THE METHOD OP AGE GRADATION 91 



some cases a product of external conditions, in par- 

 ticular of poor home conditions, neglect, change of 

 residence and school, long illness, etc. In other 

 cases, however, what is lacking is something in- 

 ternal: those volitional attributes that must supple- 

 ment intelligence to produce useful men are not de- 

 veloped to the same degree as the intelligence. 

 There are, then, the morally feeble-minded: "chil- 

 dren of this type, as one might expect, shirk their 

 lessons, are up to all sorts of mischief in the class, 

 are quite unaffected by punishments, and so forth, 

 so that, despite good intelligence, they more or less 

 often fail of promotion. Those cases in which these 

 mental anomalies are accompanied by intellectual 

 deficiency of a small degree prove to be especially 

 unpropitious (Kramer, 54, p. 31). 



5. Points of View for the Reorganization and Im- 

 provement of the Gradation Method 



Our discussion has revealed already a series of 

 more or less serious defects in the Binet-Simon 

 method, nor have these defects been removed by the 

 revision made by Binet himself in 1911. Nearly 

 every user of the method has called attention to 

 weaknesses of some sort in it; moreover, many do 

 more than merely criticize ; they make proposals for 

 modifying or supplementing the method, or even 

 make use themselves without more ado of modified 

 methods of conducting the tests at this or that point. 



But it would become a very serious matter if in- 

 dividual investigators, on mere grounds of personal 

 preference or chance bits of criticism, should be for- 

 ever making changes in an instrument of investiga- 



