Discriminating employers long ago learned to observe carefully the condition of every applicant. It is now a pretty well accepted fact that the accountant who neglects his finger nails will probably also neglect his entries; that the clerk who is slovenly about his clothes will also be slovenly about his desk and his papers; that the man who cannot be relied upon to keep his shoes shined and his collar clean is a very weak and broken reed upon which to lean for anything requiring accuracy and dependability.
HOW THE SCIENCE IS VERIFIED
We have presented to you, in a brief way, the fundamental principles of the science of character analysis and the nine fundamental variables in man to which those principles apply. Are we not justified in saying that a body of knowledge which has been so classified and organized that the main fundamental facts of it can be presented in a few pages, is, indeed, a science? Add to this the fact that every conclusion is not only based upon these fundamental scientific principles, but has been carefully verified by investigation and observation in not only hundreds but thousands of cases, and has been used daily for years under the trying conditions of actual commercial practice, and this science has passed out of the merely experimental stage.
CHAPTER II
HOW TO LEARN AND APPLY THE SCIENCE OF CHARACTER ANALYSIS
There are two ways to learn any science.
The first is to begin by collecting all possible facts, recording them and verifying them under all possible conditions, until they are as thoroughly established as any facts can be in our imperfect human understanding. The collection of facts in this way requires the most painstaking research, oftentimes including many thousands of observations. When all the facts have been thus collected and verified, they are classified. Then they are carefully analyzed and an effort is made to find some of the laws which underlie them. Perhaps, instead of a definite law, all that can be at first advanced is a hypothesis or theory. This hypothesis or theory having been formulated, many thousands of observations are taken in an effort to establish it as a definite law or a principle. Oftentimes whole new realms have to be explored before this can be determined. Sometimes, after a theory is advanced, perhaps seems to be approaching complete establishment, some fact or set of facts is discovered which compels the setting aside of all old theories and the formulation of a new one. When a theory has been definitely established as a law, other laws are sought in the same way until, finally, there are enough laws established to form the basis of a general principle. Then more laws and more principles are added in the same way until, finally, the body of knowledge has become sufficiently accurate, sufficiently definite and sufficiently organized and classified to be called a science.
HOW SCIENCE SLOWLY EVOLVES