Good Qualities are Correlated 



85 



answer — that there is practically no 

 chance whatever of injury from select- 

 ive breeding within a race for intellect, 

 or for morality, or for mental health 

 and balance, or for energy, or for con- 

 structive ingenuity and skill — no risk 

 that the improvement of any one of 

 these will cause injury to any of them, 

 or to physical health or happiness." 



Among investigations tending to sup- 

 port this theory may be mentioned that 

 of Krueger and Spearman, reported in 

 the Zcitschriff fiir Psychologic in 1906. 

 The tests made by these authors were 

 five in number, and it should be noted 

 that they were of a nature involving 

 very dissimilar mental faculties. The 

 five tests were as follows : 



1. Distinction between pitches of 

 given tones. 



2. Combination of fragments of 

 printed texts. 



3. Establishment of the limits of the 

 sense of touch. 



4. Addition of figures. 



5. Ease of committing to memory 

 successive series of numbers. 



In spite of the wide difference be- 

 tween having an ear especially sensitive 

 to musical tones, and a brain quick at 

 adding figures, the experimentees, who 

 were brilliant in one of these five di- 

 rections, were found on the average to 

 be brilliant in the other four. 



Recent confirmation of this theory is 

 furnishel by W. H. Pyle in the Septem- 

 ber, 1918, number of the Journal of De- 

 linquency. He shows, in his article 

 "The Relation of Mental to Physical 

 Development," that there is good evi- 

 dence that brighter children are also 

 both anatomically and physiologically 

 superior to children of mediocre men- 

 tality and that they are physically su- 

 perior to their duller schoolmates to an 

 even greater degree.^ 



The same issue of the Journal of De- 

 linquency has further evidence bearing 

 on the question of correlations within 



individuals. Willis W. Clark, who is a 

 field-worker in the Whittier State 

 School for Truants, Whittier, Califor- 

 nia, finds that one-fourth of the white, 

 one-half of the colored, and one-half of 

 the Mexican Indian boys, committed to 

 the school were definitely feeble- 

 minded. Only 17.7 per cent of the 

 total number committed were of aver- 

 age-normal or superior intelligence. 



Further proof is to be found in the 

 July number of Mental Jiygiene (page 

 445). Here Jessie D. Hodder, Superin- 

 tendent of the Reformatory for Women, 

 Framingham, Massachusetts, presents 

 statistics which show a slight though 

 measurable correlation between intel- 

 lectual superiority and freedom from 

 nervous defect. All of the 5,310 cases 

 were women committed to the insti- 

 tution for some form of criminality. 

 The author has classified these indi- 

 viduals into six grades for mentality, 

 (imbecile, moron, subnormal, dull, fair, 

 and good). The method used in classi- 

 fying is not given, but inasmuch as the 

 material is presented for a purpose 

 other than proving that good qualities 

 are correlated, we may assume that the 

 author has no bias towards such a 

 theory, and we may at least examine the 

 statistics from this standpoint. The 

 percentages of these criminal women 

 who show some form of nervous or 

 mental defect is very high (63.6 per 

 cent) and is itself a manifestation of the 

 joining together of bad qualities. 

 Furthermore, if we sum up the two 

 highest classes in mental grades we find 

 1,837 persons showing only 39 per cent 

 free from nervous defect, while the 

 three lowest mental classes, 2,390 in 

 number, give an even worse record, or 

 only 34 per cent, free from some one of 

 the four forms of defect here classified 

 under the categories, neuropaths, psy- 

 chopaths, epileptics and hysterical. 



Psychologists have also made tests 

 upon school children and college stu- 



3 See also "Body and Alind," in the Journ.\l of Heredity for June, 1917, Vol. viii, 

 p. 286. 



