692 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION L. 
established at once an objective standard by means of which all mental process 
may be understood and manipulated. So scientific is his system that he claims 
that the interaction of the ideas may be calculated in certain cases by a simple 
application of the rule of three. With Herbart, Psychology has certainly been 
raised to the rank of a science; but unfortunately it has to be admitted that his 
objective standard has been illegitimately assumed. ; 
Just as Psychology utilises Physiology in its effort to gain a standing as a 
science, so Education is inclined to use Psychology. Frequently we hear Psycho- 
logy described as a science, while Education is relegated to a place among the 
arts. It is natural, therefore, for the educator who wishes to claim rank in 
science to appropriate the scientific status of his auxiliary science. As a matter 
of fact Education has captured Psychology. This is only one of many cases in 
which a profession has taken possession of an abstract study, and in this way 
enabled the abstract study to make real progress. ‘l'heology as a study has gained 
greatly by the fact that it is a compulsory subject for those who are preparing 
for a great profession. Astronomy owes a great deal to the support it has re- 
ceived from its practical value to navigators. Physiology would not be what it 
is to-day had it not become an essential subject in the preparation for the practice 
of medicine. Physiologists sometimes complain that their subject is hampered 
by its professors having to waste time in teaching mere medical students; it is 
well to remember, however, that but for the demands of the medical profession 
Physiology would have been left to the few private investigators who might be 
able at their own cost to carry on under adverse conditions the work that is now 
being done in thousands of well-equipped laboratories. In the same way it is 
greatly to the advantage of Psychology that it has become an essential part of 
the professional training of teachers. The subject is now receiving an amount 
of attention that it would never have had but for the support of its connection 
with the profession of teaching. But after all a teacher is not a mere psycholo- 
gist : Education is more than applied Psychology. If lducation is to rank as 
a science it cannot be in virtue of its use of another study that itself has an 
insecure foothold among the sciences. It must establish for itself an objective 
standatd. 
Mere quantitative manipulation of the elements of a study, if only carried 
out on a sufficiently large scale, has a tendency to evolve an objective standard, 
apart from any deliberate search for such a standard. We may gather something 
from an examination of a standard of this kind that, unexpected and unsought, 
evolved itself in the ordinary course of educational administration. What Binet 
and his colleagues and followers have been trying to do of set purpose was, to 
some extent at least, accomplished automatically by the working of the system 
of individual examinations under the English and Scotch Codes of Elementary 
Education. Binet has drawn up certain tables with the express purpose of 
testing the intelligence of children at various ages. But we are only at the 
threshold of investigation work of this kind, and the tests cannot be regarded as 
satisfactory, either in themselves or in their application. But they have been 
drawn up with the deliberate purpose of supplying,a more or less objective 
standard of intelligence. Now in the British Elementary School Codes we have 
the examination requirements from the pupils of different ages set out in a series 
of tables each corresponding to one of the seven grades known technically as 
‘standards.’ The purpose of these tables of requirements was not primarily to 
determine the intelligence of the pupils, but rather to indicate certain minimum 
amounts of information that had to be communicated in consideration of a certain 
money payment. Yet these tables bear a generic resemblance to those of, Binet, 
and in actual practice the ‘standards’ did win acceptance as a test of*intelli- 
gence. The requirements were perhaps less scientifically determined than are 
those of Binet’s tests, but their practical value was very much greater, because 
of the extremely wide range of their application. 
When the Codes had been in working order for a score of years it became 
evident to thoughtful observers that there had arisen a standard of comparison 
among pupils in elementary schools that was gradually being recognised all over 
the country. It was an objective standard, as was shown by the fact that each of 
the standards began to have a meaning of its own, apart from the individual 
school in which a particular pupil happened to be found. No doubt there were 
differences in detail. A Standard III. boy in one school would be found to have 
