336 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



shrugged their shoulders and wore that gently derisive smile which is so irritating ; 

 a few scoffed openly ; and the rest, surmising that it was " some new dodge for 

 finding out whether you are stupid or not," placidly left them uncut. 



Now, Prof. Findlay claims that, though Binet-Simon Method textbooks have 

 appeared, " this work by Prof. Terman is the first comprehensive and detailed 

 account prepared for the use of educators in dealing with school-children " 

 (Preface, p. v). 



Unfortunately, dealings with red tape nowadays curtail some teachers' oppor- 

 tunities and energies for dealing with their proper objective — children. But if, as 

 Prof. Findlay suggests, these methods are upon us, let them be weighed, for if 

 unsound they may prove disastrous, educationally and socially. 



Part I of this book describes, in seven chapters, the Binet-Simon theory with 

 its " Stanford-revision," attempting to justify its use in general, and its results in 

 particular. Part II presents carefully, and rather tediously, tests for children 

 at each year between 3 and 14 ; for the " average" and for the "superior" adult. 



The " Material," eighteen cardboard sheets, consists of pictures, a colour 

 scheme and diagrams, to test observation, judgment, memory ; the latter, perhaps, 

 overrated as a sign of intelligence — certainly Montaigne would say so. 



It is fair to note that Prof. Findlay expressly states that " those who use the 

 tests make no claim that the entire mental life of the subject is comprehended 

 within the scale " ; and again, " Just as the chemist analyses a sample of milk, 

 and then sends his report to the competent authority, so the Binet-Simon tests 

 enable the psychologist to report on certain facts : the educator takes his own 

 responsibility in attaching due weight to these " (p. viii). Also, Prof. Terman 

 says : " Before offenders can be subjected to rational treatment, a mental diagnosis 

 is necessary ; and while intelligence tests do not constitute a complete psycho- 

 logical diagnosis, they are, nevertheless, its most indispensable part " (p. 11) ; and, 

 " It would be a mistake to suppose that any set of mental tests could be devised 

 which would give us complete information about a child's native intelligence " 

 (P- J 35) ; still more forcibly, " Once more let it be urged that no degree of 

 mechanical perfection of the tests can ever take the place of good judgment and 

 psychological insight. Intelligence is too complicated to be weighed, like a bag 

 of grain, by anyone who can read figures "(p. 136). Unfortunately, as so often 

 happens with propagandists, admissions, qualifications and disclaimers being 

 made are afterwards, apparently, forgotten or abandoned. 



But even with such admissions, the book's philosophical defect is its failure to 

 appreciate the impossibility of measuring intelligence in isolation, simply because 

 it does not exist so. Biology, physiology, ethics, economics, sociology — where 

 does the list end ? — claim their shares, because the human being, it is a platitude, 

 is not only "native intelligence," but an amalgam of thought, will, feeling, inter- 

 acting, interdependent, and, moreover, swayed, changed by times and places. 

 This underrating of the extreme, often conflicting, complexity of human nature 

 persists through the book. An excellent example is Prof. Findlay's simile of the 

 sample of milk, also used by Prof. Terman. Yet no child is so homogeneous with 

 other children as is a sample of milk with the rest of which it was once a part ; 

 nor — an incalculable enhancement of difficulty — is any child so homogeneous with 

 itself, there being more continuous stability of contents in milk than in any child, 

 even the most immovably stolid. 



Prof. Terman blames a teacher for stupidity in not recognising that a child, in 

 school for months, is " deficient " ; yet, what of his own state when he proposes 

 that a period, from 25 to 60 minutes, taken at random, in artificial circumstances, 



