Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/152

148 psychologist; the one interested in the functional significance of the act of writing as the expression of individuality; the other interested in a minute analysis of this motor series, seeking to determine the laws of expression that govern this particular act. In both investigations methods of research are being worked out with the ingenuity so characteristic of scientists of to-day. Each investigation as it progresses will be found to encroach upon the other. From the two will come the future science of handwriting. A résumé of the work that has already been done has perhaps its value at the present time.

First of all it may be profitable to consider the investigations that have sought to determine under scientific control whether or not the graphologists have made good their claims. It is to France that we owe, not only the most carefully wrought-out system of graphology, but also the most carefully thought-out control of that art. In an investigation covering many months, Alfred Binet, the director of the psychological laboratory at the Sorbonne, planned and executed a series of carefully controlled experiments designed to test the ability of the graphologists to determine from handwriting the sex, the age, the intelligence and the character of the writer. Binet, who guarded carefully against all sources of error, so planned his experiments as to be able to state in figures the percentage of error in the interpretations of the graphologists and thus render possible a comparison of the graphologists' successes with those that might reasonably be expected if chance alone determined the outcome. The results showed unmistakably that the graphologist was able to determine with but a small percentage of error the sex of the writer and also, but with less certainty, the intelligence of the writer. The interpretation of age and character offered still greater difficulties. To render the tests perfectly definite and to avoid the error that might arise from the personal equation in estimation of intelligence and character, Binet in his tests upon them made use, on the one hand, of the handwriting of men famous in literature and science and, on the other hand, of specimens of the handwriting of great criminals, whose biographies were matter of legal record.

Binet's investigation, apart from his general conclusions, brought out some interesting facts. He found, for instance, that there existed not only very great differences in the skill with which different graphologists made their interpretations, but also that there were those uninitiated in the art whose readings at times even the professional graphologist might envy. An observation akin, in a way, to the common experience that some people remember and recognize handwritings, as others do faces, with extraordinary facility and accuracy. Minute differences have for them undoubtedly a value not experienced by others. Binet found, moreover, that the professional's skill in