PREFACE. 



THE conclusions put forward in the following pages do not pretend 

 to explain the length and breadth of character ; they make no 

 claim to be a system ; they simply aim at establishing a few 

 truths and at stating them in untechnical language. But it is 

 believed that these truths are important and that they affect a large 

 range of character in every human being. 



Character is not a chance collection of miscellaneous frag- 

 ments : its items tend to group themselves in more or less uniform 

 clusters. In the more impassioned character, for example, there 

 is one cluster, in the less impassioned another ; though the contrast 

 between the two is not necessarily a startling one. An endeavour 

 is here made to show how true this principle of grouping is and, 

 more than this, to show that certain special groups of character-notes 

 are associated with certain special groups of bodily si,2;ns 



Much in the following chapters has been rewritten and much 

 has been added, but the views and principles they contain remain 

 unchanged. 



Some matters have been omitted from the closing Chapter in 

 the hope that they may appear more appropriately at another time 

 in conjunction with other inquiries which bear on the r-'hr.innship 

 of human organisation to human problems. 



A few of the ideas, and probably of the expressions i i his little 

 work have appeared in other pages with or with >ut author's 



name. 



