How to Analyze People on Sight through the Science of Human Analysis. Elsie Lincoln Benedict
of every meal you eat, every journey you take, every book you read, every bed in which you sleep, every telephone conversation, every telegram you receive, every garment you wear.
And this fellowman of ours has multiplied, since that dim distant dawn, into almost two billion human beings, with at least one billion of them after the very things you want, and not a tenth enough to go around!
Adapt or Die
Who will win? Nature answers for you. She has said with awful and inexorable finality that, whether you are a blade of grass on the Nevada desert or a man in the streets of London, you can win only as you adapt yourself to your environment. Today our environmental problem consists largely of the other fellow. Only those who learn to adapt themselves to their fellows can win great or lasting rewards.
Externals Indicate Internal Nature
To do this it is necessary to better understand our neighbors—to recognize that people differ from each other in their likes and dislikes, traits, talents, tendencies and capabilities. The combination of these makes each individual’s nature. It is not difficult to understand others for with each group of these traits there always goes its corresponding physical makeup—the externals whereby the internal is invariably indicated. This is true of every species on the globe and of every subdivision within each species.
Significance of Size, Shape and Structure
All dogs belong to the same species but there is a great difference between the “nature” of a St. Bernard and that of a terrier, just as there is a decided difference between the natures of different human beings. But in both instances the actions, reactions and habits of each can be accurately anticipated on sight by the shape, size and structure of the two creatures.
Differences in Breed
When a terrier comes into the room you instinctively draw away unless you want to be jumped at and greeted effusively. But you make no such movement to protect yourself from a St. Bernard because you read, on sight, the different natures of these two from their external appearance.
You know a rose, a violet, a sunflower and an orchid and what perfume you are sure to find in each, by the same method. All are flowers and all belong to the same species, just as all human beings belong to the same species. But their respective size, shape and structure tell you in advance and on sight what their respective characteristics are.
The same is true of all human beings. They differ in certain fundamentals but always and invariably in accordance with their differences in size, shape and structure.
The Instinct of Self-Preservation
The reason for this is plain. Goaded by the instinct of self-preservation, man, like all other living things, has made heroic efforts to meet the demands of his environment. He has been more successful than any other creature and is, as a result, the most complex organism on the earth. But his most baffling complexities resolve themselves into comparatively simple terms once it is recognized that each internal change brought about by his environment brought with it the corresponding external mechanism without which he could not have survived.
Interrelation of Body and Brain
So today we see man a highly evolved creature who not only acts but thinks and feels. All these thoughts, feelings and emotions are interrelated.
The body and the mind of man are so closely bound together that whatever affects one affects the other. An instantaneous change of mind instantly changes the muscles of the face. A violent thought instantly brings violent bodily movements.
Movies and Face Muscles
The moving picture industry—said to be the third largest in the world—is based largely on this interrelation. This industry would become extinct if something were to happen to sever the connection between external expressions and the internal nature of men and women.
Tells Fundamentals
How much do external characteristics tell about a man? They tell, with amazing accuracy, all the basic, fundamental principal traits of his nature. The size, shape and structure of a man’s body tell more important facts about his real self—what he thinks and what he does—than the average mother ever knows about her own child.
Learning to Read
If this sounds impossible, if the seeming incongruity, multiplicity and heterogeneity of human qualities have baffled you, remember that this is exactly how the print in all books and newspapers baffled you before you learned to read.
Not long ago I was reading stories aloud to a three-year old. She wanted to “see the pictures,” and when told there were none had to be shown the book.
“What funny little marks!” she cried, pointing to the print. “How do you get stories out of them?”
Printing looked to all of us at first just masses of meaningless little marks.
But after a few days at school how things did begin to clear up! It wasn’t a jumble after all. There was something to it. It straightened itself out until the funny little marks became significant. Each of them had a meaning and the same meaning under all conditions. Through them your whole outlook on life became deepened and broadened—all because you learned the meaning of twenty-six little letters and their combinations!
Reading People
Learning to read men and women is a more delightful process than learning to read books, for every person you see is a true story, more romantic and absorbing than any ever bound in covers.
Learning to read people is also a simpler process than learning to read books because there are fewer letters in the human alphabet. Though man seems to the untrained eye a mystifying mass of “funny little marks,” he is not now difficult to analyze.
Only a Few Feelings
This is because there are after all but a few kinds of human feelings. Some form of hunger, love, hate, fear, hope or ambition gives rise to every human emotion and every human thought.
Thoughts Bring Actions
Now our actions follow our thoughts. Every thought, however transitory, causes muscular action, which leaves its trace in that part of the physical organism which is most closely allied to it.
Physiology and Psychology Interwoven
Look into the mirror the next time you are angry, happy, surprised, tired or sorrowful and note the changes wrought by your emotions in your facial muscles.
Constant repetition of the same kinds of thoughts or emotions finally makes permanent changes in that part of the body which is physiologically related to these mental processes.
The Evolution of the Jaw
The jaw is a good illustration of this alliance between the mind and the body. Its muscles and bones are so closely allied to the pugnacity instinct center in the brain that the slightest thought of combat causes the jaw muscles to stiffen. Let the thought of any actual physical encounter go through your mind and your jaw bone will automatically move upward and outward.
After a lifetime of combat, whether by fists or words, the jaw sets permanently a little more upward and outward—a little more like that of the bulldog. It keeps to this combative mold, “because,” says Mother Nature, the great efficiency expert, “if you are going to call on me constantly to stiffen that jaw I’ll fix it so it will stay that way and save myself the trouble.”
Inheritance of Acquired Traits
Thus the more combative jaw, having become permanent in the man’s organism, can be passed on to his children.
Right here comes a most interesting law and one that has made possible the science of Human Analysis:
Law of Size
The larger any part or organ the better its equipment for carrying out the work of that organ and the more does it tend to express itself. Nature