Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/153

Rh 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 judgments, based on intuitions, that is, non-reasoned-out impressions, were achieved in a state of passivity that we are familiar with as characteristic 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 controlling 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 sociopsychological 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 differences 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 professional, must farther 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 unanimously judged to emanate from a man, or the handwriting of a man like Kenan 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,