NATURE AND PROBLEM OF INTELLIGENCE TESTING 11 



tional bureaus that exist in America might arrange 

 psychological tests (19, 20). And Captain Meyer 

 (17, 18) sees in intelligence testing a method that 

 ought to help the recruiting office to keep unfit can- 

 didates off the enlistment rolls. 



These last considerations show that the chief em- 

 phasis of intelligence testing, which has hitherto 

 lain wholly within psychopathology, must in the 

 future be shifted distinctly toward normal psy- 

 chology : so the labor expended by psychology in se- 

 curing a reliable method will benefit not only 

 physicians and those concerned in teaching the ab- 

 normal, but also jurists, military officials, those con- 

 cerned in teaching the normal child and others. 



But just this anticipated extension of the practical 

 applicability of intelligence tests necessitates sev- 

 eral words of warning. 



(a) We are still in the midst of our preliminary 

 work on method. The methods that now prevail 

 and this is true also of the Binet-Simon system are 

 not yet to be regarded as diagnostic canons that ad- 

 mit of official prescription. The law passed in New 

 Jersey that directs the use of intelligence tests with 

 all pupils suspected of backwardness seems on this 

 account very premature. So, too, it will be long, 

 very long, before we realize the optimistic hope that 

 Spearman attaches to the correlation method of test- 

 ing intelligence, when he says: "Indeed, it seems 

 possible to foresee the day when there will be an an- 

 nual official determination of the i intellectual index ' 

 of every child in the empire " (Hart-Spearman; 75, 

 p. 78). 



(b) It must be understood that tests of intelli- 



