Part 3 (1/2)

The quality of the man determines the quality of the work he should do.

The strong, coa.r.s.e, sluggish organization is adapted to occupations requiring power and momentum. The refined, delicate, responsive character will succeed best in positions calling for agility, dexterity and sensitiveness. The blacksmith may ruin a watch if he attempts to mend it, while the jeweler would not be a safe man to shoe a valuable horse. There is an eternal fitness of things.

The occupation of an individual should be in harmony with his temperament. The brilliant versatility of the magnetic permits a greater variety of selection to the individual than the positive and concentrative energies of the electric temperament. The latter is dignified, sombre and severe, with a ready inclination to forego comfort and convenience to carry out a cherished object.

It works, not better than the magnetic but more willingly. Men of the magnetic temperament succeed best in the cultivation of the social graces, the fine arts, and in those departments of literature that call for brilliancy of imagination, versatility of talent and variety of accomplishment. The leaders of great and successful armies, the powerful statesmen and the literary men of the world, distinguished by fervid genius and concentrative application, have been on the other hand strongly endowed with the electric temperament.

When the motive temperament is in the ascendency, the character is marked by an almost uncontrollable desire for physical exercise. This temperament demands activity of body as well as brain, and the occupation should be such as will combine both. The vital temperament on the other hand is more inclined to sedentary habits, and is capable of doing an immense amount of mental work without breaking down. It seems to thrive best when loaded with responsibilities of a mental character.

The mental temperament on the other hand will display great brilliancy of intellect and versatility of talent, but is in constant danger of a physical collapse unless constantly subjected to conditions favorable to recuperation.

To subject a person of the delicately organized and sensitive mental temperament, for a long period of time, to the hards.h.i.+ps and privations of an occupation requiring exposure and severe muscular exertion is the height of cruelty and folly. A person of the extreme vital temperament, under the same conditions, would find life a weary burden, though a limited experience in muscular exercise, under conditions favorable to health, would be beneficial to both. On the other hand, the motive temperament, confined in an office or room to books and study, with insufficient exercise, is in much the same condition of misery as a caged bird.

Temperament, quality, and capacity having been duly considered, the ability of an individual in any given direction, depends upon the special development of the organs of the brain. The special sense of each individual is determined by an examination of the special organs of the brain. And it is upon this special development, in the case of every man, that his prerequisites for success depend, namely, the ability to do much good work, the remuneration for his services, and the pleasure derived from the occupation.

I desire to call your attention to some examples of special ability, which are familiar enough to the experience of most of you to be accepted without argument.

There are those who are gifted in the sense of touch above their fellows, who can judge of the quality of goods in the dark. There are others blest with penetrating eyesight. Others with a sense of hearing most acute. Also those with nice discriminating sense of taste and smell. These distinctions for a long time were regarded as the five senses of man, and he was believed to have only those five avenues of perception. Phrenology, however, subdivides these and adds others, vastly increasing the number of the sources of knowledge and the springs of human action.

A great many cases of defective eyesight, so called, are in reality defective brain. The mechanism of the eye may be perfect, the retina and the optic nerve may faithfully perform their duties, but if the brain behind the eye be defective, the comprehension of the object or some of its properties is lost to the intelligence of the individual. Some people are ”color blind.” Their eyes are good enough, but they don't see colors; they comprehend no difference in the shades of different colored objects exhibited to the view. At the same time they fully comprehend the size, form, distance, etc., of the object. An examination discloses the fact that they are deficient in a portion of the brain just behind the middle of the eyebrow. Give such a man every material and brush of the painter and request him to paint a landscape and the result will be a daub. He has no sense of colors, he has no fitness for that kind of work. At the same time he may be entirely capable of a very creditable performance in drawing a picture with a pencil in white and black because that does not involve his weakness. This particular element of sense may, like all others, be only partially defective, but an examination by a competent phrenologist will disclose its exact state, whatever it may be. I once examined a man and remarked to him that he was thoroughly endowed with the qualities essential to a good locomotive engineer, except that the organ of color was slightly deficient. I remarked, ”You will never experience the slightest inconvenience in distinguis.h.i.+ng switch-lights and signals when you are in good health and sober, but a slight indigestion, or a gla.s.s of liquor, decreasing the power of your brain, would render your vision of colors unreliable and might cause a wreck, hence I advise you to keep out of the business.”

The man was a railroad engineer, and admitted that he could generally distinguish colors without difficulty, but that his color sense was lost, under the conditions I described.

