You chose a certain man as your prospective employer because you believe that if you succeed in associating yourself with him you will have the best opportunities to achieve your ambition. You are now standing in his presence. You need to size up his true character quickly in order that you may be sure of presenting your capabilities in the particular way that is likely to be most effective with him. You wish to impress this one man with right ideas of your qualities and their value. You want him to perceive that he lacks and requires just such services as you purpose to offer for sale. You realize it is unsafe for you to jump at conclusions about his characteristics. You pause briefly to size him up before presenting your proposition, rather than to proceed blindly in ignorance of his habits of thought, and with no clue to what he happens to be thinking at the time you call. You must know all it is possible to find out on the spot regarding him.
What Has He Done with His Birthright?
You cannot be certain of his characteristics if you judge him solely by what Nature forced on him. But you can be absolutely sure if you size him up by observing what he has done with his birthright, and if you are then able to interpret correctly what you perceive. Your prospect has had nothing to do with the shape and size of his head. His fair or dark complexion is inherited. He is utterly unable to control the color of his hair or eyes. His muscle structure, however, is a development that he has accomplished himself. If he has a firm jaw, the jaw muscles, not the jaw bone, signify the characteristics of a firm mentality. Judge the physical man he has made by his habits of living under the government of his mind. Disregard such physical details of his appearance as he cannot help. The made man is the true image of the ego. It is this ego of your prospective employer you need to know, for your chance to succeed in your purpose with him depends on the inner man you must convince and persuade. Therefore restrict your size-up to the discriminative observation of the muscle signs of his mind habits and mind actions.
Recall now, or re-read the second chapter of this book. There you studied the principles of restrictive-discriminative growth—the Burbank method of developing selected qualities of manhood. That chapter related to your cultivation of particular characteristics within yourself. The same principles will guide you with equal certainty in acquiring knowledge of other men.
Every mental characteristic of your prospect about which you need to know has physical indications that can be perceived, and translated into certain knowledge of details of his character. You have studied the co-relation of your mind and body in mutual development. You may be sure that similar processes of development have produced like effects in the case of the man you have come to see. You know exactly how to grow particular qualities within yourself, by using your muscles to develop corresponding mind centers and vice versa. You can read another man's mind by observing his muscle structure and muscle action, and by then interpreting the mental significance of what you perceive.
Men are Alike At Heart, But Differ in Mind
To repeat and emphasize again what already has been said about knowing the heart of another man—you need but look into your own breast to find there the finest basic characteristics of the human heart in general. As Kipling wrote, "The Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins." All men are fundamentally alike at the bottoms of their hearts, however much they may differ in the individual traits they have grafted upon their common root of human nature.
So when you are sizing up your prospect, you should comprehend that the most effective way to get to his heart is through such an appeal as would reach the heart of every man. Know your own heart surely, then, in order to be certain of knowing his. All human hearts respond similarly to manifestations of courage, nobility, love, faith, honor, and the like. We laugh and cry at the same humor and pathos. Our feelings are closely akin. We differ from one another only in our minds. Our individual, acquired habits of thought affect but the degrees of our several heart responses to the gamut of fundamental emotional appeals.
Exhaustive Prolonged Analysis Unnecessary