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IT is time psychologists used some other word. The literary usage of the word "intelligence" has caused the trouble. Why not call it mental acumen? All parents know whether their children are "bright" or "slow." Few will admit that their children are "dull," and the writer is inclined to think the parents are right. There are not many dull persons, but there are many who take in ideas slowly. Persistency and ambition count for a lot. The writer knows a man who has been classed pretty low in several mental tests but who worked his way through college, taking seven years at it. He is regarded highly by his business associates, who say he is slow but right when he does give an opinion. His former teachers are amazed that he is so well thought of, for to them he appeared frightfully dull. This man won out because he gained the habit of winning. The habit of winning is the best habit one can acquire.

"The stairs of time are hollowed by the wooden sabot going up and the velvet slipper going down," said the French philosopher. This is the fact we must keep ever before the eyes of the average man. The classification of young children according to mental acumen should not range them in classes determined by mental strength, but in classes determined by mental age. That some minds mature more slowly than others is the thing the average man must be told; not that development entirely ceases in some cases at an early age, thus condemning the child and its descendants to occupy permanently a certain situation in society. Such teaching is like the outworn doctrine of predestination and fore-ordination.

Brand children as being low in intelligence and the knowledge will hamper their development. Brand their parents as being mentally inferior and a curse will descend on a large portion of the population. What do we know about the effect of heredity? The Mendelian law shows such a splitting off of dominant and sub-dominant types and characteristics that the segregation of those found to be actually feeble-minded will in time improve the stock, provided healthy bodies are insisted upon for those who breed. What we must avoid is over-stating the effect of heredity in shaping destinies in the wrong direction.

There are men who must be privates all their lives. That does not mean their children will occupy the same status. The father and mother may inherit from ancestors certain desirable traits which, joined in their offspring, may make those children leaders. We all know brilliant men with stupid brothers and sisters. This simply shows the truth of the Mendelian law. Our mission is to transmit to posterity sound bodies in which sound minds may develop: to breed descendants who will believe in the ability to win out in the struggle of life and who will never despair, no matter what obstacles may be encountered. The discovery that mental acumen may be measured should not be used to establish "an aristocracy of brains and a mentally subnormal proletariat," but to show how the ideal of a common school education for every citizen may be brought about.

The writer had an experience fifteen years ago which will never fade. He was in charge of a piece of construction work on which there were employed between three and four hundred men. The men sent to the job by employment agencies were foreigners, very few of whom understood any English. There were a number of distinct languages among them and a number of local dialects, so that men of the same nationality found difficulty at times in understanding each other. An inspiration seized him to call in a man who knew Esperanto. Within less than ten days the men began to converse in this language. It was not imagination that made all of us believe that their eyes became brighter and their step more sure. That crowd of dull men was transformed. Opportunity had come, the environment was changed, they became intelligent. They were a different lot from their fellows who were working for other contractors in the neighborhood and who were dull and stupid because they were so classified by the men over them.

Let mental measurements mean an opening of opportunity to the general run of mankind, not a condemnation of masses and an exaltation of classes. Let us remember that many quick thinking men do not always display great common sense, while many slow thinking and slow acting men have a wonderful amount of it. Mental acumen alone will not serve to classify men, for there are other qualities which are needed. Mental acumen plus education and experience form intelligence and, even if the scholar is sure he chose the right word, let him show himself to be a good psychologist and abandon it for another, the literary usage of which is not going to mislead the simple into condemning a large proportion of the well-known human race as numskulls.

ERNEST McCULLOUGH