Those who are large in the organ of color, are artists in its appreciation, for the simple reason that they have more sense in this particular direction. On the other hand, color may be large, but appreciation of form, size, etc., may be deficient. The individual may try to paint a picture and get the colors all right, but if form is deficient his figures will be grotesque in their absurdity; or he may have good sense as to form and color, and get the sizes of his objects all wrong. Mechanical skill depends in a great measure upon these ”Perceptive Faculties,” as they are called: that is, those portions of the brain that comprehend and give the ideas pertaining to the properties of material objects, such as individuality, form, size, weight, color, etc. The trained eye and hand of the blacksmith are alike directed by these faculties of the mind acting through these organs of the brain, as he moulds a piece of iron to the proper size and form to fit the horse's foot. What folly then to expect good work, in a blacksmith shop, of a man deficient in these special senses requisite in that department of work; and as we study all trades and professions we shall find that apt.i.tude in any line depends on the possession of superior development of the organs of the brain representing the faculties of intelligence most used and depended upon in that business.

There are those who are wonderfully gifted in the organ of calculation, the seat of the special sense of the number of things. One who has this organ large will be able to count rapidly and correctly, to add, subtract or multiply, and he understands the relation of numbers to each other, their properties, and because of his superior sense in this direction he becomes a ”lightning calculator” and is regarded as a mathematical prodigy. There are others who have this sense deficient, but they may be superior in development to the mathematical prodigy in a dozen other faculties.

One may be developed in those organs which contribute to talent for music. He may have a sensitive organization, highly responsive in quality, a fair intellect, such an exquisite sense of time and tune, aided by good Constructiveness, Imitation and executive ability that he is able to produce music which charms the listening ear of thousands. If this talent is discovered in time, and he has adequate instruction and advantages, he becomes a magnificent success. Place him in the counting room, the work-shop, or on the farm and he is not in harmony with his surroundings, he is awkward and inefficient, he does poor work and but little of it, and he is regarded by his a.s.sociates as an inferior person.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Musician.]

Some men are wonderful in their ability to comprehend machinery, and in dexterity in the use of tools, the special sense represented by the organ of Constructiveness. They seem to be perfectly at home with a piece of new and complicated machinery in five minutes, while others will work on the same thing for hours, growing more and more bewildered, and exhibiting little or no mechanical genius whatever, literally making a botch of everything they undertake. When I was lecturing in Austin, Texas, in 1887, several gentlemen came to see me and asked if I would be willing to submit to a test. They said, ”We have a man in this city who is unquestionably a genius in a certain direction, and we would like to call him out for a public examination and see if you can locate him.” I urged them to do so, at the same time remarking that that was the kind of a man I liked to get hold of. That night when I called for nominations, Mr. Geo. P. a.s.sman was immediately elected. He came forward, and as I measured his head I said, ”This man is a genius as a machinist. He has only ordinary ability in other directions, but as a machinist he is a marvel. He has thoughts on machinery far beyond the comprehension of other men, and especially in the practical handling of complicated work.” Somebody in the audience sung out at this point ”You've got him,” and the audience broke into applause. They then informed me that he was a most celebrated locksmith and machinist whose specialty was opening combination locks on valuable safes when the combination was lost by the owners, or when the works were injured by the blasts of burglars. On one occasion he had opened a safe in New Orleans in a few minutes when the trained locksmiths of the safe factory had worked for hours and failed. He was in the right business, was regarded as a genius, and was respected and admired by a whole section of the United States simply because he employed his best element of sense.

Some men have wonderful intellectual development and are specially gifted with the ability to acquire knowledge, but they may be most wonderfully deficient in that kind of executive force which makes use of it. They are largely developed in the frontal lobe of the brain where the intellectual organs reside, but are deficient in the regions of moral and physical energy; while others are largely endowed with ambition, physical and moral energy,--the parietal lobes are large and the head rises high in the crown, and they are able to use all the knowledge they acquire. Their intellectual capacity may be limited, but they are able to put their knowledge to account, and what gems of information they possess are made to glitter by constant use. Men of the first cla.s.s are always rated at less than their true value of intellectual ability; those of the second cla.s.s at a greatly over-estimated premium. The first may be compared to capacious barns where knowledge is stored like hay to become musty because it is never used. I have seen hundreds of boys of this character, graduate with great honor in college (where the only criterion applied was the capacity to absorb knowledge as a sponge does water), only to be eclipsed in after years by the boys who graduated at the foot of the cla.s.s, who were practically in disgrace on Commencement day. In our popular public school and collegiate system, there is too much stuffing of knowledge, and too little attention given to developing the practical sense of the student.

