In this movement but little recognition was given to the psychological differences and peculiarities of the individuals concerned. Knowledge of personal aptitudes and capacities, interests, and satisfactions, was more or less taken for granted in each case, or at least left to develop in its own way. It was assumed either that any individual could satisfactorily pursue any vocation in which he might become interested, or else that industrial and vocational information alone was needed in order to enable the individual to make a suitable choice. Nor was there any doubt that the work which the youth found interesting and attractive at the time was the work in which he might find a maximum of ultimate success, satisfaction, and serviceableness. With the vocational surveys, the industrial schools, and the part-time practice methods of education we shall not be concerned, in what is to follow. They represent a movement of tremendous social and educational significance, but their development does not immediately concern that other field of work which we have designated "vocational psychology." They proceed mainly by giving the individual a knowledge of the external series of facts and events, thus replacing the era of fortune-telling and clairvoyance, with its search for signs and omens, just as fortune-telling had, in its own day, replaced the practices of crude objective magic. But the methods of industrial and occupational training have been found to solve only one aspect of the vocational problem; and it is more and more coming to be realized that a thorough understanding of the aptitudes which the individual brings to his work is as important as the knowledge of the opportunities which the environment affords. In the remainder of this book we shall be concerned with the various systematic efforts that have been made or are now being made to study the individual himself, and to judge from a determination of his mental characteristics the type of vocational activity which he is best fitted to undertake with success.
THE SEARCH FOR PHRENOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOGNOMIC PRINCIPLES
The primitive magic, directed toward the formation of individual character, was displaced by the personal clairvoyance which attempted to diagnose the individual's mental and moral constitution on the basis of his own early acts, expressions, and physical characteristics. This soon gave way to a tendency to abandon, for the most part, such signs as did not relate in some actual or fancied way, to the individual's brain. This limitation of the field of significant signs may be related to the widespread interest in human physiology, historically associated with the knowledge of anatomy. The invention of the microscope, Harvey's proof of the circulation of the blood, the discussion centering about the automaton theory of Descartes, and the rapid development of surgical technique, brought about a most interesting spread of curiosity concerning the nature and mechanism of the human body. Balls and tournaments gave way to dissections and demonstrations as means of courtly entertainment. Celebrated surgeons exhibited their skill and knowledge, and lectured on the facts of physiology and anatomy in the formal presence of royalty and society. Court painters executed pictures such as "The Anatomy Lesson," some of them now cherished as famous masterpieces.