Amjune,rilnarm' \  Examination  as  a  Measure  of  Ability.  37 S 
ant."  Perhaps  this  is  so,  and  perhaps  this  fact  is  made  plain  by  just 
such  a  test  as  Mr.  Edison  applied  if  rightly  interpreted.  The  kind 
of  questions  used  by  Mr.  Edison  are  apparently  of  the  general  in- 
formation type.  This  type  of  questionnaire  is  found  as  one  of  the 
subdivisions  of  the  Alpha  Army  Intelligence  Test,  to  which  a  mil- 
lion or  more  American  youths  were  subjected  while  in  the  training 
camps  during  the  war. 
Information  for  its  own  sake  is  of  little  value.  It  is  ordinarily 
regarded  as  haphazard  or  casual  as  opposed  to  knowledge  which  is 
accurate  and  systematic.  Learning  is  superior  to  information  and  is  the 
result  of  study:  Wisdom  is  said  to  be  applied  knowledge.  Informa- 
tion therefore  may  be  looked  upon  as  an  amorphous  form  of  knowl- 
edge and  as  such  is  one  of  the  fundamental  factors  of  wisdom;. 
Exposure  to  sources  of  information  does  not  always  result  in 
the  infection  of  the  individual,  else  proofreaders  would  be  among 
the  wisest  in  the  land  or  the  best  informed,  which  they  usually  are 
not. 
If  one  studies  Mr.  Edison's  questionnaire,  however,  one  is  im- 
pressed by  the  fact  that  it  can  be  resolved  into  a  number  of  groups 
of  allied  or  associated  questions  concerned  with  such  subjects  as 
physics,  chemistry,  geography,  history  and  literature  to  mention  the 
most  outstanding. 
Is  it  not  possible,  therefore,  that  Mr.  Edison  by  picking  out  the 
answers  to  certain  questions  and  groups  of  questions  may  be  able  to 
classify  his  applicants  according  to1  their  predilections  and  hobbies? 
And  is  it  not  also  possible  that,  when  one  finds  a  large  number  of 
applicants  whose  knowledge  is  so  vague  and  incomplete  that  no  single 
subject  is  even  passably  covered,  a  conclusion  could  be  drawn  similar 
to  that  expressed  by  Mr.  Edison? 
All  of  the  critics  of  Mr.  Edison's  questionnaire  have  assumed  that 
he  was  trying  to  find  men  who  were  capable  of  making  a  perfect 
mark.  This  is  to  be  doubted.  What  he  was  probably  trying  to  do 
was  to  find  men  who  knew  all  about  some  one  subject,  and  in  addi- 
tion had  a  fairly  wide  range  of  general  information.  A  man  who 
could  answer  all  of  the  questions  would  probably  be  shunned  by  Mr. 
Edison  himself. 
Mr.  Edison  is  too  smart  a  man  to  waste  time  trying  to  find  out 
unnecessary  things.    "Methinks  there  is  a  method  in  his  madness." 
Charles  H.  La  Wall. 
