VARIATIONAL FACTOR IN HANDWRITING 149 



diagnosis far outran his ability to ground his judgment on definite 

 graphic signs. His reading was the translation into words of a 

 general impression, somewhat similar, we may assume, to that received 

 by the skilled reader of the human countenance. Moreover, in at 

 least one instance, and that in the case of a non-professional, the judg- 

 ments, based on intuitions, that is, non-reasoned-out impressions, were 

 achieved in a state of passivity that we are familiar with as character- 

 istic of automatic activities of different sorts. 



Accepting these results, the investigation is obviously only well 

 initiated, for one is next anxious to press home the question that asks 

 the cause of such differences. It is not enough, for instance, to know 

 that Binet's graphologists were able under highly favorable conditions 

 to distinguish in ninety per cent, of the tests the sex of the writer; 

 it is not enough to know that, to a certain extent, they were able to 

 base their judgments upon the presence or absence of certain graphic 

 signs ; one would also know in detail what determines each sign of sex, 

 whether at the last they are due, as Binet himself asks, to profound 

 physiological or psychological causes, or, rather, are the outcome of the 

 social environment so different in the case of the two sexes. 



We are here brought face to face with the old question that has 

 confronted all investigators of sex-differences. It is evident, however, 

 that the question of the social environment is, in this instance, a con- 

 trolling one not merely in the discussion of the revelation of sex in 

 handwriting, but also in that of the revelation of intelligence; for 

 there exists a peculiar environment for talent as well as for sex. 

 Indeed, it appears that the investigation of handwriting must be socio- 

 psyehological in nature. Unconscious imitation, social suggestibility 

 doubtless play an important, if not all-important, part in determining 

 writing characteristics. On the whole, therefore, it is not surprising 

 that the experts were more successful in distinguishing marked differ- 

 ences in intelligence than in determining the nature of the individual 

 superiority. They perceived the class characteristic, as it were. 



The overlapping of the writer's environments, social and pro- 

 fessional, must further complicate the matter. The cases cited by 

 Binet of writing that gave evidence of reversion of signs : the writing, 

 for instance, of a young woman scientist that the graphologists unani- 

 mously judged to emanate from a man, or the handwriting of a man 

 like Eenan that the graphologists marked as coming from a man of 

 inferior mental ability are of particular interest in this connection. 

 Such cases would probably repay a detailed investigation not only of 

 the psychology of the individual, but also of his environmental history. 



It is, perhaps, because character, within certain limits, does not 

 produce segregation of classes that the experts showed little accuracy 

 in their judgments of moral qualities from handwriting. Their failure, 



