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
The second is to learn how to analyze others to the end that your relationships with them may be harmonious and mutually advantageous.
Take every individual according to the way he was born, accept him as that kind of mechanism and deal with him in the manner befitting that mechanism. In this way and this only will you be able to impress or to help others.
In this way only will you be able to achieve real success. In this way only will you be able to help your fellowman find the work, the environment and the marriage wherein he can be happy and successful.
The Four C’s
To get the maximum of pleasure and knowledge out of this interesting course there are four things to remember as your part of the contract.
Read CONCENTRATEDLY
Think of what you are reading while you are reading it. Concentration is a very simple thing. The next C is
Observe CAREFULLY
Look at people carefully (but not starefully) when analyzing them. Don’t jump at conclusions. We humans have a great way of twisting facts to fit our conclusion as soon as we have made one. But don’t spend all your time getting ready to decide and forget to decide at all, like the man who was going to jump a ditch. He ran so far back to get a good start each time that he never had the strength to jump when he got there. Get a good start by observing carefully. Then
Decide CONFIDENTLY
Be sure you are right and then go ahead. Make a decision and make it with the confidence that you are right. If you will determine now to follow this rule it will compel you to follow the first two because, in order to be sure you are right, to be certain you are not misjudging anybody, you will read each rule concentratedly and observe each person carefully beforehand.
Practise CONSTANTLY
“Practice makes perfect.” Take this for your motto if you would become expert in analyzing people. It is one easily followed for you come in contact with people everywhere—at home, amongst your business associates, with your friends and on the street. Remember you can only benefit from a thing as you use it. A car that you never took out of the garage would be of no value to you. So get full value out of this course by using it at all times.
These Rules Your Tools
These rules are scientific. They are true and they are true 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
