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note, because these races at present figure so conspicuously among our immigrants.

Dr. Carl C. Brigham of Princeton University has recently reëxamined and carefully analyzed the army data bearing on nativity and length of residence in the United States. His results have not yet been published, but I am permitted to say that, in the main, they confirm the statements of this article. He has studied with care the intelligence of immigrants for different periods of the history of our country, and has discovered rather marked diminution of intelligence, which seemingly is due to change in the proportions of immigrants from Northern and Southern Europe.

For the past ten years or so the intellectual status of immigrants has been disquietingly low. Perhaps this is because of the dominance of the Mediterranean races, as contrasted with the Nordic and Alpine.

By some people meagre intelligence in immigrants has been considered an industrial necessity and blessing; but when all the available facts are faced squarely, it looks more like a burden. Certainly the results of psychological examining in the United States Army establish the relation of inferior intelligence to delinquency and crime, and justify the belief that a country which encourages, or even permits, the immigration of simple-minded, uneducated, defective, diseased, or criminalistic persons, because it needs cheap labor, seeks trouble in the shape of public

expense.

It might almost be said that whoever desires high taxes, full almshouses, a constantly increasing number of schools for defectives, of correctional institutions, penitentiaries, hospitals, and special classes in our public schools, should by all means work for unrestricted and non-selective immigration.

VI

Crime, delinquency, and dependency, as well as educability, are intimately related to intellectual ability. For, when records of special and summary courts-martial are related to measurements of intelligence, it appears that men of low-grade intelligence are particularly prone to minor delinquencies, or infractions of military regulations. In one camp, of 929 courtmartial cases, 44 per cent were men of D-grade intelligence or lower, and less than 6 per cent of men graded A or B.

A chart used by army psychologists to exhibit graphically differences in intelligence between various groups, and to illustrate practical applications. of mental measurement, shows the following startling facts. Of men with very poor, or poor, intellectual ability, who received in the examinations D, D-, or E, there were none among commissioned officers; very few among students in officers' training-schools; less than one per cent among sergeants and corporals; something like 20 per cent among white recruits; and, by contrast with the above, among 'disciplinary cases,' men ranked by their officers as of 'low military value' or 'unteachable,' from 50 to 75 per cent. The graphic representation of these facts was impressive. It became more so as officers observed their men, and discovered for themselves that their estimates of military value agreed pretty closely with the intelligence grades supplied by the psychologist.

These figures suggest a way in which our army might have used intelligence measurements to excellent purpose. The elimination of the lowest ten per cent of the draft would have lessened by one half the waste and annoyance incident to military offenses, slowness and refractoriness in training, weakness and inefficiency.

The psychological examination of drafted men and other recruits was proposed originally as a quick, inexpensive, and reasonably sure way of discovering and eliminating men with too little intelligence to be worth training for regular military duty. But, as soon as the practical work of making psychological examinations was under way in the army, new uses of its results revealed themselves; and when the official inspector stated the purposes of examining, in his report to the Surgeon-General, he mentioned three important types: namely, the discovery and, as desirable, the elimination of the mentally defective; the classification of all men according to their intellectual ability; and assistance in the selection of men especially suitable for positions of responsibility, as in the case of commissioned officers.

In summary appraisal of results, it may be said that psychological examining in the United States Army had many and considerable direct and indirect values. It focused the attention of thousands of intelligent army officers many of whom have now returned to civil life, taking their new knowledge of psychology with themon the possibility and practicability of measuring human traits, and of using the resulting information for the benefit of mankind. It led to the improving of old and the devising of new methods of mental measurement, such as would not, ordinarily, have become available in a score of years. It provided data on intelligence, its distributions, and relations, unprecedented alike in quantity and in value. It increased the faith of psychologists in their professional work, and greatly stimulated them to concentrated labor on methods, problems of mental development, and the relations of intellectual ability to professional and other demands.

VII

Looking forward! Popular appreciation of the need for knowledge of man has increased rapidly in our times. The more daring are clamoring for branches of human engineering which, with curative and preventive medicine and hygiene, shall take their place beside civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical, mining, and those other well-established varieties of engineering that have to do with our environment rather than with ourselves. The idea that man's chief study is man, is old. The conviction that the study of ourselves should enable us more wisely to direct and control our lives and our civilization, is

new.

Tending to supplant the belief that whatever happens is definitely foreordained, and that it is our duty to accept meekly, and with what cheerfulness we can command, both good and ill, is the conviction that we are active, creative parts of the definite scheme of things, and that intimate knowledge and control of human behavior may just as well have been foreordained as anything else! Bitter and bloody was the opposition to the dissection of the human body; to efforts toward discovering the functions of our bodily organs; to attempts to prevent or avoid certain diseases. Persisting even to-day is the suspicion that insanity is a species of demoniacal possession and perhaps a divine visitation. Religious opposition to an increased knowledge of man's origin and development, of the laws of growth, of the relations of bodily functions and mental processes to the world in which we live, continues to manifest itself. But, despite ancient beliefs and superstitions, traditions and prejudices, there is growing desire to know about the self as a natural object; eagerness to understand human life and to act more intelligently

in connection with it; conviction that service to our fellow beings is both a privilege and an obligation; and faith that, while recognizing the importance of nature's slower way, we may actively further the physical and spiritual wellbeing of mankind.

Whereas heretofore too little has been expected of psychology by most people, now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, and hopes as well as demands are extravagant. It is needful, therefore, to emphasize the necessity for patience and temperance. The practical values of psychological methods and of their results depend almost entirely upon the thoroughness, skill, foresight, and disinterestedness with which the science is developed.

VIII

'Can the value of a man be appraised?' Man is a delightfully complex and varying object. His values are legion. But even now it is possible to estimate or predict certain of his 'values' as a social being by measuring bodily and mental traits. Categorical reply to the question is unsafe, for in certain respects man can be measured accurately. In certain others he cannot, at the present time. Assuredly we cannot to-day appraise a man accurately. But this statement would be grossly misleading if I did not add that substantial progress has been made during the past half-century in the development of methods of measuring man, in our knowledge of his traits and their relations, and, consequently, in our ability to predict his values, or to appraise him.

The preceding paragraph wholly neglects the optimistic note that seems to me legitimate. I beg therefore to declare my faith, and to present my scientific creed. They require few words. Theoretically, man is just as

measurable as is a bar of steel or a humanly contrived machine. He is infinitely more complex in constitution, in possibilities of reaction and response, and in relations to environment, than is the bar of steel. But this does not alter measurability. It renders it a more difficult, tedious, and lengthy task, but it also makes it more interesting, for it constantly challenges our faith, persistence, ingenuity, and intellectual resourcefulness. When asked nowadays, 'Can imaginativeness, skill, courage, honesty, inventiveness, or any similarly and seemingly intangible, unmeasured ability be measured?' I promptly and dogmatically reply, 'Yes.' Then I hasten to qualify my optimistic assertion by explaining that, although convenient and readily usable methods may not be at hand to measure or evaluate the particular aspect of human nature in point, the experienced, skillful, and intelligent psychologist can make the desired observations. It may require weeks or months, but it can be done.

Two decades ago it was possible to measure traits of intellect in psychological laboratories, but impossible to evaluate them simply, accurately, and serviceably, as is done to-day all over the world by means of the so-called 'intelligence tests.' We should be sadly lacking in faith, optimism, and the spirit of prophecy, if we refused to maintain the probability that more and more aspects of man will become measurable, more and more modes of response predictable, and more and more social values appraisable.

Can the value of man be accurately appraised? In so far as it depends upon the form of his body, it can be: for height, weight, dimensions of bones, of muscles, cranial capacity, color of skin, hair, eyes, and scores of other aspects of the man as physical object may readily be measured, and the results

compared with those obtained from other individuals. Such measurements are the special concern of anthropology. They enable us to identify stages of development, the sexes, different races, and the variety of defects and pathological conditions of the human body. Anthropometry and physical anthropology have developed through the curiosity of man, but also, and perhaps more, because of the need for accurate knowledge of bodily traits, their changes during growth and occupational use, their relations, their controllability and modifiability by educational means. It has come to be recognized that an essential part of vocational guidance and placement is the attempt to fit the physical man to job or occupation. This requires definite knowledge of occupational requirement, stated in terms of bodily traits, and equally definite knowledge of the traits of a given individual. What has been said of bodily form is equally true of bodily functions. Response to fatigue or to cold or warmth, rapidity and accuracy of movement and coordination, are at once measurable, occupationally significant, and essential conditions of certain 'values.'

With traits of mind as contrasted with those of body, it is far different. As forms of experience, they appear to be immeasurable, but as expressed in action, behavior, conduct, they can be measured. So it happens that experimental psychology is the application of new and constantly improved ways of testing and measuring what man does under certain circumstances, or in certain situations. Between physiology and psychology it is quite as impossible as unprofitable to attempt to draw a sharp line. Both are interested in bodily processes; but, whereas the physiologist attends chiefly to bodily functions in their relations to structure, the psychologist undertakes to study

the relations of certain bodily functions or expressions to sense-impressions, feelings, emotions, ideas, thoughts.

The whole of history is a record of human behavior. Man has always been interested in himself, always observant of his acts. But mostly his descriptions are impressionistic, colored by the purpose or bias of the writer, inaccurate and incomplete. The science of psychology has undertaken to supply carefully controlled and accurate descriptions of behavior, based upon objective measurements of what man actually does in certain definite circumstances. Here is a simple illustration of the contrast between the old and the new descriptions. It has long been recognized that some people respond quickly to sights and sounds, others slowly. The psychologist has devised methods and mechanisms for measuring the time required by a given person to respond to a certain type of stimulus. Results of such measurement may class the individual not merely as quick or slow, but as precisely so quick. His speed of reaction may then be compared with the average for all persons measured, with the quickest or with the slowest, and he can be ranked objectively and precisely. The advantages of such definite objective information over the impressionistic sort are too obvious for

comment.

Just as it is possible to measure such a simple characteristic as quickness of response to any sort of stimulus, so likewise the presence of ideas and their use in thinking, the presence of images and their use in remembering or in imagining, may be evaluated by measurements of what a person actually does. Memory or, rather, memories, for there are several different kinds, which seem to vary independently is measured by getting reliable records of the amount of material in the shape of words, phrases, sentences, names of

objects or acts, which can be recalled under given conditions. For instance, I repeat to the person to be tested, with uniform emphasis, and at the rate of two per second, the digits 386159427, and the person responds by naming as many as he can in the order in which they were given. Thus, by the use of nine digits, repeated in different orders, I can readily measure the memory-span of the individual for digits presented auditorially, that is, to the ear. There is a surprising difference among individuals in ability to recall such material. It has also been discovered that a person who can recall only five digits if he merely hears them may be able to recall nine when he sees as well as hears them.

When the psychologist talks about measurements of intelligence, he is inevitably asked if traits of temperament and character, or yet other aspects of personality, can likewise be measured. In the army it was often said that measurement of leadership, reliability, and courage, certainly would be more useful than similarly dependable measures of mental alertness. Although this probably is not true, it is undeniable that the feelings, emotions, and other temperamental characteristics of the person are as important in most practical situations as the intellectual. Occupational fitness depends primarily on bodily, intellectual, and temperamental traits. To appraise the value of a man without trustworthy measurements of his will-power, his reliability, his frankness or honesty, his patience, persistence, or irascibility, his courage or timidity, his self-dependence, his temperamental resourcefulness, his sympathy and self-forgetfulness, would be inexcusably stupid. Bodily traits alone, however accurately measured, are inadequate. Knowledge of intellectual functions constitutes a valuable supplement, but we still fall short of

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what is required. Knowledge of temperament, which may be defined as the 'constitutional' or inborn tendency to feel and act in certain ways, goes far toward completing our picture; but we still have neglected certain components of character and personality which result from the interaction of the above with conditions of life.

It has proved more difficult to measure 'affective' as temperamental traits are called — characteristics, than intellectual. Little progress has been made as yet toward the development of reliable, readily used, and standardized methods of gauging honesty, courage, timidity, and similar essential traits. But starts have been made — starts that have taken the psychologist out of his laboratory into the field of practical life. In connection with criminal procedure, he has been called upon to measure deception; and, although he has not entirely succeeded in this task, he has made sufficient progress to justify optimism. Just as in the case of intellectual functions, he measures, not the experience of the individual, but one or another aspect of behavior or conduct. In a few years we shall be measuring affective traits as readily, as serviceably, and as accurately, as we now measure intellectual functions!

IX

Knowledge is power as truly in the human sphere, intellectual, affective, and social, as in the environmental. Chemistry, and the branch of engineering based upon it, have revolutionized the conditions of human life. Physics, geology, mineralogy, likewise have found innumerable applications to our welfare. The so-called physical sciences have literally transformed man's world. Modern medicine Modern medicine- including surgery, preventive medicine, and hygiene-not only has banished the most frightful of

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