_ "Over fifty thousand people heard Elsie Lincoln Benedict at the City Auditorium during her six weeks lecture engagement in Milwaukee."--
Milwaukee Leader, April 2, 1921. "Elsie Lincoln Benedict has a brilliant record. She is like a fresh breath of Colorado ozone. Her ideas are as stimulating as the health-giving breezes of the Rockies."--
New York Evening Mail, April 16, 1914. "Several hundred people were turned away from the Masonic Temple last night where Elsie Lincoln Benedict, famous human analyst, spoke on 'How to Analyze People on Sight.' Asked how she could draw and hold a crowd of 3,000 for a lecture, she said: 'Because I talk on the one subject on earth in which every individual is most interested--himself.'"--
Seattle Times, June 2, 1920. "Elsie Lincoln Benedict is a woman who has studied deeply under genuine scientists and is demonstrating to thousands at the Auditorium each evening that she knows the connection between an individual's external characteristics and his inner traits."--
Minneapolis News, November 7, 1920. "Elsie Lincoln Benedict is known nationally, having conducted lecture courses in many of the large Eastern cities. Her work is based upon the practical methods of modern science as worked out in the world's leading laboratories where exhaustive tests are applied to determine individual types, talents, vocational bents and possibilities."--
San Francisco Bulletin, January 25, 1919. It's not
how much you
know but what
you can
DO
that counts
Human Analysis--The X-Ray Modern science has proved that the fundamental traits of every individual are indelibly stamped in the shape of his body, head, face and hands--an X-ray by which you can read the characteristics of any person on sight. The most essential thing in the world to any individual is to understand
himself. The next is to understand the other fellow. For life is largely a problem of running your own car as it was built to be run, plus getting along with the other drivers on the highway.
From this book you are going to learn which type of car you are and the main reasons why you have not been getting the maximum of service out of yourself.
Also you are going to learn the makes of other human cars, and how to get the maximum of co-operation out of them. This co-operation is vital to happiness and success. We come in contact with our fellowman in all the activities of our lives and what we get out of life depends, to an astounding degree, on our relations with him.
Reaction to Environment ¶ The greatest problem facing any organism is successful reaction to its environment. Environment, speaking scientifically, is the sum total of your experiences. In plain United States, this means fitting vocationally, socially and maritally into the place where you are.
If you don't fit you must move or change your environment to fit
you. If you can't change the environment and you won't move you will become a failure, just as tropical plants fail when transplanted to the Nevada desert.
Learn From the Sagebrush ¶ But there is something that grows and keeps on growing in the Nevada desert--the sagebrush. It couldn't move away and it couldn't change its waterless environment, so it did what you and I must do if we expect to succeed. It adapted itself to its environment, and there it stands, each little stalwart shrub a reminder of what even a plant can do when it tries!
Moving Won't Help Much ¶ Human life faces the same alternatives that confront all other forms of life--of adapting itself to the conditions under which it must live or becoming extinct. You have an advantage over the sagebrush in that you can move from your city or state or country to another, but after all that is not much of an advantage. For though you may improve your situation slightly you will still find that in any civilized country the main elements of your problem are the same.
Understand Yourself and Others ¶ So long as you live in a civilized or thickly populated community you will still need to understand your own nature and the natures of other people. No matter what you desire of life, other people's aims, ambitions and activities constitute vital obstructions along your pathway. You will never get far without the co-operation, confidence and comradeship of other men and women.
Primitive Problems ¶ It was not always so. And its recentness in human history may account for some of our blindness to this great fact.
In primitive times people saw each other rarely and had much less to do with each other. The human element was then not the chief problem. Their environmental problems had to do with such things as the elements, violent storms, extremes of heat and cold, darkness, the ever-present menace of wild beasts whose flesh was their food, yet who would eat them first unless they were quick in brain and body.
Civilization's Changes ¶ But all that is changed. Man has subjugated all other creatures and now walks the earth its supreme sovereign. He has discovered and invented and builded until now we live in skyscrapers, talk around the world without wires and by pressing a button turn darkness into daylight.
Causes of Failure ¶ Yet with all our knowledge of the outside world ninety-nine lives out of every hundred are comparative failures.
¶ The reason is plain to every scientific investigator. We have failed to study ourselves in relation to the great environmental problem of today. The stage-setting has been changed but not the play. The game is the same old game--you must adjust and adapt yourself to your environment or it will destroy you.
