But suppose we assume (although we may have as yet no good grounds for the assumption) that tests of certain characteranalysts have given positive results. This would not be surpri sing. In fact, I should expect to find that some "experts" could produce positive results. Few "experts" are willing to submit to real tests, but those few who are willing must be so because they are confident that they could succeed to some extent, even in a carefully checked test.

We may freely admit that certain persons, working in entire independence of any system, may be able to make some good guesses. Many of us think that we can make good guesses. Our guesses are probably very much less accurate than we suppose, yet they may have some validity. In many cases we have to entrust important matters to individuals as to whose honesty or intelligence we have no evidence except from our guesses based on brief observation of the visible appearance of the individual. There is no reason to suppose that professional character analysts should not be able to make as good guesses as any one else, provided these experts have the requisite native capacity, and provided that, like the one I quoted, they ignore their systems and use common sense. It is actually a fact that we do make correct judgments about the transient mental processes of other persons without being able to identify the facts on which these judgments are based. If you are talking to some one, and you say something which offends or grieves or pleases him, you may recognize that fact at once, although it may be impossible for you to designate the exact change in his face or voice or posture which is the basis of your idea. You may even make similar judgments when carrying on a conversation over the telephone, in which case changes in the timbre and inflections of the voice alone could give you the clue. You know from the other person's voice that he is offended or pleased, although you may not be able to identify the exact change in his voice which is the important factor. When you have the visual clues from the other person's face, as well as the clues from his voice, your judgments are more definite and more secure.

This whole matter is but a special case of the more general phenomenon of perception and judgment by sign. It is a fact that in much of our perception we perceive meanings without perceiving the signs on which the perception is based. In some cases, the signs could be perceived, if attention were drawn to them; in other cases, the signs can not be discriminated even under the best conditions. I shall not go into this topic in an extended way, both because it is familiar to psychologists, and because it can not be briefly expounded to those without psychological training. I men

tion it only to show that on this point of character readings we are not dealing with a unique phenomenon, but with a particular manifestation of a general principle which runs broadly through our mental life.

As another illustration of the general principle, I may refer to certain cases of supposed "thought-reading" which are really cases of sign-reading. Many amateurs succeed in catching ideas from other persons, where there is physical relation of such sort that movements of the second person may actually stimulate receptors of the first person, either tactually, visually or acoustically. But these amateurs never succeed if they watch for the signs. They succeed only when they ignore the signs and attend to the meanings. In fact, if amateurs who succeed brilliantly in muscle reading tests become convinced that their performance really is muscle reading and nothing more occult, they can usually do the trick no longer, and this is precisely what we might expect. Similarly, if, instead of watching to see whether the person you are talking to is pleased or not, you watch for the facial changes which indicate pleasure, you will not catch his emotional changes unless the symptoms are extremely gross. The conditions here are not greatly different from those obtaining in the visual perception of depth, where, if you attend to the signs, convergence, accommodation, binocular disparity, and so on, you will lose the depth-effect which those signs would give if they were not attended to.

The important question, therefore, is: What are the signs which tell us something about the mental characteristics of other persons? In the case of fleeting, ideational and emotional changes, these signs are obviously not anatomical; and in the case of fundamental tendencies of mental and moral sorts, we have already shown that there are no known anatomical signs. We are, therefore, forced to the conclusion that in the one case as in the other, the signs are physiological. Changes in the complicated muscular system of the face do occur along with ideas, especially if these ideas are emotionally toned. Changes in the complex musculature of the vocal organs and changes in the arm, leg and trunk muscles also occur. There are, in other words, changes in voice, in features, in posture and in other bodily postures and movements which are perfectly competent to serve as indexes of ideational and emotional changes. Unfortunately, we have not yet succeeded in analyzing more than the most gross of these signs.

Fundamental tendencies in ideational and emotional reaction give rise to habitual modes of expression of the various sorts. Habitual modes of expression, moreover, leave their traces, especially in the face, even when the actual expression is not occurring.

There would seem to be, therefore, a complex system of signs, not only of fleeting mental changes, but signs also of character traits, provided we can make use of them.

Signs of this sort are effective, prior to analysis. Habits of perception and of judgment are built up on signs, without necessitating any analysis or identification of such signs. Moreover, the development of the capacity to catch meanings in this way, if it be possible, depends upon native capacity as well as upon practice. We should, therefore, expect to find exactly what we do find, namely, that there is great individual variation in this apparent skill, and that in the absence of a really comprehensive and accurate analysis of signs, the attempt to attend to signs is a disturbing factor.

