5 
view our manner of rearing humans 
from the environmental standpoint 
alone. The first big fact that we meet 
—a fact easily demonstrable by any- 
one who will go from the silent streets 
of the thrifty to the swarming alleys of 
the thriftless—is that at least three- 
quarters of all children are born to liv- 
ing conditions well below those of the 
average, as measured, not by wealth, 
but by the quality of the parents,— 
while a scant one-quarter have the ad- 
vantage of homes above the average. 
Now what enthusiast for the power 
of environment would deliberately 
raise most of his flowers and chickens 
under adverse conditions? Yet this 
is exactly what we are doing with the 
human _ species. 
So from the viewpoint of either 
heredity or environment our method 
of perpetuating humankind is a com- 
32 The Journal of Heredity 
plete reversal of nature’s scheme for 
maintaining quality of species. We 
may be drifting slowly, but we are 
drifting—toward a depreciated race. 
The histories of Babylon, Egypt, 
Greece and Rome show us that each, 
in its turn, went to its final blaze of 
glory with its population reduced to a 
vast mass of mediocrity—a huge, in- 
coherent proletariat, ridden by a hand- 
ful of plutocrats whose culture savors 
of a splendid degeneracy. 
Is such to be our end, generations 
hence? Nobody knows. All we really 
know is that we are following the 
beaten path of the ages. Yet we need 
not follow it a day longer than we 
choose. And the first move toward 
regenerating the race is to cut off unfit 
parenthood. Rid the race of the half- 
man, and human misery, in a well- 
ordered country like America, will be 
more than cut in half. 
Tests of Intelligence and Achievement 
STANDARD EDUCATIONAL TESTS, ar- 
ranged and standardized by M. E. 
Haggerty, professor of Educational 
Psychology at the University of 
Minnesota. Yonkers-on-Hudson, the 
World Book Co., 1920. 
“With the extension of educational 
investigation it is becoming apparent,” 
says Professor Haggerty in his Manual 
of Directions accompanying these tests, 
“that too little attention is being paid 
to the native intelligence of children. 
Attention was first directed to the 
matter through the presence in the 
schools of a considerable number of 
mentally defective and in some cases 
feebleminded children. These children 
presented serious problems to teachers 
and forced themselves upon the atten- 
tion of superintendents and others. 
The result was the organization of 
special classes for teaching them and 
the development of special testing 
methods for their proper classification. 
“More recently attention has been 
called to the presence in the school of a 
number of superior children. The num- 
ber of these is probably as great as that 
of the backward and feebleminded. 
The work of Terman, Whipple, and 
others shows that such pupils can be 
identified through the use of intelli- 
gence tests and that they can with 
profit to themselves and to others be 
separated from the regular classes and 
be taught as a special group.” 
Professor Haggerty has followed the 
example of numerous other psycholo- 
gists in preparing tests suitable for the 
different grades in school. They are 
based largely on the army tests.—P. P. 