Mastering His Own Environment ¶ The cities of today
look different from the jungles of our ancestors and we imagine that because the brain of man overcame the old menaces no new ones have arisen to take their place. We no longer fear extermination from cold. We turn on the heat. We are not afraid of the vast oceans which held our primitive forebears in thrall, but pass swiftly, safely and luxuriously over their surfaces. And soon we shall be breakfasting in New York and dining the same evening in San Francisco!
Facing New Enemies ¶ But in building up this stupendous superstructure of modern civilization man has brought into being a society so intricate and complex that he now faces the new environmental problem of human relationships.
The Modern Spider's Web ¶ Today we depend for life's necessities almost wholly upon the activities of others. The work of thousands of human hands and thousands of human brains lies back of every meal you eat, every journey you take, every book you read, every bed in which you sleep, every telephone conversation, every telegram you receive, every garment you wear.
And this fellowman of ours has multiplied, since that dim distant dawn, into almost two billion human beings, with at least one billion of them after the very things you want, and not a tenth enough to go around!
Adapt or Die ¶ Who will win? Nature answers for you. She has said with awful and inexorable finality that, whether you are a blade of grass on the Nevada desert or a man in the streets of London, you can win only as you adapt yourself to your environment. Today our environmental problem consists largely of the other fellow. Only those who learn to adapt themselves to their fellows can win great or lasting rewards.
Externals Indicate Internal Nature ¶ To do this it is necessary to better understand our neighbors--to recognize that people differ from each other in their likes and dislikes, traits, talents, tendencies and capabilities. The combination of these makes each individual's nature. It is not difficult to understand others for with each group of these traits there always goes its corresponding physical makeup--the externals whereby the internal is invariably indicated. This is true of every species on the globe and of every subdivision within each species.
Significance of Size, Shape and Structure ¶ All dogs belong to the same species but there is a great difference between the "nature" of a St. Bernard and that of a terrier, just as there is a decided difference between the natures of different human beings. But in both instances the actions, reactions and habits of each can be accurately anticipated on sight by the shape, size and structure of the two creatures.
Differences in Breed ¶ When a terrier comes into the room you instinctively draw away unless you want to be jumped at and greeted effusively. But you make no such movement to protect yourself from a St. Bernard because you read, on sight, the different natures of these two from their external appearance.
¶ You know a rose, a violet, a sunflower and an orchid and what perfume you are sure to find in each, by the same method. All are flowers and all belong to the same species, just as all human beings belong to the same species. But their respective size, shape and structure tell you in advance and on sight what their respective characteristics are.
The same is true of all human beings. They differ in certain fundamentals but always and invariably in accordance with their differences in size, shape and structure.
The Instinct of Self-Preservation ¶ The reason for this is plain. Goaded by the instinct of self-preservation, man, like all other living things, has made heroic efforts to meet the demands of his environment. He has been more successful than any other creature and is, as a result, the most complex organism on the earth. But his most baffling complexities resolve themselves into comparatively simple terms once it is recognized that each internal change brought about by his environment brought with it the corresponding external mechanism without which he could not have survived.
Interrelation of Body and Brain ¶ So today we see man a highly evolved creature who not only acts but thinks and feels. All these thoughts, feelings and emotions are interrelated.
The body and the mind of man are so closely bound together that whatever affects one affects the other. An instantaneous change of mind instantly changes the muscles of the face. A violent thought instantly brings violent bodily movements.
Movies and Face Muscles ¶ The moving picture industry--said to be the third largest in the world--is based largely on this interrelation. This industry would become extinct if something were to happen to sever the connection between external expressions and the internal nature of men and women.
Tells Fundamentals ¶ How much do external characteristics tell about a man? They tell, with amazing accuracy, all the basic, fundamental principal traits of his nature. The size, shape and structure of a man's body tell more important facts about his real self--what he thinks and what he does--than the average mother ever knows about her own child.
Learning to Read ¶ If this sounds impossible, if the seeming incongruity, multiplicity and heterogeneity of human qualities have baffled you, remember that this is exactly how the print in all books and newspapers baffled you before you learned to read.
Not long ago I was reading stories aloud to a three-year old. She wanted to "see the pictures," and when told there were none had to be shown the book.
"What funny little marks!" she cried, pointing to the print. "How do you get stories out of them?"
Printing looked to all of us at first just masses of meaningless little marks.
But after a few days at school how things did begin to clear up! It wasn't a jumble after all. There was something to it. It straightened itself out until the funny little marks became significant. Each of them had a meaning and the same meaning under all conditions. Through them your whole outlook on life became deepened and broadened--all because you learned the meaning of twenty-six little letters and their combinations!