Character analysts, if successful under real test conditions, obviously make their guesses just as you or I do. "The systems" can be nothing but obstacles, since they have no real bearing on the problem. But, after having made a guess, the analyst can readily find in his system details which back up his guess, provided the system is elastic, depending upon sign patterns rather than upon hard and fast single signs. We need not assume that successful character analysts, if there are such, go through this sophistical process deliberately. The tendency to construe evidence to suit one's theory, and to recognize the data which may thus be construed, overlooking conflicting data, is too well known and too widespread to need demonstration. One of the important reasons why scientific procedure and scientific methods are necessary is that such procedure and methods are indispensable helps to the avoidance of arbitrary inferences, and even with the best of scientific aids the tendency will sometimes operate.

As a matter of fact, there is no reason to believe that the accuracy and reliability of such guesses as you and I and the character analyst make are very high. But there is reason to believe that if any character analyst does obtain even ten per cent. of accuracy in certain special test cases, he very likely may not know how he gets his results, and may believe that he is getting them through his system, although he really is not.

I have no doubt that those mind-readers, such as Bishop and McIvor-Tyndall, who apparently attained striking results under test conditions, sincerely believed that they were reading minds directly, and not through physical signs. Certainly, they could obtain those results only by ignoring the signs, and it may well be that they would not have been successful if they had known the actual nature of the process. I may mention here the observation I have made that the most successful hypnotists are those who have

no scientific comprehension of the hypnotic process, but who really believe that they are exercising an occult power, or that some "magnetic fluid" flows from their hands to the patient.

On the other hand, it is true that we do, in much of our perception and thought, make use of signs effectively, although we are fully aware of the nature of those signs. In visual depth perception, to which I have already referred, we lose nothing in the perception of depth in pictures and landscapes through an exact knowledge of the signs, provided we do not attempt to attend to those signs in the moment of perception. As another pertinent illustration I may point out that the knowledge that the thinkingprocess proceeds through muscular signs does not interfere with the vividness and the efficiency of thinking, provided we do not attempt to attend to those signs while thinking.

It is therefore entirely possible that a scientific system of character measurement may some day be developed. Such a system would be based on physiological, not on anatomical signs, and would necessarily be the result of extensive and prolonged experimental work. Even the development of such a system to the point of such relative efficiency as has been reached in mental measurements would require years of work by many and highly trained investigators, just as the development of mental measurements has required.

Although we do not know that it is possible to develop a science of character estimation, serious work in the attempt to find out is highly desirable. Even a definite negative result would be most valuable. In the meantime, a respectable name by which this field of investigation might be known would be practically useful. The term "analysis" and its derivatives can no longer be used in psychology, because, thanks to the efforts of the "psycho-analysts' and the "character-analysts," the terms "analysis" and "analyst' have come to connote superstition and quackery. In the meantime, in the interests of the gullible public as well as the interests of psychology, both pure and applied, we must carry on an educational campaign against "character analysis."

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THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

THE

MAROONED IN A POTATO FIELD

By Professor EDITH M. PATCH

MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION

HE circumstance of my exile was in accordance with the rule of contrasts, by which life whets her sense of humor. For it is given even to those who, following the traditions of eight generations, were born within forty miles of Boston to will to go the way of the winds when spring beckons their gypsy instincts; and I confess to taunting visions of elephants dancing in the jungles of one continent and tadpoles named Guinevere disporting in the southern pools of another-glimpses of desire that blurred my eyes a bit as I reached the end of my own so different journey and found myself marooned in a potato field.

An amazing number of the helpless little solanum inhabitants of the field were being drawn and quartered and buried at the time. Their graves stretched out in interminable rows, vast cemeteries of tediously straight ridges, alternating with shallow-furrowed barren valleys.

The cemeteries being filled, the surplus solanums were being taken to the crematories, called, in the language of the Aroostook, "starch factories." The hearses-long, low-bodies, high-wheeled vehicles locally known as "jiggers"-were laden with staved and hooped coffins, known in the vernacular as "bawr'ls," twenty or so to a jigger; and the procession of these hearses drawn up before each crematory was seldom less than thirty long.

The whole affair that first day impressed me with funereal gloom; a sentiment shared, no doubt, by many an Aroostookian except, of course, the proprietors of the crematories, who were buying for thirty-five cents a barrel the same grade of tubers that, the previous year, had found their way to a different type of market at ten dollars a barrel.

As if to ease my mood with the consolation of sweet companionship, a voice reminded me of a near presence in the familiar words, "Yes, dear, I'm here. Yip, yip, yip, yip!" I laughed--not at the owner of the voice, but at the absurdly huge joy that surged up to welcome him, for it was the first time I had ever noticed that the song of a vesper sparrow is magically sweet. Previously I had always considered the performance a miserably minor affair, but