Base level

“ This is evident from the fact that those who stand higher can descend, but not everyone on a lower intellectual level can ascend. The latter sort, therefore, and not the former, determine the level which may be occupied in common. ”

“ It will be seen, by a glance at the above table, that the three great divisions of society, namely, High Life, Low Life, and Middle Life, are subdivided, or more properly, sub-classed, into the Superior, Transition, and Metamorphic classes. ”

“ For purposes of the following explanation, each quality will be distributed into three grades, determined not by value, but by class place—namely, the highest third, the medium third, and the lowest third. In respect to ability, these classes will be called A, B, and C. In respect to environment, the grades will refer to its helpfulness towards the particular success achieved, and the classes will be called E, F, G. It must be clearly understood that the differences between the grades do not profess to be equal, merely that A is higher than B, and B than C ”

“ Thus by the Harvard-Columbia method of grouping into five classes, if we put half the men into the middle class, C, and let B and D represent an equal range, we should give about 23 per cent, of both B's and D's and about 2 per cent, of both A's and F's. ”

“ In the first place, the reader should fix in his mind the nature of these distribution areas. Our analyses show that each is a more or less illy-defined area in which there are many trait differences, but that these show a gradation outward from a center, or nucleus. While, by comparative study, one arrives at the generalization of a type for the various social groups making up such a center, the result is, nevertheless, strongly grounded in empirical methods, and is not the work or interpretation of a single individual. ”

“ Passing over the most abstract science, Logic, on the due guidance by which, however, the large producer or distributor depends, knowingly or unknowingly, for success in his business-forecasts, we come first to Mathematics. Of this, the most general division, dealing with number, guides all industrial activities; be they those by which processes are adjusted, or estimates framed, or commodities bought and sold, or accounts kept. No one needs to have the value of this division of abstract science insisted upon. ”

“ Every volume of records we look through contains a mass of detailed information on the economic life of England in the period we are studying. How much of it is relevant to the subject of inquiry? What is to be the principle of selection? How shall we determine the relative weight and importance of different kinds of relevant evidence? As in modern problems, so in those of past times, a man requires for success qualities quite distinct from those conferred by merely academic training and the use of scientific methods. ”

“ But if the purpose is to ascertain how a particular individual, or the average of a group of individuals, compares in particular kinds of capacity with the average or the most highly developed persons of the same status, education, occupation, or age, then the standard by which the subject must be measured must be one derived from the observation and measurement of the mental capacities of as large a number as possible of individuals engaged in all sorts of occupations and of all degrees and grades of educational attainment. ”

“ As we glance at these classes we quickly detect that what may be called their vocations are extremely different; that each class—with the exception, perhaps, of two, the professional and the commercial, with that part of the indefinite class which is composed of persons of rank and property, and which approach each other—are as widely separated in tastes and habits and inclinations as they are in labors and works. Looking at the education of body and mind in these classes as a whole, there is certainly little enough of symmetry. ”

“ WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. Standards of magnitude, of weight, and of value are essential for commercial and scientific purposes, and the facility with which national and international intercourse is carried on depends largely upon the uniformity of these standards. Naturally the units of measure adopted by primitive peoples were varied and imperfect, but as civilization advanced, trade increased, science developed, and more accurate standards became necessary. ”

“ There is a gradation in the importance of the instance as one passes from mechanics and physics and chemistry, through the biological sciences to economics and sociology, a gradation whose correlatives and implications have not yet received adequate recognition, and which 228do profoundly affect the method of study and research in each science. ”

“ The third class is, in point of numbers, first, and although, today, the power and influence this class wields is not proportionate to its numerical strength, it is slowly but steadily increasing its influence. ”

“ The rate at which skill is acquired has been the subject of many careful studies. The results have been charted and reduced to curves, variously spoken of as ``efficiency curves,'' ``practice curves,'' ``learning curves,'' according to the nature of the task or test. ”

“ By exercising the class in this manner, not to exceed half an hour a day, they would, at the end of the first quarter, judge of each other's height, of the height of persons generally, of the length of various objects, of the size of buildings, and of the dimensions of yards, gardens, and fields, with greater accuracy than the average of adult persons, as was tested by actual measurement in some instances where there was a disagreement in opinion. ”

“ We speak of rank among hereditary nobility or military officers; of various orders of the priesthood; by accommodation, we may refer in a general way to the higher ranks, the lower orders of any society. Grade implies some regular scale of valuation, and some inherent qualities for which a person or thing is placed higher or lower in the scale; as, the coarser and finer grades of wool; a man of an inferior grade. ”

“ In the description of things under the present organization of society, we continually make use of a system of weights and measures. Thus, a commodity is evaluated in terms of size—shape, weight, value, etc. ”

“ The Order of the Main Classes.—The reasons which determined the adoption of a certain sequence of classes in this system may be briefly set forth here, instead of any argument or attempt to justify the order. The battle which has raged, and is still raging, among scientists, as to the best and most desirable order in which to arrange the great branches of human knowledge in order to produce a ‘hierarchy,’ must deter a non-scientific classifier from arguing on such a complicated and difficult topic. ”

“ We must take these successive classes as we find them: we see each class in itself, developing into higher and better types; then, some maintain this improved development, some dwindle away and disappear. ”

“ There is a falling back in grade or “regression” of the offspring as compared with their parents, which increases in amount as the grade of the parents becomes higher. (See column “Regression” in Table 1.) The parents of this first generation were chosen because of their high grade. They were all probably in grade above the general average of the population from which they were selected. In the case of those which deviate most from the general average the regression is greatest, as we should expect. ”

“ If one could sit down and, foreseeing the growth of his institution for years to come, settle upon the way in which that growth should be cared for, his classification might possibly be more logical and workable than most classifications now are. ”

“ We shall do better work, children, teachers, and supervisors, when we have provided for our use more definite standards or scales by which to measure our results. There is no reason why we should not have a scale which would enable us to tell with a fair degree of accuracy just what the standing of this group of children is in writing, in ability to perform the fundamental operations in arithmetic, in spelling, in writing compositions, in discussing the geography of North America, in decorating a cover for a notebook, or in any other subject or aspect of their school work. ”

“ While the internal organizations of different industries, mechanical and agricultural, differ according to their peculiar conditions, they agree in a general division of their workers into first, second, and third grades, according to ability, and these grades are in many cases subdivided into first and second classes. ”

“ What is higher has a greater degree (or it has a greater number of degrees) of something definite; what is lower has a less degree or number of degrees. Their quality, as higher and lower, is referable to quantity. ”

“ Instead therefore of dividing every class into sub-classes, each with its own name, we draw a line across all the classes, dividing all nature into large things and small, and by using these two words as adjectives, that is, by adding one or other of them as the occasion requires to every noun substantive which is the name of a class, we are able to mark universally the distinction of large and small by two names only, instead of many millions.—Ed. ”

“ There is an appreciable and widening difference between the habits of life of the two classes; and this carries with it a widening difference in the discipline to which the two classes are subjected. It induces a difference in the habits of thought and the habitual grounds and methods of reasoning resorted to by each class. There results a difference in the point of view, in the facts dwelt upon, in the methods of argument, in the grounds of validity appealed to; and this difference gains in magnitude and consistency as the differentiation of occupations goes on. ”

“ The general class embraces those for the conduct of some general or ordinary lines of business. The special class comprises those formed to undertake a definite task or some particular line of business. ”

“ Among the middle classes, the gradations and varieties of social position are more numerous, less distinctly marked, and therefore fenced round with a world of form and ceremony. And as we descend, and enter the lower ranks, and approach the lowest, the distinctions and grades multiply. ”

“ But if we contemplate any one of the classes so formed, such as the class animal or plant, or the class sulphur or phosphorus, or the class white or red, and consider in what particulars the individuals included in the class differ from those which do not come within it, we find a very remarkable diversity in this respect between some classes and others. ”

“ This fact is more accurately summarized in the coefficients of correlation, table XV, p. 37.
As seen from its heading, table XXII gives the systems in order of achievements. These serial standings are derived from tables III and IV. Reading from the top, system XXIII has an average serial standing of one, being lowest in both reasoning and fundamentals; system XXV ranks three in average serial standing, being fourth from lowest in reasoning and second from lowest in fundamentals; the readings for the other systems are similar. ”

“ In the one case, the child makes the best production he can and measures its quality by comparing it with similar products of known quality on the scale. Composition, handwriting, and drawing scales are good examples of scales for quality of products. In the other case, the scales are placed in the hands of the child at the very beginning, and the magnitude of his achievement is measured by the difficulty or number of tasks accomplished successfully in a given time. Spelling, arithmetic, reading, language, geography, and history tests are examples of scales for quantity of achievement. ”

“ If the class in psychology is a large one, a graph should be prepared showing the distribution of abilities in the class. For this purpose, you will have to use the absolute measures instead of ranks. ”

“ The classes are arranged into a number of sections, according to their class rank, as determined at the previous annual examination, or according to rank in some particular study—for instance, for instruction in engineering the first class is arranged according to merit in philosophy, and not according to general merit or class rank. ”

“ From O upwards we may cut off equal sections, OA, AB, etc., to indicate grades of societal value above that of the greatest number, and from O downwards we may cut off equal sections of the same magnitude to indicate grades of societal value less than that of the greatest number. ”

“ The fewer but more fundamental the identities the greater the number of the individuals in the class; the fewer the number of variables and the less fundamental the variables, the smaller the number of individuals within the class. ”

“ It is difficult precisely to define the seven levels of human progression, for the reason that these levels are personal; they are variable. for each individual and are apparently determined by the growth capacity of each human being. ”

“ Degrees are of two kinds, discrete and continuous. Discrete degrees are related to each other as end, cause, and effect. Continuous degrees consist in the gradual increase of some quality of the same discrete degree of substance. The increase of light from the faintest indications to the most intense brightness; the change from cold to intense heat; all the variations of matter from soft to hard, fine to gross, dense to rare, weakness to strength, are examples of continuous degrees. ”

“ Owing to occasional retrogressions, to still more frequent moral and intellectual stagnation, and to the extraordinary fecundity of the Criminal and Vagabond Classes, there is always a vast superfluity of individuals of the half degree and single degree class, and a fair abundance of Specimens up to 10 degrees. ”

“ Every new quality or circumstance which can belong to an object, subdivides each combination or class, so that the number of such combinations, when unrestricted by logical conditions, is represented by an infinitely high power of two. The extremely rapid increase in the number of subdivisions obliges us to confine our attention to a few qualities at a time. ”