Natural-born Failures Few 279 



it can be shown that the child is born with not 

 a few latent abilities aptitudes for doing and 

 learning this and that and that one of these 

 aptitudes is likely to have correlated with it more 

 than the average amount of nerve development 

 in the corresponding brain center. As a result, 

 that particular aptitude will require less training 

 than the others and will tend to predominate over 

 them as maturity is approached. 



The reply of the psychologist to the statement 

 that some men are "natural-born failures," 'is 

 this : Few if any of those possessed of ordinary 

 physical and mental qualities at birth are necessarily 

 so. Excepting the feeble-minded and the like, 

 whose marks of degeneracy are usually apparent to 

 all, it may be asserted on the highest authority 

 that none are "natural-born failures" to any greater 

 extent than they are "natural-born successes"; but 

 that they have within the inherited nerve mechanisms 

 many possibilities of both success and failure. 



THREE METHODS OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING 



We should be willing to overlook almost any other 

 interest in this discussion for the sake of inducing 

 in the farm father the belief that his young boy is 

 a potential success the belief that this boy is 

 furnished by nature with the latent ability to shine 

 somewhere in the broad field of human endeavor 

 provided he be rightly trained and disciplined during 



