ESTIMATION AND TESTING OP FINER GRADATIONS 119 



would be expected, upon the behavior of the child under instruc- 

 tion, and the attempt is made, with more or less success, to dif- 

 ferentiate the strictly intellectual factors in the school work from 

 the phases that depend more on mere memory : quickness of ap- 

 prehension, ability to solve problems in applied mathematics, un- 

 derstanding of historical movements and relations, good orthog- 

 raphy, expressive reading and many other things are mentioned 

 as symptoms that serve the teachers for estimating their pupils' 

 intelligence. Finally, even the teachers themselves hit on the use 

 of the method of tests by asking of their pupils certain questions, 

 specially prepared for the purpose, the answers to which serve 

 them as a measure for guaging intelligence. 



Binet then enters into a very careful criticism of 

 these various ideas, calls attention to the strong and 

 the weak features in them, shows that the "intelli- 

 gence questions " invented for the express purpose 

 are much less useful than the tests worked out by 

 the psychologist after long years of experimentation, 

 and comes to the conclusion that the estimation of 

 intelligence by the teacher is not at all likely to 

 render the exact testing of intelligence a superfluous 

 process. It must be admitted that he might easily 

 have given more emphasis to the reverse of this 

 statement: he might have pointed out that the esti- 

 mation of intelligence may possess advantages that 

 are excluded on principle from the mere test, so that 

 the estimation may therefore be indispensable as a 

 supplement, and also in part as a control for the re- 

 sults of tests. 2 



2 This whole discussion of Binet's is couched in a light and 

 sketchy vein, but is on that account one of the prettiest examples 

 of the grace of his style and the pictorial clarity of his phrases. 

 We may cite here just two instances that are so neatly put as to 

 defy translation. Where he is speaking of the ease with which the 

 possession of information may be misinterpreted as token of in- 

 telligence, he says : "La memoire est la grande simulatrice de 

 1'intelligence." And the recommendation to watch children while 

 engaged in play as well as in school is coupled with the declara- 

 tion : "En classe ils sont denatures par la discipline." 



