How to Analyze People on Sight through the Science of Human Analysis. Elsie Lincoln Benedict
always. They are very valuable tools for the furtherance of your progress through life.
An understanding of people is the greatest weapon you can possess. Therefore these are the most precious tools you can own. But like every tool in the world and all knowledge in the world, they must be used as they were built to be used or you will get little service out of them.
You would not expect to run a car properly without paying the closest attention to the rules for clutches, brakes, starters and gears. Everything scientific is based not on guesses but laws. This course in Analyzing People on Sight is as scientific as the automobile. It will carry you far and do it easily if you will do your part. Your part consists of learning the few simple rules laid down in this book and in applying them in the everyday affairs of your life.
Fewer and Truer
Many things which have been found to be true in almost every instance could have been included in this course. But we prefer to make fewer statements and have those of bedrock certainty. Therefore this course, like all our courses, consists exclusively of those facts which have been found to be true in every particular of people in normal health.
IMPORTANT
The Five Extremes
This book deals with PURE or UNMIXED types only. When you understand these, the significance of their several combinations as seen in everyday life will be clear to you.
The Human Alphabet
Just as you can not understand the meaning of a word until you know the letters that go into the makeup of that word, you cannot analyze people accurately until you get these five extreme types firmly in your mind, for they are your alphabet.
Founded in Five Biological Systems
Each PURE type is the result of the over-development of one of the five biological systems possessed by all human beings—the nutritive, circulatory, muscular, bony or nervous.
Therefore every individual exhibits to some degree the characteristics of all the five types.
The Secret of Individuality
But his PREDOMINANT traits and INDIVIDUALITY—the things that make him the KIND of man he is—agree infallibly with whichever one of the five systems PREDOMINATES in him.
Combinations Common in America
The average American man or woman is a COMBINATION of some two of these types with a third discernible in the background.
To Analyze People
To understand human beings familiarize yourself first with the PURE or UNMIXED types and then it will be easy and fascinating to spell out their combinations and what they mean in the people all about you.
Postpone Combinations
Until you have learned these pure types thoroughly it will be to your advantage to forget that there is such a thing as combinations. After you have these extreme types well in mind you will be ready to analyze combinations.
The Five Types
Science has discovered that there are five types of human beings. Discarding for a moment their technical names, they may be called the fat people, the florid people, the muscular people, the bony people and the mental people.
Each varies from the others in shape, size and structure and is recognizable at a glance by his physique or build. This is because his type is determined by the preponderance within his body of one of the five great departments or biological systems—the nutritive, the circulatory, the muscular, the bony or the nervous.
At Birth
Every child is born with one of these systems more highly developed, larger and better equipped than the others.
Type Never Disappears
Throughout his life this system will express itself more, be more intense and constant in its functioning than the others and no manner of training, education, environment or experience, so long as he remains in normal health, will alter the predominance of this system nor prevent its dictating his likes, dislikes and most of his reactions.
Effect of Eating
If you do not understand why the overaction of one bodily system should influence a man’s nature see if you can’t recall more than one occasion when a square meal made a decided difference in your disposition within the space of thirty minutes.
If one good meal has the power to alter so completely our personalities temporarily, is it then any wonder that constant overfeeding causes everybody to love a fat man? For the fat man is habitually and chronically in that beatific state which comes from over-eating.
Chapter I
The Alimentive Type: The Enjoyer
Note: Bear in mind at the beginning of this and every other chapter, that we are describing the extreme or unmixed type. Before leaving this book you will understand combination types and should read people as readily as you now read your newspaper.
Those individuals in whom the alimentive system is more highly developed than any other are called Alimentives. The alimentive system consists of the stomach, intestines, alimentary canal and every part of the assimilative apparatus.
Physical Rotundity
A general rotundity of outline characterizes this type. He is round in every direction. Fat rolls away from his elbows, wrists, knees and shoulders.
The Fat, Overweight Individual
Soft flesh thickly padded over a small-boned body distinguishes the pure Alimentive type. In men of this type the largest part of the body is around the girth; in women it is around the hips. These always indicate a large nutritive system in good working order. Fat is only surplus tissue—the amount manufactured by the assimilative system over and above the needs of the body.
Fat is more soft and spongy than bone or muscle and lends to its wearer a softer structure and appearance.
Small Hands and Feet
Because his bones are small the pure Alimentive has small feet and small hands. How many times you have noted with surprise that the two hundred pound woman had tiny feet! The inconvenience of “getting around” which you have noticed in her is due to the fact that while she has more weight to carry she has smaller than average feet with which to do it.
The Pure Alimentive Head
A head comparatively small for the body is another characteristic of the extreme Alimentive. The neck and lower part of the head are covered with rolls of fat. This gives the head the effect of spreading outward from the crown as it goes down to the neck, thus giving the neck a short, disproportionately large appearance.
The Round-Faced Person
A “full-moon” face with double or triple chins gives this man his “baby face.” Look carefully at any extremely fat person and you will see that his features are inclined to the same immaturity of form that characterizes his body.
Very few fat men have long noses. Nearly all fat men and women have not only shorter, rounder noses but shorter upper lips, fuller mouths, rounder eyes and more youthful expressions than other people—in short, the features of childhood.
The entire physical makeup of this type is modeled upon the circle—round hands with dimples where the knuckles are supposed to be; round fingers, round feet, round waist, round limbs, sloping shoulders, curving thighs, bulging calves, wrists and ankles.
Wherever you see curves predominating in the physical outlines of any person, that person is largely of the Alimentive type and will always exhibit alimentive traits.
The Man of Few Movements
The Alimentive is a man of unhurried, undulating movements. The difficulty in moving large bodies quickly necessitates a slowing