"A group in the scientific management field affirmed that an examination of physical characteristics such as the shape of the fingers and shape of the head, disclosed aptitudes and 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 the 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." We must content ourselves on this point by insisting that the formulated facts of physiognomy are so unsupported, contradictory, and extravagant that the vocational psychologist cannot afford to trifle with them. General impressions on the basis of the totality of an individual's appearance, bearing, and behavior we shall always tend to receive. Whether one judges more accurately by an analytic recording of each detail or by ignoring these in favor of his own more or less unanalyzed total impression has never been demonstrated. Under any circumstances one is likely to look about for such details as may lend support to the total impression. But it is quite unjustifiable--though perhaps commercially expedient--to pretend that the judgment is really based on the details selected. The life of him who bases his expectations of human conduct on the physiognomy of his neighbors is bound to be full of delightful as well as fearful surprises. I shall never forget the practical lesson in the principles of physiognomics I learned when watching a shipload of immigrants pass the physical and mental examinations at Ellis Island. Admission to the new land, and to the theater of their vocational plans, depended on the results of these examinations. Ellis Island is perhaps the one place in the world where principles of individual psychology are most in demand, and where such principles as are relied on lead to results of the most serious human consequences. I watched the line file past the preliminary gate, by the inspectors who scrutinized them still more carefully, and on into the inner room where the suspected ones were submitted to more searching examination. One young woman stood out among her companions as easily the most comely and attractive of the women. She was the only one of that shipload who was finally certified as an imbecile, and refused admission to the mainland.