tories can furnish them with really
reliable means and schemes. Certainly it is very important, for
instance, that boys with weak lungs be kept away from such industrial
vocations as have been shown by the statistics to be dangerous for the
lungs, or that the onrush to vocations be stopped where the statistics
allow it to be foreseen that there will soon be an oversupply of
workers. But, after all, it remains much more decisive for the welfare
of the community, and for the future life happiness of those who leave
the school, that every one turn to those forms of work to which his
psychological traits are adjusted, or at least that he be kept away
from those in which his mental qualities and dispositions would make a
truly successful advance improbable.

The problem accordingly has been handed over from the vocational
counselors to the experimental psychologists, and it is certainly in
the spirit of the modern tendency toward applied psychology that the
psychological laboratories undertake the investigation and withdraw it
from the dilettantic discussion of amateur psychologists or the mere
impressionism of the school-teachers. Even those early beginnings
indicate clearly that the goal can be reached only through exact,
scientific, experimental research, and that the mere naive
methods--for instance, the filling-out of questionnaires which may be
quite useful in the first approach--cannot be sufficient for a real,
persistent furtherance of economic life and of the masses who seek
their vocations. In order to gain an analysis of the individual,
Parsons made every applicant answer in writing a long series of
questions which referred to his habits and his emotions, his
inclinations and his expectations, his traits and his experiences. The
psychologist, however, can hardly be in doubt that just the mental
qualities which ought to be most important for the vocational
counselor can scarcely be found out by such methods. We have
emphasized before that the ordinary individual knows very little of
his own mental functions: on the whole, he knows them as little as he
knows the muscles which be uses when he talks or walks. Among his
questions Parsons included such ones as: "Are your manners quiet,
noisy, boisterous, deferential, or self-assertive? Are you thoughtful
of the comfort of others? Do you smile naturally and easily, or is
your face ordinarily expressionless? Are you frank, kindly, cordial,
respectful, courteous in word a