434 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIV. No. 614. 



is any truth in graphology except by taking 

 the average of those efforts, which (he thinks) 

 answers the doubt affirmatively." 



Madame Ungern- Steinberg graphologizes 

 Bertrand (great mathematician) as ' culti- 

 vated, supple, destitute of great delicacy or 

 clear view of things.' Dumas chemist (sec- 

 retary of the Institut), " Mediocre intelli- 

 gence, bound to routine, considerable faculties 

 of succeeding, limited horizon. Sees nothing 

 outside of his window pane." Kollicker 

 (great German naturalist), "Mediocre mind, 

 not clear, credulous and suspicious. Discour- 

 aged and deceitful. By a transparent ruse he 

 seeks to compensate lack of judgment," etc. 



Brown-Sequard. — " Intelligence below aver- 

 age, destitute of clearness and moderation. 

 Impressionable imagination to the prejudice 

 of judgment. Originally intelligence more 

 alert than cultivated. Sum total, muddled 

 mind"(!). 



Ernest Renan. — " Intelligence mediocre and 

 little cultivated (!) . Little reflection ( !). 

 Credulity, and babbling emphasized. The 

 latter owing to commencing senility." 



Crepieux-Jamin says of Renan's writing: 

 " Clear, delicate and fine mind without attain- 

 ing talent" (t. e., 38; talent begins at 40 of 

 the scale). Eloy says of the same: "Good 

 average intelligence, some deficiency of reflec- 

 tion but very active. What a good heart ! " 

 (He rated another letter of Renan's simi- 

 larly.) 



Chapter XVI. :' Shows the traps Dr. Binet 

 laid for the graphologists. 



Crepieux-Jamin, Paulhan and two others 

 were chosen. To these four Dr. Binet sent a 

 lying letter to say that in certain couples they 

 had been completely misled. Among the 

 couples of which this was falsely asserted were 

 two where errors had really been made. Cre- 

 pieux-Jamin recognized these and corrected 

 them, but he refused to change his judgment 

 of the mental superiority of Kenan to a small 

 provincial lawyer, even when falsely told he 

 was wrong; but on the contrary, raised the 

 index of Renan and lowered that of the other. 

 He did the same when asked to reexamine the 

 writing of Paul Bert and an unnamed official. 



which he had already rated 42 and 35. He 

 retained the 35 and raised 42 to 47. " This 

 experiment argues well for graphology," says 

 Dr. Binet. 



The others fell into the trap and recanted 

 all they had said. Binet apologizes for lying 

 to them, but says he did not transcend his 

 rights as an experimenter. 



His conclusion is that " graphological rea- 

 soning may establish two diametrically op- 

 posite conclusions — like politics and other 

 things. It is to be desired that the reasons 

 for opinion were less open to suggestion and 

 more subject to proof." 



Chapter XVII. : Necessity of better defining 

 graphological terms. 



Graphologists disagree: (1) by finding dif- 

 ferent ' signs ' ; (2) by giving different inter- 

 pretations to what they find. Crepieux-Jamin 

 says : ' Large writing — imaginative.' Paulhan 

 says : ' Large writing — clumsiness.' Two hy- 

 potheses are suggested: (1) Graphology is an 

 intuition, can not be explained or controlled; 

 (2) (which is Crepieux-Jamin's view) it is 

 based upon observation of forms, but these 

 (may) neutralize each other. 



Chapter XIX.: The achievements of those 

 ignorant of graphology. 



Experiments in judging intelligence from 

 handwriting were made with male and female 

 scholars in the primary schools. The masters 

 and mistresses in four communal schools se- 

 lected ten of the brightest and ten of the dull- 

 est scholars between twelve and fourteen. 



The 80 envelopes, containing addresses dic- 

 tated to the scholars, were submitted to 16 

 persons; 3 of professions, and 13 instructors 

 and instructresses. The majority of the re- 

 plies agreed with the rating of the instructors 

 in 57, and differed in 20 cases. In 5 the 

 agreement was unanimous; in 6 it was 17 to 

 1 ; in 10, 17 to 2. Asked to define the features 

 on which ''they relied for the opinions, the most 

 frequent replies were: (9) Place and disposi- 

 tion of words, specification, disposition of the 

 address. (9) Accuracy or clumsiness, pre- 

 cision, decision, firmness, energy of the char- 

 acters. The author asks if these were their 

 real reasons for judging, adding, ' to judge is 



