84 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science. 
understand no more than a normal child of eight who, it happens, is 
better at reading than at anything else. 
Believing with me that the mental level determines the ability of 
the feeble-minded individual, I may mention in passing the three great 
levels at which we classify subnormal mentality. There is first and 
lowest, the Idiot, who attains a mental ability equal to that of babies 
one and two years old. Some idiots can feed themselves and move about 
as smart babies do—others cannot. Many idiots of mature age are as 
helpless and as dirty as tiny babies. The Imbecile rises a little higher 
in the scale—he attains to a mind like that of normal children from 
three up to eight years of age. Low-grade imbeciles play a little, show 
interest in their surroundings and can make known their physical needs. 
As we come higher in the scale of imbecility we find these aments able 
to do simple routine tasks and run easy errands. Above the imbeciles 
are the Morons—those whose mental power resembles that of children 
from eight up to twelve years of age. These Morons can do simple 
tasks with only a little supervision—they make good household helpers 
(not managers)—they can run machinery and often work without super- 
vision—but they cannot plan. The difference between the occupational 
ability in low, middle and high-grade Morons is almost as startling as 
the vivid contract between normal and defective. 
Mental level or “mental age” is a result of a gradual slowing up 
and final and complete stoppage of mental development. The limitations 
manifest themselves between infancy and adolescence, leaving the sub- 
normal individuals at a mental standstill somewhere between infancy 
and twelve years of age, while their bodies go on with the passing of 
the years, and the evolution of physical phenomena makes them men 
and women in the flesh while still they are children in the mind. 
For nearly a year I have helped to search the highways and towns 
of certain counties of Indiana to find these defectives. They have not 
been hard to find, because they are to be found everywhere. Every 
State has them; no community escapes; no kind or amount of industry 
can free you from them; no legal rigor can expel them (except to some 
other community). Your State needs a farm colony—it needs more 
than one—for the feeble-minded. I can tell you of one place in a beauti- 
ful town where you would have a colony ready-made by building a fence 
around the slums. There is a section of about twelve blocks where in 
every one of the fifty houses there is defect of one kind or another— 
pauperism, syphilitic infirmities, and immorelity walking hand in hand 
with feeble-mindedness. Some of the homes are clean, some are too 
filthy to talk about. There are about eight family names represented 
in this community and they all belong to each other somehow. As one 
old Moron woman said, “Yes, mom, we air all kin here. I jest found 
