"This seems to be a development of the old idea of phrenology. It is claimed in this system that physical characteristics indicate certain abilities. For example, a directive, money-making executive will have a certain shaped head and hand. A number of money-making executives were picked at random and their physical characteristics charted. We do not find that they conform at all to any law. Also, we found men who had physical characteristics that ought to make them executives, but they were anything but executives. A number of tests of this kind gave negative results. We were forced to the conclusion that this system was not reliable." It is of exceeding great importance for us to know whether the conclusion of Dean Schneider is to be accepted as final. He is a man of high attainment and has done some most remarkable and highly commendable work in connection with continuation schools in the city of Cincinnati. His opinion and conclusion, therefore, are worthy of the most careful consideration. At first glance, Dean Schneider's method of investigation seems sound and his statement, therefore, conclusive. He examined actual cases; he collected evidence, and he found that physical characteristics were not a reliable guide to aptitudes and character. It is well for us, however, to remember in discussing problems of this kind, that every new scientific discovery has always been rejected by many recognized authorities after what they considered to be careful and convincing tests. Harvey nearly died in trying to maintain his theory of the circulation of the blood; Darwin's theory was insistently repudiated and rejected by many scientific men of his day; Galilo, Columbus, Boillard, the discoverer of the convolution of Broca, and Stevenson, the inventor of the steam locomotive engine, failed to convince the recognized authorities of their times. Gall, who localized the motor functions of the brain, a discovery universally accepted by all brain physiologists today, was laughed out of court by men of the highest scientific authority, who, by experiments, "proved" that he was wrong. So great a mathematician and scientist as Professor Simon Newcomb made the emphatic remark that the dream of flight in a heavier-than-air machine was absurd and would never be realized. The difficulty with all these conclusions lay in the fact that the much-vaunted "proof" was negative in character. Nothing is easier--or more fallacious, logically--than to "prove" that a thing is _not_ so. The difficulty lies in proving that it _is_ so; therefore, logically sound.