286 GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



with circumspection and in some cases with independent 

 verification by Dr. Goddard. 



The importance of such an investigation as this is shown, 

 according to Goddard, by many facts. 



First. Feeble-mindedness is much commoner than most 

 persons suppose, understanding the feeble-minded to include 

 all persons congenitally of such low intelligence that they are 

 either unable to care for themselves or are incapable of 

 managing their own affairs with ordinary prudence. God- 

 dard believes that the feeble-minded are individuals of 

 arrested or undeveloped mentality and are thus quite differ- 

 ent from the insane, who show pathological mentality. A 

 feeble-minded person has the undeveloped mind of a child; 

 an insane person may have attained mental maturity and 

 then lost it again, his mentality having degenerated. Feeble- 

 mindedness and insanity may coexist in the same individual 

 but they are due to distinct agencies. Feeble-mindedness, 

 according to Goddard, characterizes a large proportion of 

 such persons as become public charges as paupers, drunkards, 

 or criminals. 



The method now generally employed of grading the intelli- 

 gence of individuals is known as the Binet test, from the 

 Frenchman who devised it. It consists of giving the indi- 

 vidual a series of standardized tasks to perform of increasing 

 difficulty as regards the demands on intelligence. The results 

 of these tests are graded in terms of the average performance 

 of normal children of particular ages. Thus a feeble-minded 

 person may show the mentality of a nonnal child of any age 

 from one year to twelve years, and is spoken of as mentally 

 of age one, two, three, etc. Tests of intelligence made by the 

 Binet method upon juvenile criminals in various state refor- 

 matories show that a large proportion of the inmates are of 

 abnormally low intelligence, i. e., are feeble-minded. In 

 New Jersey the proportion reported feeble-minded as indi- 

 cated by Binet tests is 46 per cent; in Ohio 70 per cent; in 

 Virginia 79 per cent; and in Illinois 89 per cent. Probably 

 50 per cent would be a conservatively low general estimate 