There are special senses which give physical and moral energy, ambition and industry. One man is splendidly equipped with knowledge and is thoroughly posted in regard to how a business should be conducted in all of its practical and theoretical details, but he is afflicted with inertia, he does not move. The unscientific observer says he is lazy, and that is true, but Phrenology a.n.a.lyzes even laziness and finds that it is caused by a lack of sense. Develop the organs of physical and moral energy, which can be easily done, and the character of the man becomes transformed, and he becomes a cyclone of business push and executive ability. Another man may be gifted with energy, but deficient in knowledge and business tact, and he wastes his force in tremendous efforts at the accomplishment of small matters. He puts as much mental force into opening a can of oysters as would suffice to destroy a building. Figuratively speaking he loads a cannon to kill a mosquito, the result is a great waste of energy and vitality. By proper cultivation of knowledge, and adaptation to pursuits employing his splendid energies with large enterprise, a character of this description is brought into harmony with the eternal fitness of things.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Physical Energy.]

There are men endowed with the sense which gives appreciation of values and the knowledge of property to such an extent that they are artists in the manipulation of finances. They acc.u.mulate fortunes, and the world admires their accomplishments; and one who has less of this world's goods is accustomed to wish that he had as much sense as Vanderbilt or Gould. The fact may be, that he has more sense in the aggregate than either, but it is not the same kind of sense. Other things being equal, the man with large Acquisitiveness will exhibit more sense in acquiring property, and the man with large Caution and Secretiveness more sense in economizing, than those having these organs small. It is curious to observe the different phases of financial sense in different individuals. One man will be a miser, eager to get and anxious to hold property; another will be close and cautious in taking care of the property he inherits, but will exhibit no special ability in increasing his riches; another displays great ability in making money, but spends it lavishly; while still another may show indifference to the acquisition of property or the care of it. All of these various combinations I have delineated correctly with utter strangers, in thousands of instances. They all depend on the development of the various organs of special sense, and a man may be educated at any period of life, so as to correct his financial sense and make him more successful in acc.u.mulating and holding property.

Some men are good collectors, while others fail to exact their just dues. One man will dun his debtors with a persistence and regularity, and with a force and dignity which compels payment even from those who wish to avoid it; while another will be diffident, and often suffer the most humiliating emotions in presenting his demands--in fact, often failing to exact payment from those who are perfectly able and willing to meet the account. Others are careless about paying their debts, and lose financial standing in the community by neglecting their dues, without any desire whatever to avoid payment, while others are punctilious in financial matters to the greatest degree. All of which variety of financial dispositions are the result of development of special combinations of brain organs, and susceptible to material modification by proper influences.

It is as absolutely essential to the success of the man of commerce that he should be well developed in the organs which give the financial instincts, as it is that the artist should be developed in those which give a sense of artistic effect. Hundreds of men go into bankruptcy every year because of deficient development in this respect, being crowded to the wall by the superior strength of men of greater business sagacity. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the young business men of this country that the true road to fortune is in a correct knowledge of adaptation in business and in constantly educating the financial senses.

In my written delineations of character I furnish every applicant with a careful a.n.a.lysis of his business adaptation, showing the exact condition of his financial instincts, as well as all others. I have also composed directions whereby deficient organs may be strengthened by special mental exercises, and I claim that the financial sense can be developed and strengthened as well as any other part of man's nature; and in no part of my professional work have I met with more satisfactory results.

I once examined an utter stranger, and as I proceeded, I said, ”You should never enter mercantile life, sir, with your present development.

You would be bankrupt within a year, because you would trust everybody, and you cannot collect your small accounts.” The gentleman, in great surprise, asked me if I knew anything of his past history personally.

”No, sir, I never saw you nor heard of you until you entered my room a moment ago.” He then informed me that he had failed in business three times, because he could not collect his small accounts, and that he had over $1500 due him in the city--small items against respectable customers that he had not succeeded in collecting. ”Now, sir,” he continued excitedly, ”I want to know why that is and how you can tell it.” I explained to him his deficient organs, and gave him my special rules for the cultivation of financial ability; and after instructing him, I told him to try some of his most collectable accounts according to my rules. I remained in his town a few days longer, and before I left he called on me with a list of over six hundred dollars'

worth of claims he had collected, and he was jubilant. ”There!” said he, ”that is what your examination and chart has been worth to me.” And by persistently following my instructions he developed into a very good collector.