which interested itself particularly in studying such divisions of mental activity as attention, will, habit, etc., emphasizes more particularly the likenesses of minds.  It is necessary to understand thoroughly all of these likenesses before one can be sure what the differences, or idiosyncrasies, are, and how important they are, because, while the likenesses furnish the background, it is the differences that are most often actually utilized by management.  These must be determined in order to compute and set the proper individual task for the given man from standard data of the standard, or first-class man.

In any study of the individual, the following facts must be noted:—­

    1.  The importance of the study of the individual, and the
       comparatively small amount of work that has as yet been
       done in that field.
    2.  The difficulty of the study, and the necessity for great
       care, not only in the study itself, but in deducing laws
       from it.
    3.  The necessity of considering any one individual trait as
       modified by all the other traits of the individual.
    4.  The importance of the individual as distinct from the
       type.

Many students are so interested in studying types and deducing laws which apply to types in general, that they lose sight of the fact that the individual is the basis of the study,—­that individuality is that for which they must seek and for which they must constantly account.  As Sully says, we must not emphasize “typical developments in a new individual,” at the expense of “typical development in a new individual."[5] It is the fact that the development occurs in an individual, and not that the development is typical, that we should emphasize.

INDIVIDUALITY SELDOM RECOGNIZED UNDER TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT.—­Under Traditional Management there was little or no systematized method for the recognition of individuality or individual fitness.[6] The worker usually was, in the mind of the manager, one of a crowd, his only distinguishing mark being the amount of work which he was capable of performing.