152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Whatever more extended observations may show, the writer of this 

 paper has found it a very simple matter to pick out individuals who 

 will make good subjects for muscle-reading — an experiment that suc- 

 ceeds best with those whose movements are most automatic — by a 

 preliminary test in which the subject, blindfolded, is required to write 

 his name rapidly in sequence while counting aloud by a given interval, 

 say by 13's. The writing of those individuals who would serve best 

 in the proposed test shows a progressive enlargement and, moreover, 

 characteristic pen-lapses. 



The question may then be raised whether such difference in mental 

 type reveals itself in normal handwriting, and an affirmative answer 

 seems not presumptuous, although a detailed study of handwriting 

 from this standpoint has not, so far as the writer knows, been instituted 

 experimentally. It should be noted, however, that in the thought 

 process which accompanies writing during composition, momentary dis- 

 tractions' occur frequently, for thought, even in the case of rapid 

 penmen, is apt to run ahead of the writing. Who does not number 

 among his correspondents those whose final letters trail off into an 

 indistinguishable scrawl ; and others who end with a flourish that marks 

 well the motor abandon? Characteristic revelations, no doubt, 

 although interpretation as yet must be exceedingly diffident. 



It is interesting to note in this connection the interpretation 

 graphologists put upon the size of writing as indicative of individual 

 traits. Distinction, power, frankness, honesty are held to reveal them- 

 selves by magnified writing either throughout writing as a whole or 

 at the termination of words. Minute writing throughout or at the 

 close of words is held to indicate, in the case of superior intelligence, 

 artifice or preoccupation with metaphysical or other minutiae; in the 

 case of inferior minds, miserliness. Usually, the graphologists em- 

 phasize legibility of terminal letters as highly indicative of frankness; 

 while, on the other hand, the tendency to terminate letters in filiform 

 fashion as evidence of a veiling of self. Mere exhibition of documents 

 from persons of known characteristics seems, it must be said, inade- 

 quate proof of such propositions. Variations from the normal in the 

 handwriting of any individual would under defined conditions be of 

 more value for general interpretative purposes than would variation 

 from one person to another. Nor can facile analogies appear worthy 

 of serious attention until the causal relation between certain tempera- 

 mental traits and the facilitation or inhibition of movement is better 

 understood. 



The attempt to study handwriting in the light of psychological 

 analyses already in progress bids fair to help analysis, as well as to 

 increase our knowledge of the psychology of handwriting. The rela- 

 tion of the inner word to the outer visible one has long interested 



