Harry L. Hollingworth

“ Just as the value of a commodity depends entirely on what, as a matter of fact, people can be persuaded to pay for it, so the beauty, conceit, neatness, etc., of an individual are mainly constituted by the kind of impression the individual makes on those about him. At least we may be sure that only to the degree that such traits actually manifest themselves and thus determine the reactions of others toward the individual concerned, only to that degree do the traits have vocational significance. Lovableness is just the degree to which people actually have affection for us ”

“ One might just as significantly criticize the literary style of a mathematician or a logician as the technique of an artist. Such criticisms, to be sure, have a legitimate place in life. But the critic of the mathematician’s literary style should not delude himself into the belief that he is discussing mathematics, nor the critic of the artist’s technique fancy that he is dealing with his art. ”

“ The vital import of heredity—practically expressed in the eugenic movement—finds recognition in the study of correlation of traits in those near of kin. Evolution leads to prediction; early taste, talent, achievement, precocity foreshadow ultimate capacity; we learn how far the child is father to the man, how far we may see the future in the early expressions and with what limitations the environment molds character. The most valued because most authentic type of biography is autobiography. Self-analysis is intimate if unreliable, but by this token worthy of study. ”

“ By average intelligence we do not of course imply any uniform or standardized homogeneous equipment. We mean those varying degrees of intellectual proficiency, educative docility, social coöperativeness and instinctive adequacy which fill the major section of the curve of distribution, that between the feeble-minded and obviously stupid, on the one hand, and on the other the genius, with special and distinguished traits or capacities.
In these occupations the degree of intelligence is by no means the sole determinant of either successful or satisfactory performance. ”

“ And no one wishes to, for psychology in a sense has become the intellectual handmaiden of all who think in terms of to-day, with to-day’s amazing development of insight into the mortal meanings of our very selves, body always as well as soul. ”

“ In our commonplace judgments about ourselves and others we say: 'I have no ear for music.' 'I cannot tell a chord from a discord.' 'I cannot keep time.' 'I have no sense of rhythm.' 'I cannot tell a two-step from a waltz.' 'I cannot remember music.' 'I cannot image sounds.' 'I am not moved by music.' 'I do not enjoy music.' Or, if speaking of someone who has musical ability, we say: 'He has a deep, rich voice.' 'He never forgets an air.' 'He lives in song.' Such judgments have reference to generally admitted specific factors involved in musical capacity by virtue of a musical organization. ”

“ Adaptation and Fatigue Curious phenomena in the case of all the senses are those known as adaptation and fatigue. It is a familiar experience that the illumination of a room which seems upon entrance to be yellowish quickly comes to appear merely light. After a few minutes wearing colored goggles the tinge they give to objects seems to disappear and we say we have become “adapted” to the color. “We become rapidly adapted to a constant stimulus so that we fail to notice the weight of our hats, the temperature of the room we are in, the odors of the subway.” ”

“ If it is true that with practice all tests correlate with one another, so that an individual who is good in one type of work is also, when his practice level has been reached, good in other types of work, the task of vocational psychology is at once enormously simplified. In place of further search for special occupational tests adapted in some peculiar way to particular types of work, our task is rather that of extending the general intelligence scales until they represent higher and higher degrees of general ability. ”

“ The artist desires, above all, to eliminate our own immediate and instinctive reactions to his materials. In so far as he is an artist, he is not satisfied with presenting to us a pleasing array of sense materials. His main concern is in communicating to his observers some situation, some theme, some state of affairs, some meaning, some purely relational fact. Such emotions as are stirred in us he does not wish to come from his mere materials, but from his own manipulation of them, from the form or pattern which he gives them, from the meaning which he thereby conveys to us. ”

“ It thus appears that even perception, the consciousness, as we call it, of outer things, is a consciousness of other selves as sharing our experience, a relatively altruistic, not an exclusively egoistic mode of consciousness. This is the reason why we usually speak of sight and hearing and smell as higher senses—and in the order named—than taste and the dermal sense experiences. Vision is the sense most readily shared by any number of selves: for example, everybody within a very wide area may see the mountain on the horizon or the Milky Way in the evening sky. ”