nce have led to the
organization of a new applied science, "eugenics." The new science
proposes a social program for the improvement of the racial traits based
upon the investigations of breeding and physical inheritance. Research
in eugenics has been fostered by the Galton Laboratory in England, and
by the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor in the United
States. Interest has centered in the study of the inheritance of
feeble-mindedness. Studies of feeble-minded families and groups, as _The
Kallikak Family_ by Goddard, _The Jukes_ by Dugdale, and _The Tribe of
Ishmael_ by M'Culloch, have shown how mental defect enters as a factor
into industrial inefficiency, poverty, prostitution, and crime.

4. The Investigation of Human Personality

The trend of research in human nature has been toward the study of
personality. Scientific inquiry into the problems of personality was
stimulated by the observation of abnormal behavior such as hysteria,
loss of memory, etc., where the cause was not organic and, therefore,
presumably psychic. A school of French psychiatrists and psychologists
represented by Charcot, Janet, and Ribot have made signal contributions
to an understanding of the maladies of personality. Investigation in
this field, invaluable for an understanding of the person, has been made
in the study of dual and multiple personality. The work of Freud, Jung,
Adler, and others in psychoanalysis has thrown light upon the role of
mental conflict, repression, and the wishes in the growth of
personality.

In sociology, personality is studied, not only from the subjective
standpoint of its organization, but even more in its objective aspects
and with reference to the role of the person in the group. One of the
earliest classifications of "kinds of conduct" has been ascribed by
tradition to a disciple of Aristotle, Theophrastus, who styled himself
"a student of human nature." _The Characters of Theophrastus_ is
composed of sketches--humorous and acute, if superficial--of types such
as "the flatterer," "the boor," "the coward," "the garrulous man." They
are as true to modern life as to the age of Alexander. Chief among the
modern imitators of Theophrastus is La Bruyere, who published in 1688
_Les caracteres, ou les moeurs de ce siecle_, a series of essays on
the manners of his time, illustrated by portraits of his contemporaries.

Autobiography and biography provide source material for the study both
of the subject