312 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1161 



sions, that must be admitted to be very difEer- 

 ent in their practise, is unique in the whole 

 educational system of Germany. It constitutes 

 an inherent contradiction, and has gradually 

 become an unsurmountable obstacle which will 

 in all probability wreck the system that was to 

 be built on the foundation of the law of 1906. 

 The system of training that has been described 

 above has created the peculiar situation that 

 all young people who have a leaning towards 

 any one of the niimerous branches of the civil 

 service, whether by family tradition, ideals, or 

 special capacity, are forced, even against their 

 inclination for science, to devote themselves 

 completely to a legal training in order to pass 

 the first law examination, as this provides 

 practically the first documentary evidence ob- 

 tainable for admission to a civil service career 

 in the empire, the states, the communities, and 

 many other posts. This route is closed to the 

 graduates of other faculties — for instance, of 

 all the experimental sciences — by the provis- 

 ions of the above-mentioned Prussian law and 

 of similar laws in the other German states, as 

 well as by the custom that is developing in con- 

 sequence of this law of appointing lawyers for 

 administrative work. 



In consequence of the preponderating influ- 

 ence that technical questions and the require- 

 ments of industry have to-day on all branches 

 of public life and the increasing participation 

 of the provinces, communities and towns in 

 technical and scientific enterprises, civil serv- 

 ants are called upon to deal with problems the 

 expert solution of which calls for just the type 

 of mental equipment that is provided by the 

 technical high schools. The greater part of 

 the education at these institutes is not based 

 on retrospection and definition, but is directed 

 forwards and designed with a view to produc- 

 tive activity. An education among such sur- 

 roundings must give at least as good a train- 

 ing for a civil service career as an education 

 the principal aim of which is to classify the 

 particular requirements of life according to 

 legal conceptions. The knowledge of law and 

 administration that is required by civil serv- 

 ants can be acquired to-day in every technical 

 high school. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



The Measurement of Intelligence. By Lewis 



M. Teeman. Houghton, Mifflin Co., New 



York. 1916. Pp. 362. 



In the past few years the practise of what 

 is termed " clinical psychology " has tended 

 to outrun itself, in the sense that measure- 

 ments of intellect have been demanded in all 

 quarters, while methods were still tentative. 

 Binet conceived the idea of measuring mental 

 development by age levels, but he died before 

 he could perfect his work. Binet's tests were 

 not valid above the twelve-year level of intelli- 

 gence. The tests which he offered above this 

 level were almost universally discarded by clin- 

 ical workers, as failing in their purpose. An- 

 other difficulty with the original scale lay in 

 the fact that directions for giving the tests 

 were not standardized. Inasmuch as the direc- 

 tions in giving a test constitute a very im- 

 portant part of the test itself, this seriously 

 impaired the scientific value of the results ob- 

 tained in testing. Moreover, in the original 

 system no means was provided for comparing 

 the intellectual quality of a young child with 

 that of an older child. Obviously, for ex- 

 ample, a retardation of one year in a child 

 three years of age has a different meaning for 

 diagnosis and prognosis than has a retarda- 

 tion of one year in a child twelve years of age. 

 Stern had suggested the use of a relative meas- 

 ure of mentality, i. e., the quotient obtained 

 by dividing " mental age " by actual age, but 

 this method never came into general use in 

 America in connection with the original sys- 

 tem. It is true, also, as Thorndike, Brigham 

 and others have shown, that there were dis- 

 crepancies between certain of the age levels 

 as determined by Binet, and the "true" age 

 levels. These discrepancies were due, no doubt, 

 to the fact that Binet had not been able to 

 standardize his tests on a sufficient nmnber of 

 subjects. 



Goddard, Kuhlmann and other American 

 elaborators of Binet did not advance much be- 

 yond the first work in these particulars. More 

 recently Terkes, Bridges and Hardwiek in 

 their point scale have eliminated many of the 

 original crudities, and in their mental co- 



