20 PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS OP TESTING INTELLIGENCE 



pie : suppose that a subject has made a good record 

 in the filling out of gaps in a text (Ebbinghaus* com- 

 pletion test), does this good performance depend 

 predominantly upon a real capacity for logical com- 

 bination? Or upon a specially large vocabulary! 

 Or upon a fine feeling for language? Or upon prac- 

 tise in guessing riddles? 



The only way to analyze out from this fused re- 

 sultant the ability we are after in this case, for in- 

 stance, the ability to effect combinations is obviously 

 to add several more tests of a different kind that 

 will also involve the process of combining, but that 

 will in addition involve mental processes of quite 

 different sorts. Correspondences that may appear 

 in the results of these different tests may then be 

 ascribed with probability to their common factor- 

 in our example, to the ability to effect combinations. 

 The ability sought for must, therefore, be plotted, 

 as it were, from different positions. 



Too little. But suppose that we have succeeded 

 in determining a subject's ability to make combina- 

 tions not by a single test but by a smaller number of 

 different ' combination 7 tests, have we then meas- 

 ured his intelligence? By no means, for we have 

 now determined far too little. Intelligence, it is to 

 be noted, means an all-round ability; it refers to 

 the general mental attitude toward new demands, 

 and combining is only one side of this attitude. The 

 other sides possess equal significance, e. g., the 

 grasping by consciousness of a newly presented ob- 

 ject (apprehension, apperception, understanding), 

 the dividing of a whole into its parts (analysis), the 

 taking of an intellectual attitude toward a content 



