How to Analyze People on Sight. Ralph Paine Benedict,Elsie Lincoln Benedict
The Hold of Habit
Look around you in shop, office, field or home and you will find that the quick, alert, impulsive man is acting quickly, alertly and impulsively most of the time. Nothing less than a calamity slows him down and then only temporarily; while the slow, patient, mild and passive individual is acting slowly, patiently, mildly and passively in spite of all goads. Some overwhelming passion or crisis may speed him up momentarily but as soon as it fades he reverts to his old slow habits.
Significance of Fat, Bone and Muscle
Human Analysis is the new science which shows you how to recognize the slow man, the quick man, the stubborn man, the yielding man, the leader, the learner, and all other basic kinds of men on sight from the shape, size and structure of their bodies.
Certain bodily shapes indicate predispositions to fatness, leanness, boniness, muscularity and nervousness, and this predisposition is so much a part of the warp and woof of the individual that he can not disguise it. The urge given him by this inborn mechanism is so strong as to be practically irresistible. Every experience of his life calls forth some kind of reaction and invariably the reaction will be similar, in every vital respect, to the reactions of other people who have bodies of the same general size, shape and structure as his own.
Succeed at What We Like
No person achieves success or happiness when compelled to do what he naturally dislikes to do. Since these likes and dislikes stay with him to the grave, one of the biggest modern problems is that of helping men and women to discover and to capitalize their inborn traits.
Enthusiasm and Self-Expression
Every individual does best those things which permit him to act in accordance with his natural bents. This explains why we like best those things we do best. It takes real enthusiasm to make a success of any undertaking for nothing less than enthusiasm can turn on a full current.
We struggle from the cradle to the grave for self-expression and everything that pushes us in a direction opposed to our natural tendencies is done half-heartedly, inefficiently and disgruntledly. These are the steps that lead straight to failure. Yet failure can be avoided and success approximated by every normal person if he will take the same precaution with his own machinery that he takes with his automobile.
Learn to Drive Your Car
If you were presented with a car by your ancestors—which is precisely what happened to you at birth—you would not let an hour go by without finding out what make or type of car it was. Before a week elapsed you would have taken the time, labor and interest to learn how to run it,—not merely any old way, but the best way for that particular make of car.
Five Makes of Human Cars
There are five makes or types of human cars, differing as definitely in size, shape and structure as Fords differ from Pierce-Arrows. Each human type differs as widely in its capacities, possibilities and aptitudes as a Ford differs from a Pierce-Arrow. Like the Ford or Pierce the externals indicate these functional differences with unfailing accuracy. Furthermore just as a Ford never changes into a Pierce nor a Pierce into a Ford, a human being never changes his type. He may modify it, train it, polish it or control it somewhat, but he will never change it.
Can Not be Deceived
The student of Human Analysis cannot be deceived as to the type of any individual any more than you can be deceived about the make of a car.
One may "doll up" a Ford to his heart's content—remove the hood and top and put on custom-made substitutes—it is still a Ford, always will be a Ford and you can always detect that it is a Ford. It will do valuable, necessary things but only those things it was designed to do and in its own particular manner; nor could a Pierce act like a Ford.
Are You a Ford or a Pierce?
So it is with human cars. Maybe you have been awed by the jewels and clothes with which many human Fords disguise themselves. The chances are that you have overlooked a dozen Pierces this week because their paint was rusty. Perchance you are a Pierce yourself, drawing a Ford salary because you don't know you are a high-powered machine capable of making ten times the speed you have been making on your highway of life.
Superficialities Sway Us
If so your mistake is only natural. The world classifies human beings according to their superficialities. To the world a human motorcycle can pass for a Rolls-Royce any day if sufficiently camouflaged with diamonds, curls, French heels and plucked eyebrows.
Bicycles in Congress
In the same manner many a bicycle in human form gets elected to Congress because he plays his machinery for all it is worth and gets a hundred per cent service out of it. Every such person learned early in life what kind of car he was and capitalized its natural tendencies.
Don't Judge by Veneer
Nothing is more unsafe than to attempt to judge the actual natures of people by their clothes, houses, religious faith, political affiliations, prejudices, dialect, etiquette or customs. These are only the veneer laid on by upbringing, teachers, preachers, traditions and other forces of suggestion, and it is a veneer so thin that trifles scratch it off.
The Real Always There
But the real individual is always there, filled with the tendencies of his type, bending always toward them, constantly seeking opportunities to run as he was built to run, forever striving toward self-expression. It is this ever-active urge which causes him to revert, in the manifold activities of everyday life, to the methods, manners and peculiarities common to his type.
This means that unless he gets into an environment, a vocation and a marriage which permits of his doing what he wants to do he will be miserable, inefficient, unsuccessful and sometimes criminal.
Causes of Crime
That this is the true explanation of crime has been recognized for many years by leading thinkers. Two prison wardens—Thomas Tynan of Colorado and Thomas Mott Osborne of Sing Sing—effectively initiated penal reforms based upon it.
Every crime, like every personal problem, arises from some kind of situation wherein instinct is thwarted by outside influence.
Human Analysis teaches you to recognize, on sight, the predominant instincts of any individual—in brief, what that individual is inclined to do under all the general situations of his life. You know what the world tries to compel him to do. If the discrepancy between these two is beyond the reach of his type he refuses to do what society demands. This and this only is back of every human digression from indiscretion to murder.
It is as vain to expect to eradicate these inborn trends and put others in their places as to make a sewing machine out of an airplane or an oak out of a pine. The most man can do for his neighbor is to understand and inspire him. The most he can do for himself is to understand and organize his inborn capacities.
Find Your Own Type
The first problem of your happiness is to find out what type you are yourself—which you will know after reading this book—and to build your future accordingly.
Knowing and Helping Others
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