WHITE AND COLORED CHILDREN 79 



ored children. A rough classification into three groups, according to 

 color — dark, medium, light — showed that the darkest children are more 

 nearly normal, the lightest show the greatest variation, both above and 

 below normal. 



The limitations of the study are evident. It is but a crude begin- 

 ning of a subject that will doubtless soon be opened up and made to 

 yield interesting and profitable data. It need not be pointed out what 

 radical changes would have to take place in our educational theory and 

 practise, as well as in our social philosophy, if it should be shown con- 

 clusively that races differ in mental capacity and aptitude just as they 

 do in physical appearance. No final conclusions, however, are here of- 

 fered, nor is any attempt made to settle once and for all the question of 

 race superiority or inferiority. That requires investigation along many 

 lines hardly opened up as yet. But this much we' may surely conclude 

 from the above study: that negro children from six to twelve and pos- 

 sibly fifteen years are mentally different, and also younger than south- 

 ern white children of corresponding ages, and that this condition is 

 partly due, at least, to causes that are native or racial. That is, if MM. 

 Binet and Simon had originally tested southern negro children they 

 would have worked out from the results a scale which would have been 

 different from their present one in several respects, and which when ap- 

 plied to southern white children would be found to be, for the most part, 

 a year or more too young, though possibly there would be some tests 

 which would yield the opposite results. 



Perhaps some day each branch of the human family will have a 

 Binet scale of its own. Then, by a wholesale interchange of tests, as 

 we do now with professors, it will be possible to determine wherein a 

 given people are proficient and wherein deficient; and later, perhaps, 

 by adding coefficients and credits to settle mooted questions of racial 

 rank. But this again belongs to the realm of speculation. 



Probably the point of greatest value brought out by this study is that 

 perchance a key has been found in the Binet scale which will prove of 

 the greatest service in the solution of problems in contemporary folk- 

 psychology and race and social adjustments. Certain it is that these 

 important human problems need the spirit, methods and instruments 

 of science applied to them. The Binet scale is the first instrument that 

 has appeared. 



