228 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
vocational guidance. It is the duty of the community, first, to ascertain 
what is the mental level of each individual child; then, to give him the 
education most appropriate to his level; and, lastly, before it leaves 
him, to guide him into the career for which his measure of intelligence 
has marked him out. 
Of this programme, the educational part is already in execution. 
For the lowest section, the mentally deficient, we have begun to provide 
special schools and residential homes; and, thanks to the advances of 
individual psychology, the means of diagnosis are now exact and just. 
There is a similar but newer movement towards the institution of special 
classes for the dull and backward. It is from this larger horde of 
moderate dullards, not from the tiny sprinkling of the definitely defective, 
that the bulk of our inefficient adults—criminals, paupers, mendicants, 
and the great army of the unemployable—are ultimately derived. Nor 
will it do to confine official assistance solely to the inferior groups. The 
supernormal should also enjoy a special measure of care and treatment. 
Much is done for them by awarding free places at central and secondary 
schools. But both the methods for detecting them and the opportunities 
for educating them still admit of much improvement. Already in several 
foreign countries schools have been established for Begabte Kinder. In 
Berlin, the brightest children from the whole of the city are selected by 
means of psychological tests, and brought together at an early age to a 
special centre for individual supervision and training. 
The determination of intelligence is equally indispensable for proper 
vocational guidance. Respecting intelligence, indeed, vocational psycho- 
logists seem unanimous that, as it is the easiest, so also it is the first and 
foremost factor to be tested. The worst misfits arise, not from forcing 
round pegs into square holes, but from placing large pegs in little holes, 
and small pegs in holes too big for them to fill. We have already seen 
that different occupational groups have different intellectual levels. For 
nearly every type of employment there exists a certain minimum of 
intelligence, below which a man is pretty sure to fail. For many, if not 
most, there is also, in all probability, an optimal upper limit. Just 
as some men are too dull for their jobs, so others are too clever. Hence, 
in the interests of the employer and of the employment, as well as of 
the employee and the general community, it is a blunder always to pick 
the brightest candidate who applies for a given job. 
In this country, for the purposes of vocational selection, the most 
extensive application of intelligence-testing has been the introduction 
of a psychological ‘ group-test ’ into recent Civil Service examinations. 
The papers, comprising five or six graded speed-tests of well-known 
types, have been drawn up, after experimentation, by professional 
psychologists. Some 40,000 candidates have been. tested in this way. 
And the calculated correlations demonstrate that the results of the new 
methods agree, both with the total marks from the whole examination 
and with subsequent reports on office-efficiency received from Govern- 
ment departments, more closely than any other single paper set. 
Incidentally, the extensive data so secured ratify conclusions reached 
in other countries and by different means—namely, that the range of 
intelligence among adults is quite as wide as that observed among 
