r, as with a better
adjustment of the material, the demands would steadily increase; but
it could at least be predicted with high probability that this lack of
really fit material would not be felt so keenly everywhere if the
really decisive factor for the adjustment of personality and vocation,
namely, the dispositions of the mind, were not so carelessly ignored.

Society, to be sure, has a convenient means of correction. The
individual tries, and when he is doing his work too badly, he loses
his job, he is pushed out from the career which be has chosen, with
the great probability that he will be crushed by the wheels of social
life. It is a rare occurrence for the man who is a failure in his
chosen vocation, and who has been thrown out of it, to happen to come
into the career in which he can make a success. Social statistics show
with an appalling clearness what a burden and what a danger to the
social body is growing from the masses of those who do not succeed and
who by their lack of success become discouraged and embittered. The
social psychologist cannot resist the conviction that every single
one could have found a place in which he could have achieved something
of value for the commonwealth. The laborer, who in spite of his best
efforts shows himself useless and clumsy before one machine, might
perhaps have done satisfactory work in the next mill where the
machines demand another type of mental reaction. His psychical rhythm
and his inner functions would be able to adjust themselves to the
requirements of the one kind of labor and not to those of the other.
Truly the whole social body has had to pay a heavy penalty for not
making even the faintest effort to settle systematically the
fundamental problem of vocational choice, the problem of the psychical
adaptation of the individuality. An improvement would lie equally in
the interest of those who seek positions and those who have positions
to offer. The employers can hope that in all departments better work
will be done as soon as better adapted individuals can be obtained;
and, on the other hand, those who are anxious to make their working
energies effective may expect that the careful selection of individual
mental characters for the various tasks of the world will insure not
only greater success and gain, but above all greater joy in the work,
deeper satisfaction, and more harmonious unfolding of the personality.

V

SCIENTIFIC VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE