Intelligence quotient

“ Now, when we remember that the method of intelligence is to profit by chance experience, while the method of reason is, with foresight and intention, to adapt means to ends, we shall see that to move a straw even a quarter of an inch, or to make a bridge with particles of mould, would require rational and not merely intelligent powers. Chance experience would not supply the necessary data to be utilized by intelligence when repetition had established an association in the conscious situation. ”

“ In the first place, in order to judge an individual’s intelligence it is necessary to have in mind some standard as to what constitutes normal intelligence. This the ordinary parent or teacher does not have. In the case of school children, for example, each pupil is judged with reference to the average intelligence of the class. ”

“ Such do I see Intelligence in those who possess it; such do I feel it, on some delightful occasions, in myself. Such also I frequently notice it failing to make itself agreeable to some kinds of persons. Those who take a just pride in Reason or Logic are often a little ruffled; or else, as Wagner said of Mozart, they find Intelligence just a little frivol. But in the long run they recognize an ally; and their conscious superiority makes them indulgent. ”

“ Intelligence turns to whichever side the light comes from, adjusting itself, in discursive, often desultory fashion, to all manner of directions and distances, comparing and measuring with unabashed slovenliness, extracting the qualities which strike it and hastening on to connect them with something it was struck by before. Being thus rapidly responsive, Intelligence may often, I admit, seem on the pounce, and more so than politeness warrants. ”

“ But he will have to add the thought of an Intelligence, for which the Thing is to be; while, on the contrary, the Intelligence is self-sufficient and requires no additional thought. By thinking it as the Intelligence you include already that for which it is to be. ”

“ For the present, at least, we are concerned with the worker of this class only long enough to point out, in passing, that a generally adopted scheme of intelligence measurement might have disclosed the possession by any individual of this group of abilities that would have given him a broader field and a happier and more useful existence, had he and those responsible for giving him a start in life been made aware of them early enough. ”

“ For example, the scale does not pretend to measure the entire mentality of the subject, but only general intelligence. There is no pretense of testing the emotions or the will beyond the extent to which these naturally display themselves in the tests of intelligence. ”

“ I answer, never till the people admit that matter and mind are under direction of Intelligence superior to matter. Then man will take a higher standard and be governed by Science, not mind. When matter becomes subject to Science and is the medium or power to be put in motion, this medium or matter can be changed into any form or state and be destroyed but not lost. The identity of a thing can be put out of this world, as it is called, and only remains as a thing that once was but now is not. ”

“ We can teach even morons how to read problems and how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with a fair degree of accuracy; the trouble comes when they try to decide which of these processes the problem calls for. This may require intelligence of high or low order, according to the difficulty of the problem. As for the present test, we have shown that almost totally unschooled men of “average adult” intelligence pass this test as frequently as high-school seniors of the same mental level. ”

“ The Intelligence whose future interests me is not the same thing as the Intelligentsia. Those of us who belong to that class presumably possess Intelligence, since we live, or try to live, by its exercise. But it is no monopoly of ours, nor do [4] we always employ it in the manner which answers to my meaning. For living on or by its employment may, as is often seen among men of science and philosophers, result in their capital of natural Intelligence being sunk in a few enterprises of especial value, leaving them, as in the notorious case of Dr. ”

“ Therefore the sound conclusion is, that our intelligence is diametrically different, essentially dissimilar in all respects, from intelligences of a superior order, and that there are no common laws binding on intelligence considered simply as such. ”

“ There is quite enough to be done in the way of selection, assimilation and elimination (since all understanding means that) without setting such Intelligence as we have to play scavenger to wasteful or slatternly genius.... And yet, and yet.... May not those trashinesses of genius, and the scavengering entailed thereby, be that which secures to Intelligence its highest activities, and in so far fulfils one of Genius’s chief missions? For, after [55] all, Intelligence is the living, changing mass of unprofessional thought, the averaged, habitual thought of the majority of us. ”

“ Now, B is a very different man; he is slow, but he reasons everything out. A knows the right thing to do; and B can tell you why it must be done. A has the keenest intelligence, but B the clearest reasoning faculty. If I have occasion to question them about any mechanical contrivance, A says, 'Let me see it work;' but B says, 'Let me think it out.'"
In other words, A, the intelligent man, deals with phenomena as wholes, and his perceptual inferences are rapid and exact; while B, the reasoner, analyzes the phenomena, and draws conceptual inferences about them. ”

“ It should be evident, however, that we need more than the ability merely to distinguish a genius from a simpleton, just as a physician needs something more than the ability to distinguish an athlete from a man dying of consumption. It is necessary to have a definite and accurate diagnosis, one which will differentiate more finely the many degrees and qualities of intelligence. ”

“ If an individual’s intelligence is all that is known, some mistakes will be made in attempting vocational guidance, but if only one thing can be known, general intelligence is perhaps most important.... A pupil’s intelligence score is an approximate measure of the diameter of an approximate general ability circle, and is hence an approximate basis for vocational guidance. ”

“ But since one of the very best tests of intelligence is, of course, the degree to which one is able to profit by social contacts and the breadth and variety of the individual’s stored-up impressions, these extraneous or collateral qualities, which every test also more or less successfully measures in addition to the particular quality or mental dimension under direct examination, furnish useful data in arriving at a conclusion which is, after all, the main purpose sought, as to the individual’s actual abilities and potential powers. ”

“ The demand is everywhere for Knowledge of the soul. Facts there are in abundance, but how far these facts are demonstrated, so as to constitute a basis of exact science, and how to classify and systematize them, the average intelligence does not know. ”

“ Whatever it appears to be from mere inspection, it is a real measure of intelligence. Henceforth it stands or falls with the scale as a whole.
The reader will understand, of course, that no single test used alone will determine accurately the general level of intelligence. A great many tests are required; and for two reasons: (1) because intelligence has many aspects; and (2) in order to overcome the accidental influences of training or environment. If many tests are used no one of them need show more than a moderately high correlation with the scale as a whole. ”

“ But every one acquires more or less facility in distinguishing the coarser differences among people in intelligence, and this half-knowledge naturally generates a certain amount of resistance to the more refined method of tests. ”

“ The effectiveness of learning to thread a maze as a test of the intellectual capacity of the lower animals is probably not superior to the effectiveness of the same sort of learning as a measure of the intelligence of human beings. ”

“ But what evidence is there that the individual's degree of intelligence is a native characteristic, like his height or color of hair? The evidence is pretty convincing to most psychologists.
First, we have the fact that an individual's degree of intelligence is an inherent characteristic, in the sense that it remains with him from childhood to old age. ”

“ But there is all the difference in the world whether the acquisition of information is treated as an end in itself, or is made an integral portion of the training of thought. The assumption that information which has [Pg 53] been accumulated apart from use in the recognition and solution of a problem may later on be freely employed at will by thought is quite false. The skill at the ready command of intelligence is the skill acquired with the aid of intelligence; the only information which, otherwise than by accident, can be put to logical use is that acquired in the course of thinking. ”

“ The ability to think is but an attribute of a certain modification of existence. Intelligence is a word by which we express the sum of certain abilities, always attending a certain mode of existence. I find intelligence manifested so far as organization is developed. I never find intelligence without animal organization. I find intelligence manifested in degree, only so far as I find a higher or lower type of organization—that is, I find man's intellectual faculties limited by his organization. ”

“ Probably no single test could do justice to so complex a trait as intelligence. Two important features of intelligent action are quickness in seizing the key to a novel situation, and firmness in limiting activity to the right direction, and suppressing acts which are obviously useless for the purpose in hand. ”

“ We know, however, that this has been done; and we must therefore admit the possibility that, if we are not the highest intelligences in the universe, some higher intelligence may have directed the process by which the human race was developed, by means of more subtle agencies than we are acquainted with. ”

“ In the case of the complex functions again, it is very hard to separate the actual capacities of intelligence (Intelligenzanlagen) , which it is desired to test, from the objective effects of instruction, training, etc. Thus, for example, many of the alienists' socalled tests of intelligence are really tests of information and scholastic attainment. ”

“ To make this clear, it is necessary to define intelligence a little more closely, so as to discover the mental habits which it requires. For this purpose I shall consider only the aptitude for acquiring knowledge, not the store of actual knowledge which might legitimately be included in the definition of intelligence. ”

“ There is no opposition between "general intelligence", as measured by the tests, and the abilities to deal with concrete things, with people, or with big ideas. Rather, there is a considerable degree of correspondence. The individual who scores high in the intelligence tests is likely, but not certain, to surpass in these respects the individual who scores low in the tests. In technical language, there is a "positive correlation" between general intelligence and ability to deal with concrete things, people and big ideas, but the correlation is not perfect. ”

“ Here we have involved increased knowledge as a basis of human action and the use of that knowledge through discriminating intelligence. The intellect thus represents the selective and directive process in the use of knowledge. Hence, intelligent behavior of the individual or of the group comes only after accumulated knowledge based on experience. The process of trial and error thus gives rise to reflective thinking. It is a superior use of the intellect that more than anything else distinguishes the adult from the child or modern man from the primitive. ”

“ In the intelligence test the aim is to ascertain the subject’s general capacity; in the trade test, to discover his present ability or degree of skill in some special direction. Capacity, as has been previously pointed out, is only to be measured in terms of demonstrable ability, so that in the application of trade tests, although limited in their scope to a single class or kind of ability, there is also obtainable as a by-product a partial measure of the subject’s mental capacity. ”

“ Thus being one in origin and function, the simplest forms of cognition and the most complex must be dealt with alike. We are bound in consistency to receive the widest knowledge which our faculties can reach, or to reject along with it that narrow knowledge possessed by all. There is no logical alternative between accepting our intelligence in its entirety, or repudiating even that lowest intelligence which we possess in common with brutes. ”

“ The ideas, therefore, in relation to knowledge strictly so called, have regulative value, for they furnish the general precepts for extension and completion of knowledge, and, at the same time, since they spring from reason itself, they have a real value in relation to reason as the very inmost nature of intelligence. ”

“ The inheritance of intellect does not, therefore, follow the simple formula of unit characters, as does the shape of peas, the color of rabbits’ coats, or eye-color in man. The trait we measure and name as general intelligence is a complex, resulting from the incidence of a great number of functions, acting together in a great number of ways, yet cohering in respect to amounts found in given individuals. ”

“ If now we try to analyze intelligence and see in what it consists, we can best proceed by reviewing the intelligence tests, and asking how it is that an individual succeeds in them. Passing the tests is a very specific instance of {286} intelligent behavior, and an analysis of the content of the tests should throw some light on the nature of intelligence. ”