Analyzing Character eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 522 pages of information about Analyzing Character.

Analyzing Character eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 522 pages of information about Analyzing Character.

[Illustration:  FIG. 6.  Hugo de Vries, Botanist.  An example of physically frail type.  Very careful, accurate, painstaking, and patient in mental work.  Also very thoughtful, mild in disposition, but determined and persistent.  Note large development of upper part of head; long, narrow face; long nose; narrowness of head just above ears; slight squareness of chin, and serious, thoughtful expression.]

[Illustration:  Copyright by B.F.  McMann FIG. 7.  Dr. Henry Van Dyke, United States Minister to Holland, Author, Scholar, and Poet.  A good example of physically frail type, with slight tendency to bone and muscle.  Refined, intellectual, sensitive, responsive, optimistic, but well-balanced, poised, and keenly discriminating.  Dr. Van Dyke shows his tendency to physical activity in his love for the out-of-doors.  Note large development of upper portion of head; slight squareness of jaw; height of head above temples, especially in center; fine texture; excellent balance of features, and calm, poised, thoughtful, but kindly expression.]

[Illustration:  Photo by American Press Association.  FIG. 8.  Dr. Beverly T. Galloway, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture.  Physically frail, but mentally very active.  Said to be one of the greatest living authorities on plant culture.  Slight squareness of build indicates tendency to interest in out-of-door matters, which, on account of large development of mental qualities, he expresses in an intellectual way.]

NATURAL APTITUDE

The fifth criterion is natural aptitude.  Everyone has observed that some people are naturally commercial.  We have seen a boy take a penny to school, buy a slate pencil or a lead pencil with that penny, and trade that for an old pocket knife, the knife for something else, and keep on swapping until he had a gun, a set of chess, a bag of marbles, and several other important boys’ acquisitions, all from that one penny.  Another boy takes penny after penny to school and he never has anything to show for it You know such boys—­and grown people, too.  Every individual has some such aptitudes—­either latent or developed, either mediocre or marked—­and his aptitudes fit him better for some one vocation than for any other.

EXPERIENCE

The sixth point to be considered is experience.  One might be fitted for a vocation with all of the five points that we have enumerated, and yet not have either the education or the training for it.  What shall he do?  Theoretically and ideally, every individual should be carefully and thoroughly trained, from his earliest childhood, for the vocation for which he is physically, mentally, and morally fitted.  But this seldom happens—­and can happen but seldom so long as parents and teachers remain ignorant of human nature and of work.  A hard problem, then, confronts the young man or young woman past

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Analyzing Character from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.