THE METHOD OF AGE GRADATION 85 



(b) Relation to the several tests. It must not be 

 thought that the significance of the Binet-Simon 

 method for the study of feeble-mindedness is re- 

 stricted to the possibility of grading them quanti- 

 tatively. Perhaps even more important than this 

 is the qualitative analysis of the individual subject 

 that the method allows and the discovery of how the 

 several tests have participated in the final values. 

 Chotzen's investigation, the first to attack this prob- 

 lem, has shown how confusingly many special prob- 

 lems and matters of interest are to be unearthed in 

 this field. 



At the very outset, for example, there is thrust 

 insistently upon us the question : Have we any right 

 at all to equate a 10-year-old feeble-minded child 

 with a 7-year-old normal child just because the re- 

 sult of testing gives him a mental age of 7 years: 

 in other words, can we say that feeble-mindedness 

 is actually mere ' backwardness/ It is, indeed, quite 

 often asserted that this expression is misleading 

 because feeble-mindedness is something qualita- 

 tively different from normality. But the Binet- 

 Simon method makes it possible for us to work out 

 the comparison between the two mental conditions 

 exactly. 



And in fact comparison does show that the mental 

 age of 7 years is not reached in the tests in quite the 

 same way that the normal 7-year-old child reaches 

 the same mental age, for the area of irregular dis- 

 tribution is very much wider with the feeble-minded 

 than ivith the normal child. Bobertag, in an as yet 

 unpublished discussion, reckons the distribution at 

 twice the area of that of a normal child. In other 



