When you learn, for example, that a blonde is more volatile, more fond of change and variety, more inclined to pioneering and government, than the brunette, you have learned an important law. When you study carefully the history of the evolution of the blonde and brunette races, you know why the law is as it is. But when you have gone out and observed several hundred blondes and several hundred brunettes and have seen them manifest dispositions, aptitudes and characteristics in accordance with the law, you have not only demonstrated the law to your own satisfaction, but you understand it even better than before. Furthermore, you are far better able than ever to determine the characteristics of the people you meet, as indicated by their color. ANALYZE YOURSELF There are many good reasons why the very first application of the knowledge of the principles and laws of character analysis should be to yourself. While, in one sense, you know your own thoughts and feelings and innermost desires and ambitions better than anyone else does, in another and very important sense, your friends and relatives probably understand you far better than you understand yourself. If you need any demonstration of this truth, look for it amongst your relatives and friends. You may have a relative, for example, who is very modest, retiring and diffident, who lacks self-confidence, who imagines that he is unattractive, unintelligent, and below the average in ability. You and all the rest of his friends, on the other hand, know that he has genuine talent, that he has an unusually attractive personality once his self-consciousness has been laid aside, that he is intelligent and far above the average in ability. Contrariwise, you may know someone who vastly over-estimates himself, whose own opinion of himself is at least fifty per cent higher than that of his relatives and immediate acquaintances. If other people, therefore, do not understand themselves, is it not at least probable that you do not understand yourself? So universal is this lack of self-under standing that the poet expressed a real human longing when he said: "Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us And foolish notion: What airs in dress and gait wad lea'e us And even devotion!" Careful analysis of yourself, however, with your own intimate knowledge of the depths of your being will do more than give you an understanding of your own character. It will give you a better understanding of some, at least, of the laws and principles of character analysis. For this reason, it will also give you a far more intimate understanding of others. COMPARE INDICATIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS