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 I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
.. - --■ . 
 
LOUIS CLARK VANUXEM FOUNDATION 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 v'" 
 
 BY VERNON L. KELLOGG 
 
 PRINCETON 
 
 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 London: Humphrey Milford 
 Oxford University Press 
 
 19 2 3 
 
Copyrighted 1923 by Princeton University Press 
 
 THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON U.S.A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 Introduction i 
 
 The Instinct Mind of Ammophila 1 
 
 Reiiexes of Honey-bees and 
 
 Silkworm Moths 
 
 13 
 
 Other Reflexes and Tropisms 
 
 23 
 
 Intelligence and Reason 
 
 31 
 
 The Inheritance of Mind 
 
 41 
 
 Intelligence Tests 
 
 51 
 
 Education and the Mind 
 
 GO 
 
 Societal Organization and 
 
 Mental Capacity 
 
 70 
 
 Racial Traits and 
 
 Immigration 
 
 87 
 
 Heredity a?id Environment 
 in Mind Determination 
 
 101 
 
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE LOUIS CLARK VANUXEM 
 FOUNDATION 
 
 This Foundation was established in 1912 
 with a bequest of $25,000 under the will of 
 Louis Clark Vanuxem, of the Class of 1879. 
 By direction of the executors of Mr. Van- 
 uxenTs estate, the income of the Foundation 
 is to be used for a series of public lectures 
 delivered in Princeton annually, at least 
 one half of which shall be on subjects of cur¬ 
 rent scientific interest. The lectures are to 
 be published and distributed among schools 
 and libraries generally. 
 
 THE FOLLOWING LECTURES HAVE BEEN 
 PUBLISHED 
 
 The Theory of Permutable Functions 
 
 By Vito Volterra 
 
 Lectures delivered in Princeton in connection 
 with the dedication of the Graduate College of 
 Princeton University , by Emile Boutroux, 
 Alois Riehl, A.D. Godley , and Arthur Shipley 
 
Romance 
 
 By the late Sir Walter Raleigh 
 
 A Crit ique of the Theory of Evolution 
 
 By Thomas Hunt Morgan 
 
 Platonism 
 
 By Paul Elmer More 
 
 Human Efficiency and Levels of Intelligence 
 
 By Henry Herbert Goddard 
 
 Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle 
 Ages 
 
 By Maurice De Wulf 
 The Defective Delinquent and Insane 
 
 By Henry A. Cotton 
 
 Nature's Simple Plan 
 
 By Chauncey B. Tinker 
 
MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 W e have a convenient single word to ex¬ 
 press our confession of ignorance when 
 faced with things we do not understand. We 
 apply this word to the unexplained things of 
 our own body, to things in the world about us, 
 to things of the apparently infinite universe. 
 We call such things mysteries, and to many of 
 us, especially the more tender-minded among 
 us, the labeling of a thing as mystery ends dis¬ 
 cussion of it. To others, tougher-minded, it is 
 the very incitement to discussion, and, to some, 
 the activating stimulus to prolonged and fever¬ 
 ish study. It is, of course, chiefly, if not entire¬ 
 ly, by such study that we ever can and do get 
 anywhere in the fascinating game of solving 
 mystery. 
 
 The methods of such study are familiar; 
 they are primarily descriptive and analytic. 
 We call them scientific. They break up the big 
 mystery into little ones; they sometimes suc¬ 
 ceed in reaching an immediate—although nev¬ 
 er an ultimate—rather satisfying explanation 
 of some of these little parts of the big whole. By 
 
 [ i 1 
 
11 
 
 Introduction 
 
 these methods we re-describe , which is a form 
 of approximate explanation , these parts of the 
 mystery and sometimes the whole mystery. If 
 it is a mystery of life and so-called vital forces 
 —and no kind of mystery is more fascinating 
 to us nor more feverishly discussed and studied 
 than this kind—we re-describe it , or bits of it, 
 in terms of non-life , and of forces of physics 
 and chemistry. We analyze protoplasm , the 
 physical basis of life, into chemical and elec¬ 
 tric elements. We re-describe the simpler vital 
 phenomena in terms of mechanics. There is a 
 veritable mechanistic school of scientific stu¬ 
 dents of life, a most active and aggressive 
 school. The American leader of this school 
 writes a guide-book for his followers called 
 “The Mechanistic Conception of Life ” The 
 strength and vogue of this school rest on the as¬ 
 sumption that a re-description of life in terms 
 of mechanics is an explanation of life. To be 
 sure it carries the life mystery from one field of 
 study into another in which we have been more 
 successful in describing a wide variety of struc¬ 
 tures and phenomena as manifestations of a 
 few basic structures and happenings , and a re- 
 
Introduction 
 
 in 
 
 description of this sort may be accepted as a 
 welcome nearer approach toward real explan¬ 
 ation 9 although, of course, it leaves ultimate 
 causes and conditions to remain as much of a 
 mystery as ever. Perhaps this is well, for life 
 robbed of mystery would be drab indeed. The 
 stimulus of mystery is a mainspring of the 
 higher human activities. 
 
 Now all this applies precisely to our atti¬ 
 tude toward mind, by which we usually, and 
 perhaps unfortunately for our hope in reach¬ 
 ing any understanding of mind, mean just 
 human mind. But this is understandable; for 
 human mind means more to us than all other 
 mind and than all else human. We speak of 
 good minds and poor minds; of minds of tal¬ 
 ent and of genius; of feeblemindedness and in¬ 
 sanity; of the quick mind and slow mind; of 
 the unconscious mind and the creative mind. 
 These are kinds of mind. But we mean by all 
 of these, kinds of human mind, and, even more 
 limitedly, kinds and conditions of functioning 
 of the human brain. 
 
 I wish to use the name mind in a broader, if 
 less interesting way; a much broader way, in- 
 
IV 
 
 Introduction 
 
 deed , so as to indicate by it both a wider occur¬ 
 rence of mind in Nature than in human be¬ 
 ings alone , and a wider inclusion of seats of 
 mind, even in human beings , than the brain 
 alone. I want to use mind to mean almost ev¬ 
 erything that acts as control of animal or hu¬ 
 man behavior , with a recognition that other 
 parts of the nervous system besides the brain , 
 and even body-parts not composed of nerve tis¬ 
 sues at all , may play a role in mind. 1 want to 
 assume even that animals with no specialized 
 nervous system whatever may have mind , that 
 is y may respond by action in a recognizable 
 and even predictable way to stimuli. There 
 are , indeed , some plants , like the quickly re¬ 
 sponding sensitive plant and the diabolically 
 effective sun-dews and Venus fly-traps which 
 attract , imprison and digest small insects , that 
 might fairly be considered to have a kind of 
 mind. An Indian naturalist of some repute , 
 Dr. Bose , writes constantly about the “mind of 
 plants 
 
 Someone may think that this taking all 
 meaning out of mind. I think , rather , that it is 
 putting new and usef ul meaning into it. that 
 
Introduction 
 
 v 
 
 to do anything less than this is to limit our¬ 
 selves to an anthropocentric interpretation of 
 mind, which may tend to obscure our under¬ 
 standing of what our own mind really is. 
 Mind in Nature is surely something much 
 wider than that special manifestation of it as 
 a function of the human brain. Of course , we 
 must , for practical reasons , if no others , limit 
 somewhere our generosity in the way of a defi¬ 
 nition of mind, else we might involve ourselves 
 in that too logical predicament of finding our¬ 
 selves talking about the “consciousness of the 
 molecule” as some of our predecessors have 
 actually done. But we must at least be broad¬ 
 minded enough in our talking about mind to 
 escape the cry of anthropocentrism from the 
 lower animals , such animals , say , as Ammo- 
 pliila , the sand-loving wasp of the salt-marshes 
 of San Francisco Bay , about which I purpose 
 now to give a true story. 1 am sure it is true , 
 for I have seen repeatedly all the incidents of 
 this story. 
 

 
 
THE INSTINCT MIND 
 OF AMMOPHILA 
 
 long the western shores of the long 
 
 southern arm of San Francisco Bay 
 there stretch broad salt marshes, through 
 which tide-channels run, but which embrace 
 considerable areas that lie above all but the 
 very high spring tides, and which are mostly 
 covered by a dense growth of a low, fleshy- 
 leaved plant called samphire or pickle-weed 
 (. Salicornia ). Here and there, however, in 
 these areas there are small, entirely bare, 
 level sandy places which shine white and 
 sparkling in the sun because of a thin in¬ 
 crustation of salt over them. 
 
 Each September these bare places are tak¬ 
 en possession of by many female wasps of a 
 species of Ammophila, which is a long, slen¬ 
 der-bodied “solitary” or “digger” wasp, that 
 is somewhat gregarious in habit, but is not 
 at all a “social” wasp like the hornets and 
 yellow-jackets, the Vesjpas , more familiar to 
 us. Now, watching closely any one of these 
 female Ammophilas flitting about these bare 
 places one can see the following performance 
 take place. 
 
 First, the Ammophila, after various 
 flights—flights of survey, we may call them 
 
 [ i ] 
 
2 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 —over the salt-encrusted ground, will settle 
 down somewhere on it, and, with her sharp 
 jaws, cut out a small circular bit of the salty 
 soil crust, which she gets out unbroken, and 
 drags off a few inches to one side. Then she 
 digs out, by means of her jaws, bit by bit, a 
 little vertical well about three inches deep 
 and slightly less in diameter than the circu¬ 
 lar bit of salt crust. Each pellet of soil dug 
 out is carried away by the wasp, flying a 
 foot or two from the mouth of the hole in 
 any direction, and dropped. She does not 
 plan to have any tell-tale pile of soil near 
 the mouth of that precious hole in the 
 ground. In emerging from the hole she al¬ 
 ways backs upward out of it, and while dig¬ 
 ging she keeps up a low humming sound. 
 We might imagine this to be the joyous song 
 of the home-making mother—but as we are 
 scientific observers we had better restrain, 
 if not our imagination, at least our unverifi- 
 able interpretation of things. Let us be prop¬ 
 erly matter of fact. 
 
 After the hole is about three inches deep 
 our energetic Ammophila, climbing out with 
 the last pellet and flinging it to one side, 
 seeks for and finds the little circular bit of 
 salt encrustation which was so carefully re¬ 
 moved and put to one side at the beginning 
 of this hole-making performance. This she 
 
INSTINCT MIND OF AMMOPHILA 3 
 
 now drags to the hole and with it carefully 
 covers the hole’s mouth. Then she flies away 
 over the surrounding pickle-weed and dis¬ 
 appears in it. 
 
 We must wait a few minutes now, some¬ 
 times only a few, sometimes as many as fif¬ 
 teen or twenty. If we like, we can look 
 around us in the little bare space and we 
 shall see other Ammophilas digging holes, 
 going in head first and backing out, flipping 
 pellets of soil away, humming their nest¬ 
 building songs and altogether doing just 
 what our first Ammophila did and in just 
 the same way. But now, silence and immov¬ 
 ability! For the first Ammophila is coming 
 back, flying low and heavily with what 
 seems to be a dead looper or inch-worm 
 (larva of a Geometrid moth) about an inch 
 and a quarter long, held in her jaws. She 
 comes directly to the covered hole;—how 
 does she tell where it is, with its salt-crust 
 cover making it look like all the rest of the 
 ground?—puts the limp inch worm down by 
 it, carefully removes the salt-crust cover, 
 and then drags the inch worm down into the 
 hole, going in head first and then coming up 
 and out backwards. Then she re-covers the 
 hole with the salt-crust lid, and flies away 
 again. After a while she is back with another 
 limp inch worm which she puts into the hole, 
 
4 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 going through just the same performance as 
 she did the first time. And so on until she 
 has put in five inch worms. If we watch other 
 Ammophila mothers we shall see that they 
 vary a little in number of inchworms put 
 into their holes. The number runs from five 
 to eight, or rarely, ten, but is usually five 
 or six. 
 
 Now, what next? After taking the fifth 
 inchworm down into the hole Ammophila 
 does not come out as soon as she has after 
 putting each of the others down. After sev¬ 
 eral minutes, however, she does come out, 
 but instead of flying away she now begins 
 to fill the hole with pellets of soil which she 
 scrapes up here and there with her sharp 
 strong jaws. Some of the pellets are the ones 
 she scattered a foot or two away while she 
 was digging the hole. If they are close by she 
 scrapes them in with her forefeet. If farther 
 away she brings them in her jaws. She works 
 rapidly, running and jumping about, mak¬ 
 ing little buzzing leaps and flights, until she 
 has quite filled the hole. 
 
 Then she does a clever thing. With her 
 forefeet she paws and rakes the surface of 
 the filled hole until it is quite smooth, and 
 then with jaws and horny head she presses 
 and tamps down the bits of soil on top until 
 they are a little below the surface of the salt 
 
INSTINCT MIND OF AMMOPIIILA 5 
 
 crust around the hole. Finally she gets again 
 the circular salt-crust lid and neatly puts it 
 into the depression on top of the filled-in 
 hole so that it fits perfectly with the hard 
 continuous salt crust around the hole’s edge! 
 Without saying anything about intention 
 on the part of Ammophila, it is certain that 
 by this performance she has almost perfect¬ 
 ly concealed the whereabouts of the hole. In 
 fact, if we take our eyes off it we shall have 
 difficulty in finding it again: and yet we 
 know, to start with, just where it is. How 
 about the various predaceous birds or in¬ 
 sects who would like to find it with its store 
 of luscious inch worms? 
 
 And now Ammophila is finished with this 
 hole, at least. But we are not. Let us dig it 
 up and have a look at those apparently dead 
 inchworms, and also see if we can find out 
 what kept Ammophila so long in the hole 
 after taking down the fifth worm. So we dig 
 up and examine the five inchworms. Stick¬ 
 ing to the body of the last one put in there is 
 a little, shining, white, seed-like thing. It is 
 an egg which Ammophila has laid and glued 
 on to the worm’s body. And the worms 
 themselves instead of being dead are alive 
 but paralyzed. If we prick any one of them 
 near head or tail it will wriggle just a little. 
 If we prick one in the middle of the body it 
 
6 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 does not wriggle. Ammophila has stung each 
 inch worm in one or more of the middle tiny 
 ganglia or body-brains which are ranged 
 segmentally along the under side of the 
 body; a very exact and useful surgical oper¬ 
 ation. For the worms, which are, of course, 
 to serve as food for the Ammophila grub 
 that will hatch from the single egg, if dead 
 would soon decay and be useless to the grub, 
 and if not paralyzed would promptly dig 
 their way up and out of the hole before the 
 egg even hatched. So down in the darkness 
 of the filled-in hole there will soon begin the 
 tragic eating alive of the worms by the Am¬ 
 mophila grub which soon hatches from the 
 egg and which will find in the inchworms 
 enough food to last it until time to pupate, 
 when it takes no more food. Then, later, it 
 will issue as a full-fledged new Ammophila, 
 to dig its way out and find another and 
 mate, and, if a female, go through this same 
 performance next September. And it will do 
 all this without ever being taught by its 
 mother or any other Ammophila. In fact it 
 will never see its mother or father, nor will 
 they ever see it. 
 
 This may not be a wholly new story for 
 those who have read Fabre or our own Peck- 
 hams and others who have watched and de¬ 
 scribed the similar performances of other 
 
INSTINCT MIND OF AMMOPHILA 7 
 
 kinds of solitary wasps. Many people know 
 from reading these other stories that differ¬ 
 ent varieties of solitary wasps use different 
 kinds of insects to store their egg burrows 
 with; some use crickets, some use flies, some 
 use spiders, and so on, but each kind or 
 species of wasp always uses a particular 
 kind, or closely related kinds, of other insects 
 or spiders to supply its never-to-be-seen 
 children with living animal food. Even the 
 great hairy Mygales, or tarantulas of Cal¬ 
 ifornia, are stung, paralyzed and stored in 
 the egg-burrows of Pepsis, the glittering 
 armored giant wasp called Tarantula-killer. 
 
 I have described the smoothing off and 
 tamping down by Ammophila, with jaws 
 and head, of the filled-in hole. But Williston 
 in Kansas and the Peckhams in Wisconsin 
 have seen other Ammophilas hunt about 
 for and find and pick up in their forefeet a 
 smooth little pebble and use it as a tool for 
 this smoothing and tamping. This may seem 
 incredible to many humans—so sure are we 
 that we are the only tool-users. But doth 
 Williston and Peckham pass among biolo¬ 
 gists as truth-tellers. Williston, indeed, was 
 afraid to tell of his observations for some 
 time after making them. It was soon after 
 the time of Theodore Roosevelt’s valiant 
 charge on the nature fakers! 
 
8 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 We have spent a good deal of time with 
 Ammophila, but I want to make one story 
 of instinct do as an example of the stories of 
 all instinct-minds. Hence I have told the 
 story in some detail. We have now only to 
 note certain particular conditions that per¬ 
 tain to the animals that have, and live suc¬ 
 cessfully by exercising, such instinct-minds. 
 
 In the first place, although Ammophila’s 
 egg-laying and food-providing performance 
 is very elaborate and seems very clever, it 
 is about the only elaborate performance she 
 does in her whole life. Most of the rest of 
 Ammophila’s activity in life is to avoid as 
 well as she can by good flying, and a use of 
 her sting, the various predaceous birds, liz¬ 
 ards, toads, or large insects that would like 
 to catch and eat her, and to hunt about for 
 some food for herself, which isn’t difficult, 
 as she, and all other wasps, are almost om¬ 
 nivorous; practically anything in the way 
 of animal food as well as various kinds of 
 vegetable food will do. In the second place, 
 we can find by a little experimenting that 
 even in the accomplishment of her elaborate 
 and wonder-compelling egg-laying and food¬ 
 providing performance there is a quickly- 
 reached limit to her cleverness. 
 
 Suppose we interrupt Ammophila in her 
 clever performance and give her a few difli- 
 
INSTINCT MIND OF AMMOPHILA 9 
 
 culties, very slight difficulties, to overcome. 
 That happens to us almost every day. It is, 
 indeed, under such conditions especially that 
 our mind shows its capacities. Of course, 
 there are, as declared at the very beginning 
 of this discussion, different kinds of human 
 minds, and so we respond to the calls put 
 on our minds with different degrees of suc¬ 
 cess, or even with no success at all. We may 
 be feeble-minded or moron or we may have 
 an average mind or a mind of much talent 
 or even of genius. We shall have later to dis¬ 
 cuss these differences. But we need only 
 recognize now that unless we are really fee¬ 
 ble-minded or moron, the introduction of 
 interruptions or special difficulties in our 
 undertakings only gives our mind a special 
 chance to win new triumphs. 
 
 But not so with Ammophila. Interrupt 
 her chain of activities in the nest making 
 and provisioning performance and she is 
 lost. If, for example, we quietly remove one 
 of the inchworms, after she has brought it 
 and laid it on the ground near the nest, and 
 place it a few inches farther away while she 
 is engaged in getting the salt-crust cover off 
 of the hole, what happens? When she turns 
 about to seize the worm to drag it down into 
 the hole and does not find it just where she 
 placed it, she is nonplussed. She moves 
 
10 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 about distractedly. She doesn’t search. She 
 simply flutters about, perhaps happening 
 by chance on the worm; perhaps not. She 
 doesn’t seem to use her powers of sight and 
 smell, which she has certainly used in find¬ 
 ing the same inchworm in the pickle-weed, 
 to find the nearby worm now on the ground 
 in plain sight or smell of her. So if she doesn’t 
 happen to find it promptly by chance she 
 simply gives up further work on this bur¬ 
 row. If she goes on with her nest-making at 
 all she starts a new hole. In other words, she 
 starts the chain of performance all over 
 again from the beginning. Fabre found in 
 the case of another kind of solitary wasp 
 which stores its burrow with individuals of 
 a certain kind of wingless ground cricket, 
 that if he merely turned around one of these 
 crickets brought by the wasp to the side of 
 the hole, and which she deposited with the 
 long hind legs nearest the hole so that she 
 always seized the cricket by these legs pre¬ 
 paratory to dragging it down, that the wasp 
 failed to put the cricket in the hole although 
 the antennae projecting from the head, 
 which was now nearest the hole, were about 
 as good handles to seize it by as the legs. 
 
 We get an enlightening idea from this. 
 This wonderful and apparently most sen¬ 
 sible and even reasoned performance of bur- 
 
INSTINCT MIND OF AMMOPHILA 11 
 
 row-building and provisioning is obviously 
 a series of separate but connected successive 
 performances, each single act being the nec¬ 
 essary stimulus for the next in the chain, 
 the whole chain being started by the stimu¬ 
 lus of egg-production in the body and all of 
 it possible to the Ammophila by inherited 
 endowment without any learning. And it is 
 as possible to any one female Ammophila as 
 to another. There seems to be no, or at best 
 but little, possibility of variation in the per¬ 
 formance. We humans go about making our 
 nests and caring for our young in a great 
 variety of ways, all alike in general, but al¬ 
 most all specifically different. Not so with 
 Ammophila. All the mothers of this kind or 
 species of solitary wasp do their nest-build¬ 
 ing in almost exactly the same way. Simi¬ 
 larly with each other kind of solitary wasp. 
 The performance must go on uninterrupt¬ 
 edly and uniformly. There is no adaptabil¬ 
 ity, no meeting of emergencies, no choice of 
 ways. Fabre stresses especially this lack of 
 variation in performance. The Peckhams, 
 quite as reliable observers—although not 
 such gifted writers and hence not so well 
 known—do find some variation in the be¬ 
 havior of individual wasps of the same spe¬ 
 cies, enough, at least, to offer bases for a 
 progressive modification of the whole be- 
 
12 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 havior if these variations can in some way be 
 selected and established as a general species 
 endowment. But these variations are slight. 
 
 Now, we are at once led to ask, what are 
 the particular influences that have deter¬ 
 mined the separate identical acts that go to 
 make up this chain of performance carried 
 out so nearly uniformly by all Ammophila 
 females of the same species? I know of no 
 analysis aimed at elucidating this in the case 
 of Ammophila’s nest-making performance, 
 but I have attempted such an analysis, by 
 experimentation, in the case of two other 
 important instinctive performances by in¬ 
 sects; first, that of the swarming of honey 
 bees from their hive, and, second, that of 
 mating and egg-laying by silkworm moths. 
 Let me briefly refer to these observations 
 by way of introducing a brief discussion of 
 another type of “mind” that may be looked 
 on perhaps as a simpler type than the in¬ 
 stinct mind, but which may even better be 
 looked on as the instinct mind in a forma¬ 
 tive stage. This is the mind, or behavior 
 control, which depends on obvious and in¬ 
 evitable mechanical reactions to specific 
 physico-chemical stimuli either internal or 
 external to the body of the organism. These 
 reactions have, however, been observed 
 chiefly as responses to external stimuli. 
 
REFLEXES OF HONEY-BEES 
 AND SILKWORM MOTHS 
 
 O ne of the many striking performances 
 in the instinctive behavior of honey¬ 
 bees is that of the “swarming” out of the 
 hive, after a new queen has emerged from 
 her special pear-shaped cell, of either the 
 new queen, or the old one, together with a 
 large number, running up to ten thousand 
 or even more, of the workers of the hive. 
 This performance accomplishes two things; 
 first, it relieves the hive of congestion, for 
 it occurs usually at times of abundant food 
 supply and when the old queen is laying 
 eggs and new workers and drones are being 
 produced in largest numbers; and, second, 
 it distributes the species, as new honey-bee 
 communities, unlike new social wasp or 
 bumble-bee communities, are founded only 
 in this way, (except of course by certain arti¬ 
 ficial methods of bee-handlers). 
 
 When it is time for the new queen to be 
 born, that is, to issue full-fledged from the 
 cell in which she has until now passed all her 
 developing life as egg, larva and pupa, there 
 is great excitement in the hive. The varied 
 tasks of the worker bees of pollen- and nec¬ 
 tar-gathering, comb-building, larva-feeding, 
 cleaning, ventilating, etc., mostly cease, and 
 
 [ 13 ] 
 
14 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 a great crowd of bees gathers about the 
 queen cell, from which is heard the chal¬ 
 lenging piping of the new queen ready to 
 issue, answered by loud trumpeting from 
 the old queen outside. Then the slender¬ 
 bodied virgin new queen emerges. Some¬ 
 times the workers—following, we may say 
 as long as we know no better explanation, 
 Maeterlinck’s “spirit of the hive”—prevent 
 her issuance for some time, or, allowing her 
 to issue, suffocate her by imprisoning her 
 in a dense mass of bees, “balling” as it is 
 called. More usually, however, they permit 
 her to issue, unhindered and unharmed, and 
 then she and the old queen fight to the death 
 for the queenship of the hive, or one of 
 them emerges from the hive exit accompa¬ 
 nied by a great number of excited workers. 
 This is “swarming.” 
 
 Over a glass-sided and glass-topped ob¬ 
 servation hive in my laboratory, with its 
 exit leading by a short glass-covered tunnel 
 to a hole cut in a window casing, I kept a 
 black cloth cover which could be easily and 
 quickly removed whenever I wanted to see 
 what was going on in the hive. At a time of 
 the birth of a new queen, readily indicated 
 to me, although the black cloth cover was 
 on the hive, by the sounds of the royal trum- 
 petings and the loud buzzing of the excited 
 
REFLEXES OF HONEY-BEES 15 
 
 workers, I suddenly lifted the black cloth 
 just as the swarm was on the point of issu¬ 
 ing from the hive. Strangely enough the 
 swarming out was immediately arrested, 
 and those bees about to issue all turned and 
 made rapidly for the top of the hive. They 
 simply flowed up the glass sides in an amber 
 stream to jam themselves tight against the 
 glass top. And there they remained excited¬ 
 ly as long as the cloth cover was off. But 
 when I replaced the cover, slipping it on 
 slowly from above down, this stream of bees 
 promptly flowed back down the sides and 
 when the cover was all on, started flowing 
 out to the exit through the short glass- 
 topped tunnel. Again I lifted the cover off 
 and again the excited bees turned and 
 flowed upward. 
 
 Now, let us realize that the only light 
 which entered the hive when the black cloth 
 cover was on came in through the small en¬ 
 trance-exit opening, but when the cover 
 was off much more light came in through 
 the glass top, the hive being at the bottom 
 of the window. With this in mind, some fur¬ 
 ther experimenting clearly revealed that al¬ 
 though the bees in normal times went unin¬ 
 terruptedly on their foraging trips out and 
 in through the entrance exit opening, wheth¬ 
 er the black cloth cover was on the hive or 
 
16 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 off of it, that is, whether the light came 
 from below or above, at the special time of 
 swarming the bees went in that direction, 
 whatever it was, from which came the most 
 light. They became at this time, to use the 
 technical language of the mechanist ex¬ 
 plainers of animal behavior on a physico¬ 
 chemical basis, strongly positively photo¬ 
 tropic. (There is one weak point in this ex¬ 
 planation, that probably may have been al¬ 
 ready noted. Why do not all of the bees in 
 the hive, instead of only ten thousand or so, 
 issue from the hive, if a strong positive 
 phototropism develops among all of them 
 at the time of the appearance of a new 
 queen. And if not among all of them, why or 
 how among a particular ten thousand?) 
 
 Swarming may be called an instinct; we 
 usually so call it. But certainly it is true 
 that I could permit or prevent this swarm¬ 
 ing, not by any such brutal proceeding as 
 opening or closing the exit of the hive, but 
 merely by determining the direction from 
 which came the strongest light. The posi¬ 
 tive and essential act of swarming thus re¬ 
 solves itself into a simple reflex or mere trop- 
 ism, a direct and inevitable reaction to an 
 external physico-chemical stimulus, namely, 
 light. 
 
 The Chinese silkworm moths issue from 
 
REFLEXES OF HONEY-BEES 17 
 
 their cocoon-covered, pupal cases as full- 
 fledged insects, sexually mature. They have 
 four wings, but cannot fly, or can only in 
 exceptional cases, and then for but a few 
 feet or yards. They take no food; indeed 
 they cannot feed, for their mouth-parts are 
 atropied. They have done their eating, and 
 plenty of it, as larvae (silkworms). They take 
 enough food then, not only to provide ener¬ 
 gy for their six or seven weeks of active lar¬ 
 val life, but to store up food in the body, 
 mostly as fat, to provide for their inactive 
 pupal life of twelve to fourteen days and 
 their active life as moths, which lasts, how¬ 
 ever, only a few days, usually not more than 
 a week. Having no need, or even means, of 
 feeding; having no bird or toad or lizard or 
 insect enemies to avoid, because they are 
 entirely protected, as their ancestors have 
 been for the past five thousand years, by 
 the silk-growers; and the males not having 
 to search widely for their female mates 
 which issue from cocoons within a few inches 
 of them; and these females, once mated, not 
 needing to search for a particular food-plant 
 on which to deposit their eggs, as most 
 moths and butterflies do, so that the hatch¬ 
 ing larvae will find proper food ready to 
 mouth; without having, thus, to do any of 
 these various things usually necessary for 
 
18 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 moths to do, the silkworm moths have just 
 two essential activities to achieve, namely, 
 mating and egg-laying. 
 
 Here, then, we have a highly developed 
 insect, of different order, but of little less 
 structural specialization than the solitary 
 wasps and honey-bees, whose behavior, 
 however, is extremely limited and very sim¬ 
 ple, although no less important to the per¬ 
 sistence of its own species than the elabo¬ 
 rate behavior of the bees and wasps is to the 
 maintenance of theirs. Under these advan¬ 
 tageous circumstances perhaps we can dis¬ 
 cover, as we did in the case of the swarming 
 of the honey-bees, an explanation, or better 
 put, a description, of the behavior of the 
 silkworm moths in terms of definitive re¬ 
 sponse to physico-chemical stimuli; in other 
 words, a mechanistic explanation or de¬ 
 scription. 
 
 After the female moths issue from their 
 cocoons, with bodies already heavy and 
 swollen because of the mass of eggs in them, 
 they move about but little and only slowly. 
 The males, on the other hand, of more slen¬ 
 der and lighter body, are active and restless 
 in their movements, which soon culminate 
 in bringing them to the females. Now, these 
 movements might be described as resulting 
 from an intention to find the females, if we 
 
REFLEXES OF HONEY-BEES 19 
 
 cared to ascribe the power of conscious in¬ 
 tention to these creatures; or as an instinc¬ 
 tive search for their mates, if we preferred 
 to explain their behavior as controlled by 
 unconscious instinct. But if we go further in 
 our observation, and add a little experimen¬ 
 tation to it, we shall find basis for a third 
 kind of description. 
 
 The females bear, in the posterior end of 
 the abdomen, a pair of scent glands which 
 are occasionally, and in some cases continu¬ 
 ously, protruded from the body. The males 
 have organs of smell—many minute pits 
 with a free nerve-ending at the base of each 
 —on their antennae. They smell the odor 
 from the female scent-glands; or, put as the 
 mechanists would put it, the scent parti¬ 
 cles proceeding through the air from these 
 glands strike and stimulate these nerve- 
 endings; which in turn results in a positive 
 stimulation of the males to move in the di¬ 
 rection of the source of the scent particles. 
 This brings them to the females. They do 
 not find the females by sight, for they find 
 them in darkness as well as in day time and 
 with their eyes totally blinded as well as 
 with their eyes untreated. If one antenna of 
 a male moth standing near a female is re¬ 
 moved, the movements of this male will con¬ 
 stitute a series of circles, or a spiral, turning 
 
20 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 always toward that side on which the intact 
 antenna lies, this devious movement, how¬ 
 ever, also usually bringing it finally to the 
 female. Finally, if the scent-glands be cut 
 from a female, and a male, with eyes and 
 antennae intact, be put equidistant between 
 the female moth and the removed glands, 
 or even much nearer the female than the 
 glands, the male will inevitably move to¬ 
 ward the glands and reaching them remain 
 there and go through the motions of an at¬ 
 tempt at mating. It doesn’t distinguish the 
 difference between the cut-out glands and 
 the female moth, and it thus doesn’t mate 
 at all. The male silkworm moth is, say the 
 mechanists, positively chemo-tropic: its 
 movements are simply a positive and inevi¬ 
 table physical reaction to a chemical stimu¬ 
 lus. That accounts for practically all of the 
 behavior of a male silkworm moth through 
 all of its adult life. 
 
 As for the egg-laying. Very soon after 
 mating the female begins to lay its eggs, in 
 small batches, until all of the 300 or more in 
 its body have been deposited. This is of 
 course a very useful performance; it is a 
 necessary one for the persistence of the 
 species. Does the female moth know of this 
 usefulness, this necessity? Or is egg-laying 
 an unconscious performance due to an in- 
 
REFLEXES OF HONEY-BEES 21 
 
 herited instinct? Or can it, too, be seen as a 
 positive and inevitable result of a mechani¬ 
 cal reaction to a certain specific and imme¬ 
 diate physico-chemical stimulus? If the ab¬ 
 domen, or even just that posterior part of it 
 containing the eggs, is cut off from a female 
 moth, thus leaving the head, with brain, 
 eyes and sense-organs on the antennae, and 
 the thorax with its large mid-body ganglion, 
 quite separated from the egg-laying organs 
 (ovaries, ovi-ducts, muscles) with the small 
 posterior abdominal ganglion and its nerves 
 which run from the skin and to the muscles 
 of the hinder part of the abdomen, this cut¬ 
 off hinder fraction of the body, if its ventral 
 side is brought in contact with the bottom 
 of the tray in which the moths are kept, or 
 if this fragment of the body be turned over 
 and its ventral side is rubbed, will extrude 
 the eggs. The performance of egg-laying will 
 be carried on just as it would be by an un¬ 
 mutilated female. In other words, the inter¬ 
 esting and useful egg-laying behavior of the 
 adult female moth—which is practically all 
 of its behavior in its whole adult life—is, 
 the mechanists would say, simply an inevit¬ 
 able physical or mechanical reaction by a 
 small mass of living substance to a group of 
 physico-chemical stimuli. 
 
OTHER REFLEXES AND 
 TROPXSMS 
 
 T hese phenomena are exhibitions of 
 animal behavior governed by the sim¬ 
 plest kind of mind, the mind of reflex and 
 tropism, the mind of mechanics, of physics 
 and chemistry, a mind, or behavior, which 
 is merely a physico-chemical property of 
 protoplasm. When we go lower in the animal 
 scale, and especially when we go to the very 
 bottom of this scale, to the simplest ani¬ 
 mals we know, the unicellular Protozoa, we 
 find this kind of behavior being more and 
 more nearly the only kind of behavior ex¬ 
 hibited. We find these simple animals, and 
 the simple motile unicellular plants, moving 
 inevitably toward or away from light (posi¬ 
 tive or negative phototropism); toward or 
 away from various chemicals (positive or 
 negative chemotropism); in or opposite to 
 the direction of the pull of gravitation (pos¬ 
 itive or negative geotropism); in contact 
 with or avoiding contact with solid sub¬ 
 stance (positive or negative stereotropism); 
 and so on; all inevitable physical reactions 
 to physical or chemical stimuli, all mechan¬ 
 istic behavior. Or, to substitute for the word 
 behavior the name of that which presum¬ 
 ably governs behavior, namely, mind (in 
 
 [ 23 ] 
 
24 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 our broad use of the word), we can say that 
 among the lowest animals the reflex or me¬ 
 chanistic mind seems to be the only, or at 
 least, principal kind of mind. 
 
 But, also, we have found that an analysis 
 of certain examples of the instinct mind, as 
 exhibited even among those animals, the in¬ 
 sects, which are usually referred to as the 
 group in which the instinct mind finds its 
 highest development, reveals the possibility 
 of seeing in instinct only a highly complex 
 and coordinated chain of mechanical re¬ 
 flexes determined by physico-chemical stim¬ 
 uli. What do we find when we transfer our 
 scrutiny from the lower animals to the high¬ 
 er, and even to the highest animals, our own 
 proud selves, in our attempt to recognize 
 behavior by reflexes or tropisms? 
 
 We readily enough find reflexes, or what 
 we call reflexes, in the higher animals and in 
 ourselves. Such are the unconscious move¬ 
 ments and general behavior of our internal 
 organs, the beating of the heart, the peris¬ 
 taltic movements of the alimentary canal, 
 the secretory activities of glands, the con¬ 
 traction and dilation of blood-vessels. And 
 while the particular physical or chemical 
 stimuli that set up the behavior of these 
 body parts are, in most cases, not recog¬ 
 nized by us, yet modern experimental physi- 
 
REFLEXES AND TROPISMS 
 
 25 
 
 ologists have revealed some of them. The 
 swiftly increasing knowledge that we have 
 of the effects of the secretions of the duct¬ 
 less glands, these secretions so small in 
 quantity but of such strong stimulating or 
 inhibiting action, has opened a new way to 
 the understanding of the physico-chemical 
 control of much of the functioning of differ¬ 
 ent body tissues and organs. 
 
 But perhaps most forms of behavior by 
 the body or its parts in the case of the high¬ 
 er animals and ourselves that are called 
 reflexes by the students of human physiolo¬ 
 gy and psychology are not of the same char¬ 
 acter as the reflex and tropismic activities 
 of the lower animals, although the mechan¬ 
 ists list some that they claim to be the same. 
 Some human reflexes are undoubtedly the 
 result of long repetition of originally inten¬ 
 tional movements, which become thus a 
 habit of the individual and are performed 
 unconsciously by reflex action under the re¬ 
 occurring proper circumstances. But such 
 acquired reflexes are not inherited. The re¬ 
 flexes, on the contrary, which we have de¬ 
 scribed among the lower animals, as well as 
 the beating of our heart, the winking of the 
 eyes, etc., are a part of the inherited endow¬ 
 ment of the species. 
 
 Some of the more thorough-going me- 
 
26 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 chanists make daring claims for the tropis- 
 mic control of the most complex animal 
 bodies, even our own. Once wdien one of 
 these convinced mechanists saw me, on en¬ 
 tering a cafe in Leipzig, find a seat in a cor¬ 
 ner of the room where my body touched the 
 wall on either side, he explained to me my 
 behavior in this instance as an example of 
 positive stereotropism, my action being 
 such as to give my body as much contact as 
 possible with solid substance—which is the 
 same explanation he would give for the 
 familiar behavior of a startled sand flea in 
 burrowing into the sand. I was to him sim¬ 
 ply a positively stereotropic animal—and 
 nothing more. 
 
 My own explanation of my interesting 
 behavior, namely, that I had made an en¬ 
 gagement with a friend some hours before 
 to meet him in this particular corner at this 
 particular time was pleasantly waved aside. 
 Why, on the philosophic principle of Oc¬ 
 cam’s Razor, should we need a more com¬ 
 plex or specialized explanation when a sim¬ 
 pler, more generalized one was at hand? 
 However, I was not convinced then, nor am 
 I yet, that the springs of my behavior are 
 to be as easily discovered by a casual, even 
 though a trained, observer, as those of a 
 Paramoecium or a sand-flea. And this, if for 
 
REFLEXES AND TROPISMS 
 
 n 
 
 no other reason than a basis of our common 
 knowledge of the power of the human being 
 to dislocate, both in time and place, many 
 of his reactions from his stimuli. My stimu¬ 
 lus and my reaction may be days apart and 
 miles away from each other. 
 
 But whether those forms of our behavior 
 that the physiologist and human psycholo¬ 
 gist call reflex are, or are not, of the same 
 type as the “reflexes” of the lower animals, 
 we certainly recognize part of our behavior 
 as instinctive and quite of the type of the 
 instinctive behavior of Ammophila and of 
 the myriad other instinct-controlled lower 
 animals. Our instinctive behavior, indeed, 
 is of so much importance to us that some of 
 it is actually necessary to the saving and 
 persistence of our lives. 
 
 Take the babe’s act of suckling, for in¬ 
 stance. This is a behavior common to all of 
 us individuals of the human species—just 
 as it is to all individuals of all mammal spe¬ 
 cies—and is neither taught us nor learned 
 from individual experience but is something 
 of which we are just naturally capable from 
 the moment of birth; an inherited possession 
 of the species. That puts it in the category 
 of instinct, simon-pure instinct. 
 
 How we came, as species, originally to 
 possess this capacity of instinctive behav- 
 
28 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 ior, or how Ammophila came to possess its 
 much more complicated nest-making and 
 food-providing instinct, is a great question, 
 the conclusive answer to which the biolo¬ 
 gists, genetic psychologists and evolution¬ 
 ists—or even the mechanists—have not yet 
 found. Some explain it by natural selection 
 choosing among a nearly infinite host of 
 spontaneous, fortuitous small variations. 
 We do know that these variations occur but 
 we do not know that they can be the basis 
 for a life-saving or life-losing determination 
 which, together with their heritability, must 
 necessarily be assumed in the Darwinian 
 natural selection explanation. In fact, we 
 know that many of these variations can not 
 fill the requirements thus made of them. 
 
 The mutationists assume fewer but larger 
 spontaneous variations as heritable, and 
 hence larger evolutionary jumps, but they 
 cannot assume that these jumps will be in 
 the right or in any particular direction, for 
 the observed mutations do not bear out 
 this assumption. Same trouble for the Men¬ 
 del ians. 
 
 The Lamarckians, or contenders for the 
 simple and highly plausible explanation of 
 evolution by the inheritance of acquired 
 characters, face what has so far been the in¬ 
 superable difficulty of proving this inheri- 
 
REFLEXES AND TROPISMS 29 
 
 tance. If this could be proved their theory 
 would beautifully explain much of evolu¬ 
 tion, especially that phase of it called adap¬ 
 tation, which includes instinct. Unfortu¬ 
 nately, it seems much easier to disprove 
 than to prove the inheritance of acquired 
 characters. There seems, indeed, to be no 
 means in the mechanism of inheritance as 
 we now so far know it, and concerning 
 which, by the way, more has been learned 
 in the last half century than in all time be¬ 
 fore, to make it possible. This general diffi¬ 
 culty, or impotence, of the Lamarckians ap¬ 
 plies disastrously also to the efforts of those 
 genetic psychologists who would explain in¬ 
 stinct as inherited habit, that is, behavior 
 originated under the direction of intelli¬ 
 gence, then repeated so often as to become 
 habit, that is, capable of being performed 
 almost or quite unconsciously, and then fi¬ 
 nally become a matter of inheritance. But 
 this explanation implies, first, the assump¬ 
 tion of intelligence in very low animals, and, 
 second, also, that fatal assumption of the 
 inheritance of acquirements. 
 
 But whether we can find or not a reason¬ 
 able and scientifically well supported ex¬ 
 planation of the origin and development of 
 tropisms, reflexes, and instincts, we know 
 that they exist and that hundreds of thou- 
 
30 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 sands of kinds of animals have minds of 
 these kinds. Compared with the mammals, 
 or even with all the vertebrates, to whom 
 may be attributed minds which, in lesser or 
 larger degree, include the elements of intel¬ 
 ligence and reason, the animals whose minds 
 are wholly or almost wholly tropism, reflex, 
 and instinct minds, are as thousands to tens. 
 The insects alone represent more than 
 three-fourths of all the half million living 
 kinds, or species, of animals we know. 
 Looked at, then, from the point of view of 
 numbers of animal kinds dominated by it, 
 the inherited instinct mind is easily the 
 prevailing kind of mind. What a curious 
 impression this gives us of animal life! 
 
INTELLIGENCE AND REASON 
 
 B ut it is time now to come to another 
 general type or kind of mind, a kind 
 which we are sure we possess, and claim to 
 possess in much higher degree than any 
 other animals, and of which we are very 
 proud. It is a kind with which we are much 
 more familiar than with any other kind, 
 and, hence, is the kind we usually think of 
 when we think of mind at all. It is the mind 
 of intelligence and reason. Perhaps our 
 whole mind includes something of that low, 
 prosaic, mechanistic element of mind which 
 seems alone to govern the lowest animals, 
 and certainly it includes something of that 
 rigorous, unadaptable, non-educable kind 
 of mind characteristic of so many animals, 
 that we call instinct. But the outstanding 
 distinction of our mind, and the thing about 
 it of which we are proud and prone to boast, 
 is its inclusion of intelligence and reason. 
 This kind of mind is especially character¬ 
 ized by varying in capacity among the dif¬ 
 ferent individuals of any given species pos¬ 
 sessing it. 
 
 There are, as we stated in almost our first 
 sentence in this discussion, good human 
 minds and poor ones, minds of talent or 
 
 [ 31 ] 
 
32 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 genius and feeble minds, and this classifica¬ 
 tion is based on the varying degrees of intel¬ 
 ligence and reason possessed by different in¬ 
 dividuals. Even in the poorest, or nearly 
 poorest, human mind there is some intelli¬ 
 gence. And that seems so much better than 
 to have only a reflex mind or an instinct 
 mind! Perhaps, in fact almost certainly, 
 some other animals have a mind possessing 
 some intelligence. Almost any of us are in¬ 
 clined to admit this when we recall inci¬ 
 dents of the behavior of our pet dog, cat, 
 horse, even chicken or canary—I have a 
 friend with a pet fish which is “so intelli¬ 
 gent”—and the special students of animal 
 behavior will say that many wild animals 
 have intelligence, as will also the nature- 
 lovers and hunters of big game by gun or 
 camera. Mr. Hornaday, in his recent book 
 on The Mind and Manners of Wild Animals, 
 is very positive that many animals—he is 
 thinking almost exclusively of vertebrates, 
 and mostly of mammals—have intelligence 
 and some of them much intelligence. Indeed 
 he says: “Some animals have more intelli¬ 
 gence than some men; and some have far 
 better morals” (p. 6). Mr. Hornaday, who 
 is a veteran naturalist and present director 
 of the New York Zoological Gardens pre¬ 
 sents in his book an interesting collection of 
 
INTELLIGENCE AND REASON 33 
 
 examples of intelligent and reasoned be¬ 
 havior on the part of wild animals in field, 
 forest and zoological gardens. 
 
 As an illustration of the intelligent and 
 apparently reasoned behavior of an animal 
 not usually accredited with too much intel¬ 
 ligence, namely the jack-rabbit, I may draw 
 on my own observations for an incident 
 which may help recall to many of you other 
 examples from your own observations of 
 the intelligent behavior of other animals to 
 add to Mr. Hornaday’s already long list. I 
 may remark in passing that one always feels 
 surer of one’s own stories about animal be¬ 
 havior than of those of other persons. There 
 seems to be a general atmosphere of sus¬ 
 picion hanging about most “true stories 
 about animals” whether told by the old 
 hunter or trapper or by the literary pur- 
 veyer of bed-time stories or even by the 
 professed scientific student of animal be¬ 
 havior and psychology. 
 
 It was on the campus of Stanford Univer¬ 
 sity—an unusually generous college campus 
 comprising, as it does, several thousand 
 acres of valley and low foothills. I was walk¬ 
 ing leisurely across an open field on this 
 campus given over at that time mostly to 
 wild poppies and a few towering eucalyptus 
 trees, when I noted the approach, at some 
 
34 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 distance, of two slender-bodied, long and 
 thin-legged coursing hounds, with their 
 trainer, who was giving them an airing and 
 some gentle exercise. It was in the old days 
 when the brutal sport of hare-coursing was 
 a more or less popular addition to horse 
 racing in California as an excuse for stiff 
 betting; and coursing hounds were almost 
 as carefully bred and trained as race-horses. 
 These hounds could run just a little faster 
 than jack-rabbits, but were less adroit at 
 dodging, their attempts at sudden stopping 
 or change of direction, when at high speed, 
 often resulting in violent falls or even in 
 breaking their legs. In that advantage lay 
 the principal hope of any jack-rabbit once 
 seen and under pursuit by the hounds in 
 open country. But there were not many 
 chances for jack-rabbits to learn of this ad¬ 
 vantage by experience, for most of the cours¬ 
 ing was done in closed fields where captured 
 rabbits were turned loose,—but with no 
 chance of final escape. 
 
 At the moment, almost, of my seeing the 
 approaching hounds, still some distance 
 away, I startled a jack-rabbit from its rest¬ 
 ing place just in front of me. The rabbit be¬ 
 gan running swiftly straight away from me 
 toward the hounds, of which it was evident¬ 
 ly, at first, unaware. But one or both of the 
 
INTELLIGENCE AND REASON 35 
 
 dogs, which at the moment were some dis¬ 
 tance apart, jogging along on parallel 
 courses, immediately saw the rabbit, and 
 announcing the news to each other—and to 
 the rabbit—by sharp barks, began converg¬ 
 ing toward the rabbit at full speed. In front, 
 and potentially on either side were the 
 hounds; behind was I; what was the jack- 
 rabbit to do? 
 
 This, at any rate, is what it did. First it 
 made, while still bearing generally forward 
 at full speed, two or three hesitant, tenta¬ 
 tive veerings, first to one side, then the 
 other, answered at once by responsive veer¬ 
 ings of the hounds. And then, as the dogs 
 drew nearer on their converging courses, the 
 rabbit straightened out on a forward line at 
 very top of its speed and passed directly be¬ 
 tween the amazed dogs, both of which, in 
 endeavoring to make the nearly right-angled 
 turn necessary to reach and seize the rabbit, 
 lost their balance and rolled over and over 
 before regaining their feet. In the mean¬ 
 time Brother Rabbit had got a good lead, 
 and soon rabbit and re-started dogs were 
 disappearing distantly across the field. 
 
 As I came up to the trainer, standing 
 stock still and staring after his disappearing 
 hounds, he expressed the amazement and 
 the appreciation of the rabbit’s perform- 
 
36 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 ance, for both of us, by a single sufficient 
 phrase. 
 
 “Well, I’ll be damned,” said he. 
 
 Along with this I may refer to an obser¬ 
 vation made on another jack-rabbit by Dr. 
 David Starr Jordan of Stanford, which he 
 used to recount to his students of evolution. 
 I give the story in Dr. Jordan’s own words. 
 
 “On the open plains of Merced County, 
 California, the jack-rabbit is the prey of the 
 bald eagle. Not long since a rabbit pursued 
 by an eagle was seen to run among the cat¬ 
 tle. Leaping from cow to cow, he used these 
 animals as a shelter from the savage bird. 
 When the pursuit was closer, the rabbit 
 broke cover for a barbed-wire fence. When 
 the eagle swooped down on it, the rabbit 
 moved a few inches to the right, and the 
 eagle could not reach him through the fence. 
 When the eagle came down on the other 
 side, he moved across to the first. And this 
 was continued until the eagle gave up the 
 chase. It is instinct that leads the eagle to 
 swoop on the rabbit. It is instinct again for 
 the rabbit to run away. But to run along the 
 line of a barbed-wire fence demands some 
 degree of reason. If the need to repeat it 
 arose often in the lifetime of a single rabbit 
 it would become a habit.” 
 
 It is not my intention, however, to debate 
 
INTELLIGENCE AND REASON 37 
 
 or give evidence for the possession of intelli¬ 
 gence by other creatures than man. The pro¬ 
 fessional students of animal psychology, I 
 believe, generally agree that various ani¬ 
 mals, especially the so-called higher ones, as 
 the mammals and birds and even on down 
 among the vertebrates through the reptiles 
 and batrachians and fishes, do have minds 
 which exhibit, in varying degrees, intelli¬ 
 gence and reason. Nor is it my intention to 
 get involved in the difficult subject of the 
 genetic relationships of the different kinds 
 of animal mind; that is, to attack the prob¬ 
 lem of which is genetically lowest or oldest, 
 and which genetically highest and most re¬ 
 cent; and, also, whether these kinds of mind 
 can be arranged serially with regard to their 
 evolutionary development. We shall not se¬ 
 riously attack such questions as, has in¬ 
 stinct been evolved out of tropisms and re¬ 
 flexes and intelligence out of instinct, or 
 do instinct and intelligence represent two 
 branches of mental evolution from a single, 
 early ancestral mental status, two branches 
 or lines of mental development which have 
 gone their independent ways, reaching pres¬ 
 ent culmination in the insects on the one 
 hand and the mammals on the other. 
 
 I am not a psychologist and these are 
 matters primarily for the professional psy- 
 
38 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 chologist. My excuse for daring to discuss 
 the subject of mind at all is that there are 
 possible special angles of approach to the 
 consideration of mind fairly open to the gen¬ 
 eral biologist and to the biologist especially 
 interested in human life. This kind, or these 
 kinds, of biologist, I do profess to be, and 
 hence claim the privilege of considering the 
 phenomena of mind from those particular 
 angles available to such a student. 
 
 Among these is that very important one 
 of the relative roles played by heredity and 
 environment (including function or exer¬ 
 cise) in determining the kind of mind in each 
 human individual. What is it that gives me 
 a poor mind and you a good one; that makes 
 a genius of Einstein and a moron of Zwei- 
 stein? Is nature more potent than nurture, 
 or nurture more potent than nature, in the 
 final determination for each of us of the 
 mind we have? The biologist strenuously in¬ 
 sists on discarding the too commonly held 
 point of view of the antipathetical relation 
 of heredity and environment. These two po¬ 
 tent influences in the determination of our 
 fate are complements, not antitheses. Both 
 are necessary to our being at all; w^e should 
 be nothing with either alone. But the rela¬ 
 tive complementary roles of each in making 
 us what we are, are capable of some meas- 
 
INTELLIGENCE AND REASON 39 
 
 urable distinction. To make the distinction 
 between, and estimate the relative poten¬ 
 cies of, these two necessary and comple¬ 
 mentary influences is a familiar problem to 
 all biologists in almost all biological study. 
 In the particular case we have immediately 
 before us this effort is essential in our fever¬ 
 ish search for wisdom to guide us in educa¬ 
 tion, in social organization, in civilization. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE INHERITANCE 
 OF MIND 
 
 I N our scrutiny and brief discussion of the 
 instinct mind we have had to emphasize 
 the essentially strictly inherited basis, or, 
 perhaps, almost inherited totality, of this 
 kind of mind. All the individuals of a given 
 species characterized by instinct mind have, 
 essentially, equally capable minds, and 
 these minds are all determined as to charac¬ 
 ter and capacity at birth; little or nothing 
 can be added by teaching or experience; all 
 of the mind is used for all of the foreordained 
 behavior of the individual; there is no re¬ 
 serve to be drawn on for emergencies. But, 
 after all, this type is a highly successful 
 mind from the biologist’s point of view; 
 that is, it is a mind entirely capable of carry¬ 
 ing its owner, or enough of the owners of 
 exactly similar minds, through life up to and 
 through the performance, sometimes highly 
 elaborate, of all that behavior involved in 
 providing for the persistence of the species. 
 And recall, please, that this all-inherited 
 mind is that kind of mind by far the most 
 usual in the whole animal kingdom; that is, 
 is that kind of mind possessed by far the 
 largest number of kinds of living animals. 
 
 [ 41 ] 
 
42 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 Now whether we have derived our kind 
 of mind from the instinct mind or not—and 
 we undoubtedly have not—we have never¬ 
 theless certainly derived our body and its 
 inherent capacities, physical and mental, by 
 slow evolution from other early lower kinds 
 of animals, these in turn having been them¬ 
 selves, body and mind, derived from other 
 earlier and still lower ones. In climbing down 
 this genealogical tree we do not get very far 
 before we are looking ancestors in the face 
 whose minds were determined for them 
 practically exclusively by heredity. Is it sur¬ 
 prising then that along with the determina¬ 
 tion of much of our bodily character and ca¬ 
 pacity by unquestioned biological inheri¬ 
 tance, we should find our mind, a function 
 chiefly of our physical nervous system, also 
 partly, even largely, determined in its char¬ 
 acter and capacity by heredity? The won¬ 
 der is, rather, that we should find our minds 
 as responsive as they are to modification by 
 environmental (which, of course, includes 
 educational) influence. Anyway, we shall 
 find it not difficult to prove the strong po¬ 
 tency of heredity in its role of helping to de¬ 
 termine our mental make-up. 
 
 Francis Gallon, cousin of Charles Darwin, 
 anthropologist,Traveler, founder of biome¬ 
 try and modern eugenics and profound stu- 
 
INHERITANCE OF MIND 
 
 43 
 
 dent of evolution and heredity, was the first 
 outstanding scholar to call serious attention 
 to the biological inheritance of human men¬ 
 tal traits and capacity. Most studies in hu¬ 
 man heredity antecedent to his—and his 
 own studies were made less than sixty years 
 ago—were confined almost exclusively to 
 the inheritance of physical characteristics. 
 Gal ton, himself an excellent example of the 
 personal advantage which comes through 
 being derived from a family stock in which 
 unusual mental capacity has been a conspic¬ 
 uous hereditary feature, studied the mental 
 ability of Oxford students and distinguished 
 English families. He found that the correla¬ 
 tion between Oxford brothers and Oxford 
 fathers and sons as regards mental ability 
 was much greater than among unrelated 
 Oxonians. He found mental ability running 
 for generations in English families, despite 
 sufficient dissimilarity in environment and 
 opportunity among successive generations 
 to make this continuing ability not explica¬ 
 ble by environmental advantage. He deter¬ 
 mined that the chance of a son of an emi¬ 
 nent man to show eminent ability himself 
 was about 500 times as great as that of a son 
 of a man taken at random. His observations 
 and conclusions are readily accessible in his 
 various well-known books and papers, as 
 
44 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 Hereditary Genius , English Men of Science , 
 their Nature and Nurture , Human Faculty 
 and Its Development , Natural Inheritance , 
 and others. The prestige of his name, his 
 lucid style of writing, and the ingenious and 
 thorough character of his studies combined 
 to give the results of his work a wide and 
 convincing hearing. There has been no ques¬ 
 tion, since his work, that human mental 
 qualities are inherited just as are human 
 physical qualities. There had been much 
 question of it before him. 
 
 Galton, however, studied heredity statis¬ 
 tically and his determinations of inheritance 
 behavior are expressed as averages. With re¬ 
 gard to mental inheritance he paid less at¬ 
 tention to the inheritance of particular men¬ 
 tal traits than to mental capacity as a whole. 
 He formulated two principal generaliza¬ 
 tions, based on his studies of both mental 
 and physical inheritance, which are now 
 commonly known as “Galton’s Laws.” The 
 first, known as the general law of ancestral 
 inheritance, is to the effect that an individ¬ 
 ual derives one-half of his inheritance from 
 his two parents, one-fourth coming from 
 each; one-fourth of his inheritance from his 
 four grandparents; one-eighth from his eight 
 great grandparents; and so on by diminish¬ 
 ing fractions until the sum of this infinite 
 
INHERITANCE OF MIND 
 
 45 
 
 series equals 1 or the total inheritance of the 
 individual. Galton’s second generalization, 
 called the law of filial regression, can be 
 summed up by saying that the children of 
 parents who vary from the mean of the pop¬ 
 ulation vary similarly, but to less extent 
 than the parents. “This law of regression,” 
 says Galton, “tells heavily against the full 
 hereditary transmission of any gift. Only a 
 few of many children would be likely to dif¬ 
 fer from mediocrity so widely as their mid¬ 
 parent [average condition of the two par¬ 
 ents] and still fewer would differ as widely 
 as the more exceptional of the two parents. 
 The more bountifully the parent is gifted by 
 Nature, the more rare will be his good for¬ 
 tune if he begets a son who is as richly en¬ 
 dowed as himself, and still more so if he has 
 a son who is endowed yet more largely.” 
 
 An excellent example of the results of this 
 latter law may be seen in the case of Gal¬ 
 ton’s collateral family, that of the Darwins. 
 Of Charles Darwin’s five sons four have 
 shown unusual mental ability—but none 
 has been a second Charles. But we are all 
 familiar with examples of “filial regression.” 
 Indeed, so conspicuous in our eyes is the fre¬ 
 quent failure of the children to equal an un¬ 
 usually able parent in mental capacity that 
 we tend to overlook the equally frequent 
 
46 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 possession by these children of mental en¬ 
 dowment above the average of the popula¬ 
 tion. But the law of filial regression calls for 
 both these phenomena. 
 
 Galton’s generalizations based on the ex¬ 
 amination and st atistical treatment of many 
 data mark a distinct step forward in the 
 study of heredity. Especially must we be 
 grateful to him for having brought mental 
 inheritance into line with physical inheri¬ 
 tance and for having determined and ex¬ 
 pressed the general or average inheritance 
 behavior of both physical and mental herit¬ 
 able endowment by common generaliza¬ 
 tions. But interesting and suggestive as 
 these generalizations may be they do not 
 tell us what we especially wish to know, and 
 that is something about the specific inheri¬ 
 tance behavior of specific traits; something 
 about what we may probably or certainly 
 expect with regard to the presence or ab¬ 
 sence in the child or children of a given trait, 
 physical or mental, which is included in the 
 history of this child’s ancestry. If, for exam¬ 
 ple, both of the parents are feeble-minded, 
 or one is feeble-minded and the other nor¬ 
 mal, or if both parents are normal but one 
 or two or three or all of the grandparents 
 are feeble-minded, or if all are normal, will 
 the child or children be feeble-minded or 
 
INHERITANCE OF MIND 
 
 47 
 
 not? That is the kind of question we burn to 
 have answered by the students of heredity. 
 Can they answer such questions? 
 
 In the eighteen-fifties and -sixties, an 
 Augustinian monk, Gregor Mendel, living 
 in a cloister in Briinn, Austria, made a series 
 of experiments in hybridizing various races 
 of peas in the cloister garden. He published 
 the results of his experiments, together with 
 a theoretical explanation of them, in the ob¬ 
 scure journal of the local natural history so¬ 
 ciety of Briinn. Here they lay, practically 
 unobserved, certainly unappreciated, until 
 1900, when three famous European botan¬ 
 ists, one in Holland, one in Germany, and 
 one in Austria, all working independently 
 along lines tending to lead them to conclu¬ 
 sions similar to Mendel’s, all independently 
 and practically simultaneously, discovered 
 Mendel’s work and made it known to the 
 world. For thirty years an epoch-making 
 discovery in science had lain hidden! Now 
 Mendel, Mendelism, and Mendelian inheri¬ 
 tance are names as familiar to biologists as 
 Darwin, Darwinism, and Darwinian selec¬ 
 tion. And in time they will be as familiar to 
 laymen. 
 
 Mendel made the beginning of the more 
 important part of what we may call the “new 
 heredity.” Many followers have developed 
 
48 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 this new heredity into a fascinating and im¬ 
 posing special science. It is already in the 
 way of answering precisely some of those 
 questions about inheritance that we most 
 want answered. It deals with the inherit¬ 
 ance behavior of specific traits of plants, an¬ 
 imals, and man, and with the hereditary 
 make-up of specific individuals. And it re¬ 
 veals much of the actual physical mechan¬ 
 ism of heredity. 
 
 Mendel, in his own work, crossed differ¬ 
 ent races of peas—he worked also with some 
 other plants—which differed plainly and 
 characteristically in such specific and im¬ 
 mediately contrasted details as height of 
 stem, character of seed coat, form of the 
 pods, and so forth. He crossed a race with 
 tall stem with one of low stem, a race wdth 
 wrinkled seeds with one of smoothly round 
 seeds, and so on, and noted the outcome in 
 every one of the offspring produced by each 
 cross-mating. He then mated these hybrids 
 among themselves and similarly recorded 
 the results for all of the second-generation 
 offspring, and he did the same for still suc¬ 
 ceeding generations. 
 
 From all this intensive work Mendel ar¬ 
 rived at several definite and surprising and 
 important results—results not limited to 
 garden peas but holding for other plants, for 
 
INHERITANCE OF MIND 
 
 49 
 
 animals and for man. One of these results is 
 that, given a definite knowledge of the pres¬ 
 ence or absence in the germ cells of given 
 parents of some physical or chemical deter¬ 
 miner of a certain trait or traits—and this 
 can be determined from a knowledge of two 
 or three ancestral generations—definite 
 prophecy can be made as to the outcome of 
 the children of these parents with regard to 
 this trait, either when the two parents are 
 alike, or when they differ in regard to the 
 bodily possession of this trait. 
 
 Another result is the clearing-up of the 
 old mystery concerning the passing-on of a 
 trait by parents not possessing it, that is, in 
 bodily or mental manifestation. The explan¬ 
 ation of this depends upon the fact, also 
 first clearly indicated by Mendel’s work, 
 that the possession of the determiner of a 
 trait in the germ cells does not necessarily 
 assure the bodily development of the trait 
 in the person producing, or produced from, 
 such germ cells. For example, a normal- 
 minded mother and father of a certain ger¬ 
 minal character and history can produce 
 feeble-minded children; and a feeble-minded 
 mother of a certain germinal character and 
 history can produce normal-minded chil¬ 
 dren. The germinal and bodily possessions 
 of an individual may differ; and it is the ger- 
 
50 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 minal rather than the bodily character and 
 history of a given individual that is of prime 
 importance in understanding and prophesy¬ 
 ing the hereditary possibilities of that indi¬ 
 vidual and his offspring. 
 
INTELLIGENCE TESTS 
 
 W e cannot indulge in any detailed pre¬ 
 sentation and discussion of the re¬ 
 sults of the intensive study of heredity 
 which has been going on since the days of 
 Galton’s work, and especially since the dis¬ 
 covery, in 1900, of Mendel’s work. We may 
 be proud that the biologists and psycholo¬ 
 gists of America have taken a particularly 
 active and brilliant part in this study, and 
 have made conspicuous contributions both 
 to the knowledge of the fundamental phe¬ 
 nomena of heredity and to the use of this 
 knowledge in a practical way. Of special in¬ 
 terest to us, at the moment, is that part of 
 this work which has established the general 
 Mendelian character of the inheritance of 
 feeble-mindedness and certain more defi¬ 
 nitely pathologic conditions of the nervous 
 system; as well as that part of it which has 
 led to the extensive elaboration and grow¬ 
 ing use of those ingeniously devised tests of 
 mental capacity commonly called intelli¬ 
 gence tests. 
 
 Out of this work we are coming to see 
 ever more clearly the high importance of 
 the heredity influence in connection with 
 the determination of our mental make-up. 
 
 [ 51 ] 
 
52 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 The extensive studies by means of the use 
 of these tests on school children and more 
 recently of college students, and, during the 
 war, on that broad sample of our population 
 represented by the drafted soldiers, have re¬ 
 sulted in a large and valuable contribution 
 to our knowledge of the inherently different 
 kinds of minds and mental levels of intelli¬ 
 gence represented within our population. 
 And I say this with full recognition of the un¬ 
 fortunate exaggeration in the claims made 
 by some persons for this work. I should not 
 fail to note in this connection that these ex¬ 
 aggerated claims are not made by the com¬ 
 petent and careful men who have actually 
 done the work of devising and testing the 
 tests; such men as Yerkes and Terman, 
 Yoakum and Boring, Thorndike and Whip¬ 
 ple, Haggerty and Brigham, and others 
 whom I ought also to name. 
 
 It has been, indeed, the common knowl¬ 
 edge of all of us, for all of our lives since 
 babyhood, that our playmates and school¬ 
 mates, our college chums and our friends 
 and acquaintances, even our brothers and 
 sisters and parents and relatives, do have 
 different kinds of minds; and that certain of 
 the differences in these minds do persist, and 
 often reveal themselves more obviously as 
 the years pass, despite all the sameness of 
 
INTELLIGENCE TESTS 
 
 53 
 
 tradition and education which is brought to 
 bear on them by parental and social control. 
 
 If we can detach ourselves sufficiently to 
 scrutinize with unprejudiced eyes our own 
 mental capacity and behavior, we can rec¬ 
 ognize distinct and persistent modes of our 
 mental operations and distinct limitations 
 in our mental possibilities, and these despite 
 all our schooling and training and opportu¬ 
 nities. Fortunately for our complacency, 
 Nature seems to compensate, in the case of 
 many of us, for her meagerness of general 
 mental gifts by a generous special gift of 
 self-assurance, a pleasant blindness to or 
 unawareness of our lackings. We often do 
 not seem to know how little our knowing 
 can be. 
 
 But if we cannot see with sufficient and 
 useful clearness our own inherent and per¬ 
 sistent mental peculiarities and limitations, 
 we can abundantly see these in our com¬ 
 panions. I often think I see what seems to 
 be a rigid stone wall or ceiling stretching 
 over the heads of my acquaintances up to 
 and against which during their early years 
 of growth and development, their heads rise, 
 only to be stopped there for the rest of life. 
 These dungeon ceilings are of various heights 
 for my various friends. Occasionally one is 
 very high, unlimitedly high, almost. I have 
 
54 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 in mind, at this moment, one such instance. 
 This man and the rare others like him reveal 
 extraordinary possibilities of human men¬ 
 tal achievement. They give us more hope of 
 the human future. But I, and perhaps most 
 of you, have lower dungeon ceilings. Fortu¬ 
 nately, as I have already indicated, that we 
 may not be too hopeless or unhappy our 
 eyes are not in the top of our heads. We 
 don’t see the ceiling; we don’t even feel the 
 gentle jar when our heads strike it. 
 
 But this common and certain but not 
 very definitely formulated knowledge of the 
 variations, idiocyncrasies and limitations of 
 the human mind as revealed by different in¬ 
 dividuals and groups of individuals, has 
 long needed more precise formulation and 
 arrangement on some analytic and classifi- 
 catory basis. These mental differences have 
 long needed more serious attention, more in¬ 
 tensive study, and more definitive revela¬ 
 tion. Especially is this needed in a country 
 like ours with its democratic form of gov¬ 
 ernment, its democratic form of education, 
 its problems of immigration and racial char¬ 
 acteristics and race assimilation. 
 
 Well, it is precisely the chief merit of the 
 recent work on intelligence tests and deter¬ 
 mination of levels of intelligence that it all 
 makes for this needed classification and pre- 
 
INTELLIGENCE TESTS 
 
 55 
 
 cision of formulation of varying mental ca¬ 
 pacity, of various kinds of mind. It all 
 tends, also, usefully to re-concentrate our 
 attention on the age-old, but ever pressing 
 and still unsolved, problem of the relative 
 influence and importance of those comple¬ 
 mentary chief factors in our individual de¬ 
 velopment and racial evolution, nature and 
 nurture, heredity and environment in its 
 broadest sense. Therefore, it is with no apol¬ 
 ogy that I purpose to give, from the point 
 of view of the general biologist, a little spe¬ 
 cial attention to this comparatively new, 
 but, to some of you, perhaps already too 
 hackneyed, subject of intelligence testing. 
 It is not so much to its methodological de¬ 
 tails but to its fundamental basis and claims 
 for consideration that I wish to ask your at¬ 
 tention. 
 
 Because of certain implications ascribed 
 to intelligence testing and its revelations, 
 which incite the antagonism of the believers 
 in that curiously persistent fiction, the 
 equality of man, and of those who would 
 organize society on the basis of this ac¬ 
 cepted equality, who would, to be more pre¬ 
 cise, organize society communistically, va¬ 
 rious heated efforts to discredit intelligence 
 testing have been recently made. Also, there 
 seems to be a fear among a considerable 
 
56 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 number of professors of education that too 
 much attention given to seeking to under¬ 
 stand and measure differences in inherent 
 intelligence or mental capacity will tend to 
 magnify in people’s minds the importance 
 of heredity and discredit the importance of 
 the environmental factor, education, in the 
 determination of our mental make-up. It is 
 important, therefore, that serious consider¬ 
 ation be given by unprejudiced, but inter¬ 
 ested people, to this new scientific contribu¬ 
 tion to human understanding which seems, 
 by every present indication, to have come 
 to stay and to exert its benign or malign in¬ 
 fluence on our attitude and efforts toward 
 the education and social organization of our 
 people. 
 
 In the very first place we want to know 
 just what it is that intelligence tests test 
 and measure. We all know that any person’s 
 mental make-up consists partly of some¬ 
 thing he has inherited from, or, better, 
 through, his parents, and partly of some 
 things that he has acquired from his parents 
 and others acting as teachers and precep¬ 
 tors and examples to imitate—or to avoid 
 imitating—as well as from books and ob¬ 
 servation and experience and from the per¬ 
 sonal exercise or lack of exercise of his in¬ 
 herited mental faculties. Among those things 
 
INTELLIGENCE TESTS 
 
 57 
 
 he has inherited are general mental capac¬ 
 ity and certain specific mental traits, which 
 we can group together under the name of 
 intelligence. And there are also emotions and 
 temperament, natural courage or coward¬ 
 ice, aggressiveness or retiringness, born in¬ 
 dependence or born dependency, born lead¬ 
 ership or born following. Now of all these 
 things inherited or acquired what are those 
 which intelligence tests really claim to and 
 do test? Just and only those, but those high¬ 
 ly important ones, indicated by the name 
 intelligence; those inherited qualities of gen¬ 
 eral mental capacity and specific mental 
 traits which compose what we call intelli¬ 
 gence; meaning native capacity for learning 
 by observation, experience and being taught, 
 mental alertness and suppleness, keenness, 
 accuracy, quickness and control. But not 
 various other inherited mental or nervous 
 characteristics such as temperament, emo¬ 
 tions, courage, aggressiveness, leadership 
 and so on. And especially not those mental 
 possessions of acquired or learned informa¬ 
 tion and knowledge, manners and methods. 
 
 Too many people jump at the wrong con¬ 
 clusion from the too little they read or hear, 
 or the too hasty reading and careless hear¬ 
 ing of what they read and hear, that the in¬ 
 telligence testers claim to test and evaluate 
 
58 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 all of an individuars mental baggage. This 
 is, of course, not true; but the denial needs 
 to be often and loudly repeated, for on this 
 wrong assumption much careless and unjust 
 criticism of intelligence testing and the test¬ 
 ers has been based. But there are less care¬ 
 less critics who understand better what the 
 intelligence testers are trying to do, and who 
 ask: Can they do it? Can they really devise 
 tests the responses to which are based only 
 on inherited intelligence as distinct from 
 acquired knowledge? And if so, do these 
 tests really enable grades or degrees of in¬ 
 telligence to be determined and measured 
 with sufficient precision to warrant sum¬ 
 mary expression in terms of mental as com¬ 
 pared with chronologic ages or in terms of 
 numerous gradatory categories indicated by 
 serial letters or figures? These are the ques¬ 
 tions, with their implied doubts, that the 
 test-devising and test-applying psycholo¬ 
 gists must answer convincingly before we 
 can accept their intelligence tests and test¬ 
 ing as a basis for radical modification of our 
 educational and societal administration. 
 
 The answer to the first of these questions, 
 that which asks if the tests can be limited to 
 inherent intelligence to the exclusion of ac¬ 
 quired knowledge is not yet perhaps entire¬ 
 ly definite. Some of the tests repeated on 
 
INTELLIGENCE TESTS 
 
 59 
 
 the same children at times separated from 
 each other by a few years receive better re¬ 
 sponses in the later times. But, of course, 
 even the inherent capacity of a child cannot 
 be all exhibited in babyhood. There is an 
 unfolding of inherent mental capacity, just 
 as there is of physical qualities, during 
 childhood. No child is born full-fledged. 
 Some children unfold or develop more rap¬ 
 idly than others. But this unfolding reaches 
 its term, on the whole, comparatively early 
 in life; perhaps in most cases by the age of 
 sixteen. Not so, of course, the individual’s 
 acquirement of information, special knowl¬ 
 edge and skill. This may go on even after 
 the age when native intelligence begins to 
 decline, a phenomenon that certainly oc¬ 
 curs in most individuals although no tests 
 have yet been devised to determine when 
 this retrogression begins or how far it goes. 
 We sometimes see very vividly among our 
 friends and acquaintances the reality and 
 the distressing extent of it. But there are 
 many individuals whose continued acquir¬ 
 ing of knowledge compensates in consider¬ 
 able degree for the loss, in their later years, 
 of the earlier vigor and keenness of their 
 native intelligence. 
 
 But enough has been done by way of re¬ 
 peated testing of children and soldiers under 
 
60 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 differing conditions of time, physical and 
 mental freshness or tiredness, and so on, to 
 indicate that, on the whole, the intelligence 
 tests of today, which have been developed, 
 both for individual and group testing, with 
 great ingenuity, to eliminate any advan¬ 
 tage of literacy as compared with illiteracy, 
 good education as compared with poor, and 
 wide experience as compared with narrow, 
 do call for responses which can be little 
 influenced by acquired knowledge. They do 
 give, on the whole, a fair picture of one’s 
 inherent intellectual possibilities. 
 
 Because of the rather startling discovery 
 that nearly 25 per cent of the million and a 
 half drafted men of the American army who 
 were intelligence-tested during the World 
 War were “found to be unable to read and 
 understand newspapers and write letters 
 home” it was necessary to devise special 
 tests, the now famous Beta tests, in which 
 no linguistic elements entered and which, 
 presumably, made no demand whatever on 
 educational acquirements. The Alpha tests 
 were applied to the literate men; but many 
 of them were also tested by the Beta tests. 
 More than 83,000 enlisted men were given 
 individual examinations in addition to Al¬ 
 pha, Beta, or both. The correspondence in 
 scores of the same men on both the Alpha 
 
INTELLIGENCE TESTS 61 
 
 and Beta group tests and on individuals 
 tests was remarkably close. 
 
 With regard to the other question, there 
 is certainly now available a sufficient body 
 of evidence to warrant an expression in 
 rather definite, but always relative , terms of 
 different grades of intelligence as deter¬ 
 mined by the tests. These are not expres¬ 
 sions of different grades of total native 
 value, mentally, of an individual even apart 
 from his acquirements, because, to repeat 
 again the important but too often uncon¬ 
 sidered fact, the tests do not test and do 
 not pretend to test those various native 
 mental and nervous possessions which we 
 speak of as temperament, emotions, hon¬ 
 esty and dishonesty, courage and coward¬ 
 ice, independence and dependence, and so 
 on, and which play a very important role in 
 determining our behavior and achievement. 
 Nor are these expressions couched in abso¬ 
 lute terms or even in relative terms indicat¬ 
 ing approximation to or distance from an 
 ideal standard. 
 
 Dr. Yerkes, in a recent paper in the Atlan¬ 
 tic Monthly , quotes from a writer in a maga¬ 
 zine of different type and greater circulation 
 as follows: “The army mental tests have 
 shown that there are, roughly, forty-five 
 million people in this country who have no 
 
62 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 sense. . . . Besides the forty-five millions 
 who have no sense, but a majority of votes, 
 there are twenty-five millions who have a 
 little sense. . . . Next there are twenty- 
 five millions with fair-to-middling sense. 
 They haven’t much, but what there is, is 
 good. Then lastly, there are a few over four 
 millions who have a great deal of sense. 
 They have the things we call ‘brains’.” 
 
 Dr. Yerkes, who was largely responsible 
 for the army tests, gets pardonably vehe¬ 
 ment in referring to such statements. “Are 
 they true?” he asks. “No,” he answers. “Is 
 there any truth in them? Just enough to 
 make them worse than false. They discredit 
 psychology and mislead the reader in im¬ 
 portant matters of fact.” 
 
 As a matter of fact the different groups 
 into which the army testers placed their sub¬ 
 jects after testing them, designated by let¬ 
 ters as A, B, C+, C, C—, D, D— and E 
 men, who can be conveniently defined, rela¬ 
 tive to each other, as men of very superior, 
 superior, high average, average, low aver¬ 
 age, inferior, very inferior and most inferior 
 intelligence, indicate primarily a compari¬ 
 son of one individual with another with re¬ 
 gard to the respective possession by these 
 various individuals of native intelligence. It 
 was, on the whole, unfortunate that this 
 
INTELLIGENCE TESTS 
 
 63 
 
 comparison was extended, for the laudable 
 purpose of making it more vivid, to test 
 scores made by children of different ages in 
 various groups. Out of this has grown the 
 widely heralded statement that the army 
 draft and, hence, taking it as a fair sample, 
 our male population, has only the intelli¬ 
 gence on the average of a thirteen-year-old 
 child, which does not mean to the informed 
 psychologist what it is likely to mean to you 
 and me. In fact there has been no determi¬ 
 nation made of the average intelligence of 
 all 13-year old children. 
 
 The child intelligence testers have adopt¬ 
 ed the custom of expressing the actual rate 
 of mental development of a subject by a 
 mathematical coefficient called the Intelli¬ 
 gence Quotient, which is the percentage 
 ratio between the chronological and the 
 mental age of the subject. This mental age 
 is a statement of the degree of mental retar¬ 
 dation or advancement of a child of a given 
 age in a given group compared with the 
 mental condition of average normal children 
 of the same age in the same group. Thus a 
 child of twelve years old may be found by 
 the tests to have a mental age of but eight 
 years, meaning that it has a mental condi¬ 
 tion not beyond that of the average normal 
 condition of children of eight in the group 
 
64 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 tested. Repeated tests of the same children 
 at intervals of one to four years have indi¬ 
 cated that the intelligence quotient of a giv¬ 
 en child remains practically constant be¬ 
 tween the ages of ten and sixteen years. 
 
 By reason of its relative stability, there¬ 
 fore, the intelligence quotient becomes a 
 fairly reliable and useful test of intelligence. 
 Once determined, it seems possible to pre¬ 
 dict by it, within reasonable limits, the 
 probable relative level to which a given in¬ 
 dividual’s intelligence will develop. From a 
 rather wide experience of these specific rat¬ 
 ings of mental age and intelligence quotient 
 in various groups, certain general categories 
 of mental capacity or incapacity have been 
 established and are now commonly used by 
 psychologists. At bottom is the category 
 feeble-minded, then, in ascending order, 
 border-line, dull-normal, average-normal, 
 and superior. 
 
 These categories, like the A, B, C, D, E 
 categories of the army testers are, as I have 
 said, categories of relative or compared val¬ 
 ues and should not be taken usually for 
 more than that. But we do know that some 
 of these categories can be interpreted, in 
 some measure, into absolute terms. For ex¬ 
 ample, most feeble-minded persons are lit¬ 
 erally unable to maintain themselves un- 
 
INTELLIGENCE TESTS 
 
 05 
 
 aided, let alone contribute to maintain 
 others, in human society. They become a 
 burden on the social organization. The two 
 men out of every hundred of the army draft 
 tested, whose scorings in the mental tests 
 revealed them so mentally inferior that they 
 could not safely be recommended for regu¬ 
 lar military training and duty were, until 
 their discharge or consignment to merely 
 manual labor groups, a load on the military 
 organization of the American army. As Dr. 
 Yerkes points out, had the Army rejected 
 or discharged immediately on the basis of 
 psychological examination the lowest 100,- 
 000 of its recruits it would have lessened by 
 at least one-half military crime, difficulty 
 and delay in training due to stupidity and 
 inequalities in strength of organization. 
 
 So there is after all some indication given 
 by intelligence tests of absolute human val¬ 
 ues. It is quite true that intelligence is but 
 one factor in the absolute value of a man. A 
 man might have an intelligence sufficient to 
 make him available for use as an army offi¬ 
 cer, but if he lacked courage and some qual¬ 
 ities of leadership this would be a poor use 
 to make of him. But also if a man had cour¬ 
 age and leadership and was of very inferior 
 intelligence he would not be a very useful 
 officer. There can certainly be no question 
 
66 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 on the part of those of us who admit that 
 there are, among human beings, differences 
 in native intelligence, that a more precise 
 knowledge of such differences can be made 
 useful in our attempts to solve the serious 
 problems presented to us in connection with 
 education, military and industrial efficiency, 
 immigration and racial assimilation and so¬ 
 cial organization generally. Such recent 
 books as Goddard’s “Human Efficiency and 
 Levels of Intelligence” and the admirable 
 analysis, under the title “A Study of Ameri¬ 
 can Intelligence,” of the results of the army 
 tests by Professor Brigham of Princeton 
 university, show us something of where we 
 now stand in regard to this knowledge and 
 some of the uses we can make of it; and they 
 show what further knowledge we can read¬ 
 ily acquire if we set ourselves to it. The 
 present-day situation of our schools and uni¬ 
 versities ; our pressing present-day immigra¬ 
 tion problem, and the present-day wide¬ 
 spread social unrest, demand of all of us who 
 are interested in the fate of the nation that 
 we overlook no least chance to inform our¬ 
 selves of anything which science has to offer 
 us that may be useful to know in connection 
 with our efforts to solve these problems. 
 The modern studies of intelligence do offer 
 us something that may be useful in this way. 
 
INTELLIGENCE TESTS 
 
 67 
 
 I have tried now to show that scientific 
 knowledge reveals with no uncertainty the 
 great role that heredity plays in determin¬ 
 ing kinds of mind in Nature and, of particu¬ 
 lar interest to us, in determining our own 
 mental make-up. We have seen how large a 
 part inherent or native intelligence takes in 
 this. We simply must not overlook this fact. 
 One of the major reasons for our present 
 loud outcries about the unsatisfactoriness 
 and waste in college and university instruc¬ 
 tion is because we do overlook it. At least 
 by our present methods, by our clinging to 
 tradition, and by our necessity of mass¬ 
 handling the crowding groups of college stu¬ 
 dents—they have increased by 100% in the 
 last five years—we do, in effect, deliberately 
 overlook this fact of wide native difference 
 in minds. And this despite the sound and re¬ 
 vealing start that our psychologists have 
 made not only in informing us of this fact— 
 which, of course, we knew before—but of 
 offering us methods of classifying in some 
 measure these varying inherent mental ca¬ 
 pacities, which is the first step toward treat¬ 
 ing them variously as their variety demands. 
 In the face of this we go on in the universi¬ 
 ties treating all student minds as if they had 
 been standardized by nature or previous 
 schooling, and hence as if, for their further 
 
68 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 best development, standardized mass meth¬ 
 ods were quite sufficient. No wonder the ca¬ 
 pable-minded students must idle, or find 
 other activities open to them out of class¬ 
 room and laboratories for the exercise of 
 their minds. It is not their fault if they do 
 it; it is our fault. And similarly we go on at¬ 
 tacking those other various problems of our 
 economic and political and social life, and 
 futilely fussing with them, with all too much 
 fatal disregard of that fundamental element 
 in them all of the proved reality of varying 
 degrees of native intelligence. 
 
EDUCATION AND 
 THE MIND 
 
 E minent educators are eminently dis¬ 
 turbed now-a-days. One hears or reads, 
 coming from them, rather panicky declara¬ 
 tions about the bankruptcy of American 
 education, the appalling spectre of an illit¬ 
 erate American nation, the general ineffi¬ 
 ciency of American university methods, the 
 swamping of American colleges by incom¬ 
 ing waves of moron students, the submer¬ 
 gence of the humanities by the hideous Jug¬ 
 gernaut of science, the utter vanishing of 
 what little sweetness and light we have ever 
 had. 
 
 Fortunately for my own peace of mind I 
 had an opportunity recently to visit Russia 
 and talk with Lunacharsky the Soviet Min¬ 
 ister of Education, and I know from person¬ 
 al observation and much added reliable in¬ 
 formation something of the present state of 
 affairs in such centers of educational leader¬ 
 ship as Vienna and Berlin, and hence know 
 that however bad is our situation theirs is 
 worse. So I take that selfish and short¬ 
 sighted comfort in regard to our own troub¬ 
 les that comes from seeing other peoples’ 
 troubles. I take refuge in the natural philos- 
 
 [ 69 ] 
 
70 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 ophy of relativity. Relatively, we are not so 
 badly off. 
 
 But after all we must not close our eyes 
 to things that are happening in the realm of 
 absolute values. We may be less illiterate 
 than the Russians, but we are, a certain 
 proportion of us, indeed illiterate. Luna¬ 
 charsky has recently announced—I may in¬ 
 terject that I do not believe everything that 
 comes out of Moscow—that in a year and a 
 half every Russian soldier will be able to 
 read and write his native language. A large 
 fraction, perhaps as high as one-fourth, of 
 our own drafted army, which may be taken 
 as a nearly fair sample of our male popula¬ 
 tion in the time of the World War, were “un¬ 
 able to read and understand newspapers and 
 write letters home,” to use the interesting 
 phraseology of the army examiners. Poland 
 ranks its university professors, as to official 
 status and salary, on a level with major- 
 generals in its army. I will not undertake to 
 estimate the social and salary status of our 
 professors. Czecho-Slovakia is providing a 
 library for every one of its towns of a popu¬ 
 lation of four hundred and over. Even the 
 Carnegie libraries are a little less abundant 
 than that. A Swedish professor of education, 
 contrasting Swedish and American schools, 
 remarked that in his own countrv the word 
 
EDUCATION AND THE MIND 71 
 
 “teacher” is not a noun feminine as it is in 
 America. A recent Bulletin of the U. S. Bu¬ 
 reau of Education shows, indeed, that the 
 total percentage of men teachers in Ameri¬ 
 can city schools is 11 while the percentage 
 of such teachers in the city elementary 
 schools is 4. 
 
 One of the high schools of Washington 
 works its pupils in shifts but its teachers all 
 the time. American teachers’ and college 
 professors’ salaries have gone up—but the 
 cost of their food and clothing has gone up 
 faster. The number of college students has 
 doubled in the last five years, but the num¬ 
 ber of college instructors has been far from 
 doubling. Presidents of universities are, 
 some of them, on the verge, or over it, of 
 hysterics. The intelligence testers are in¬ 
 forming us daily by specific figures what we 
 knew before as general facts—but these 
 facts seem more exact and awful as they 
 take on the manner of mathematical equa¬ 
 tions. 
 
 So much for a cursory glance at the edu¬ 
 cational status of the land. What should we 
 do, what can we do, what are we doing, 
 about it? 
 
 The intelligence testers, and the child 
 psychology students generally, have made 
 an impress on the primary and secondary 
 
72 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 schools and on the institutions for juvenile 
 delinquents. They have shown that they 
 can go far in determining and classifying 
 relatively the native intelligence of children, 
 and that this native intelligence, this inheri¬ 
 ted kind of mind, of the child, determines 
 in no inconsiderable measure the possibili¬ 
 ties of that child which can be realized , but 
 not materially increased, by home and 
 school environment. Some backward chil¬ 
 dren come from good homes and some for¬ 
 ward children from bad ones even though, 
 in the majority of cases, normal and for¬ 
 ward children come from good homes and 
 sub-normal children from bad homes. But 
 this more usual condition is perhaps less be¬ 
 cause of the influence of the home environ¬ 
 ment itself on the child than because the 
 bad homes are usually homes created by 
 parents of low mentality and the good 
 homes are created by parents of normal or 
 superior mentality, the children deriving 
 their sub-normal or normal mentality by 
 inheritance from these parents. 
 
 But this is not to decry for a moment the 
 high and absolute value of a careful atten¬ 
 tion to the environmental influences ex¬ 
 erted on the developing child both in home 
 and school. For each kind or grade of mind 
 has its own possibilities, and to attain the 
 
EDUCATION AND THE MIND 73 
 
 maximum of these possibilities the maxi¬ 
 mum of opportunity and help is necessary. 
 That wonderful thin, sensitive, cellular cor¬ 
 tex that spreads over the fore-brain of the 
 child, blank, and inviting the parent and 
 teacher painters to paint on it the most 
 beautiful picture of life possible to be paint¬ 
 ed with all the experience of ages in it, all 
 our knowledge of Nature in it, and all the 
 stories of human goodness and sweetness in 
 it, is the great gift of Nature to the environ¬ 
 mentalist. So much good for the child, or so 
 much bad for it, can be done with this op¬ 
 portunity that even the most convinced 
 hereditarian must be very, very careful nev 
 er to rob anv mother or father or teacher or 
 
 t/ 
 
 preacher of his or her faith in the actuality 
 and possibility of environmental influence. 
 But, equally important, no environmental¬ 
 ist should try to delude any parent with the 
 idea that anything can be made out of any 
 child by environment and education. I can 
 not forget the circular I once received, which 
 asked me the burning question if I wanted 
 to be another Michaelangelo or Leonardo 
 da Vinci, and suggesting that if I wanted to 
 I should take fifty dollars’ worth of advice 
 or instruction from the author of the circu¬ 
 lar. The promised result would, I admit, be 
 cheap at the price—if that result could be 
 
74 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 brought about. But I happen to know that 
 it couldn’t. 
 
 There is no doubt that the intelligence 
 testers have shown by their tests that in¬ 
 heritance does determine various levels of 
 intelligence which in turn determine in some 
 measure the learning and information-ac¬ 
 quiring possibilities of school children. 
 These varying mental conditions indicate 
 the need of an educational treatment adapt¬ 
 ed to the special needs and possibilities of 
 special categories of pupils. Indeed, they are 
 strong arguments in favor of as nearly an 
 individual educational treatment as can 
 possibly be given under the circumstances 
 of popular education, circumstances that of 
 course preclude going far in such treatment 
 in any but a few private schools. 
 
 But there can be, and should be, a fur¬ 
 ther and more detailed grouping of pupils 
 than our present too wholesale method of 
 classification provides. Such more detailed 
 classification and special educational treat¬ 
 ment of pupils is not a retrogression in de¬ 
 mocracy of education. On the contrary it is 
 an advance in it. For the old or widely pres¬ 
 ent method of treating every child like every 
 other is based on the unwarranted assump¬ 
 tion of human equality, and actually nega¬ 
 tives the real aim of democratic education 
 
EDUCATION AND THE MIND 75 
 
 which is to give every child an opportunity 
 to make the most of its inherent possibili¬ 
 ties. It is equality of opportunity to become 
 the most you can that a successful democ¬ 
 racy must be based on. 
 
 All this applies to college and university 
 education as well as to primary and second¬ 
 ary education. The intelligence testers have 
 invaded the examination rooms of the can¬ 
 didates for college entrance. They have re¬ 
 ceived here and there a reluctant permission 
 to use a few minutes of the valuable time 
 now devoted, according to the accepted rit¬ 
 ual, to finding out how many dates or names 
 of kings or rules of grammar and diction, or 
 description of natural objects, the candi¬ 
 dates have committed to memory. The in¬ 
 telligence testers have been permitted here 
 and there to try their tests for mental ca¬ 
 pacity, that is, capacity to learn and do 
 things mentally, on the huddled groups of 
 would-be Freshmen. On the basis of these 
 tests they have made predictions as to how 
 long certain students would last in the col¬ 
 lege they enter, that is, whether they would 
 be dropped at the end of the first semester, 
 or the second or third, or would stick on to 
 sheepskin day by virtue of professorial char¬ 
 ity, or would go on triumphantly through 
 the four years clamoring for more and hard- 
 
76 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 er work and impatiently marking time as 
 the instructors held them back while they 
 slowly nursed the mentally average and in¬ 
 ferior along to semester’s end after semes¬ 
 ter’s end. And the testers have seen their 
 predictions come true. 
 
 If the intelligence testers can do this, 
 what a waste of time and energy and money 
 our colleges are tolerating in their efforts to 
 find out during a semester or year or more 
 what students cannot keep up with even 
 the moderate—to be restrained in expres¬ 
 sion—mental achievement necessary to 
 making grades in the college courses. The 
 fact, and it is a fact, that the American uni- 
 veristy—curious hybrid of gymnasium or 
 lycee and real university—is now giving 
 more attention and effort to the less capa¬ 
 ble, the uninterested and the non-attaining 
 students than to the more capable, the inter¬ 
 ested and the attaining students, is a men¬ 
 ace to the highest usefulness of the institu¬ 
 tion if it is to exercise effectively its much- 
 needed true university function, which is 
 the development of thinkers and leaders for 
 the country. We may be all equal in our 
 right to receive service from the state, but 
 we are not all equal in our capacity to give 
 service back to it. The state, which is sim¬ 
 ply all of us, needs the benefit of the best 
 
EDUCATION AND THE MIND 77 
 
 use of the best brains, and to get it we must 
 see that these best brains have the best of 
 training, and the opportunity to go as rap¬ 
 idly and as far as they can. The problem of 
 what to do with the gifted university stu¬ 
 dent should be looked on as a problem 
 equally as important as that problem to 
 which we now give most of our attention, 
 namely, of what to do with the inherently 
 mentally incapable student. 
 

 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
SOCIETAL ORGANIZATION AND 
 MENTAL CAPACITY 
 
 e can do best what we are best fitted 
 
 V V to do. This sounds like an axiom, a 
 “proposition that it is necessary to take for 
 granted,” as Webster says. We may accept 
 it as such, but do we govern our behavior 
 and our education according to it? The an¬ 
 swer is, as they say in the House of Com¬ 
 mons, in the negative. At least, it is too 
 largely and generally in the negative. 
 
 “Vocational guidance” is a name that, 
 like “eugenics,” has come into some disre¬ 
 pute by being overworked by cranks. But 
 each is the name for a good idea and for 
 something that all those interested in the 
 advancement of individual and social ca¬ 
 pacity and happiness should not turn away 
 from simply because the name has some un¬ 
 fortunate connotations. 
 
 Vocational guidance does not mean mere¬ 
 ly, or mostly, finding jobs for jobless veter¬ 
 ans or young persons with high school or 
 college diplomas. Nor should or does it 
 mean modifying our school system so that 
 the curriculum is to be mostly given over to 
 courses in currying horses, baking bread or 
 double entry bookkeeping. It means a little 
 
 [ 79 ] 
 
80 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 of these and a good deal of several other 
 things. 
 
 Vocational guidance means, or must 
 mean, if it is to win much and permanent 
 favor, trying to find out just how men natu¬ 
 rally differ from each other in intelligence 
 and temperament, strong inclinations and 
 special capacities, and what these differ¬ 
 ences indicate as to kind of work and social 
 activities naturally differing kinds of men 
 can best fit themselves to do, and what the 
 methods and manner of this fitting can best 
 be. Vocational guidance is a natural and 
 needed consequence of recognizing different 
 grades of mind and of rallying to the win¬ 
 ning slogan, equality of human opportunity. 
 Equality of opportunity for all men means 
 opportunity to reach the most and happiest 
 and hence the best possible to each; and the 
 achievement of this is obviously the way in 
 which human society and civilization will 
 profit most from human effort, which of 
 course is the way to an ever higher civiliza¬ 
 tion. To repeat our axiom, with some exten¬ 
 sion, we can do best what we are best fitted 
 to do and be happiest in doing it, and what 
 is possible and best for the most of us indi¬ 
 vidually is best and most promising for us 
 as a social group. 
 
 The world has had for some time now an 
 
SOCIETAL ORGANIZATION 81 
 
 impressive illustration before it, of the re¬ 
 results of a vigorous and wholesale attempt 
 to put into effect the logical interpretation 
 as to practise of the slogan, “equality of 
 men.” At the same time that an important 
 member of the present American govern¬ 
 ment issues a vigorously worded little book 
 on “American Individualism” whose text is 
 the slogan, “equality of opportunity for 
 men,” we still hear, although ever more 
 faintly, the shouting of the old slogan, 
 “equality of all men,” from the present 
 Russian government. We have seen clearly 
 in Russia the results of a deliberate and 
 forced policy of non-vocational guidance, 
 of an attempt to act on the assumption 
 of the reality of the equality of all men, of a 
 disregard of the natural phenomenon of 
 kinds of mind. Every man in Russia was as¬ 
 sumed to be the potential equal of any other 
 man; any man can do or be, with similar 
 opportunity, what any other man can do 
 or be. 
 
 I have already referred to my opportuni¬ 
 ty of a little more than a year ago to see per¬ 
 sonally some of the results of this attempt 
 in Russia to act on these assumptions, and 
 to talk with some of the men responsible for 
 the attempt. I had an especially interesting 
 talk with Kalinin, the peasant president of 
 
82 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 the Soviet Republic, about the theories and 
 practise of the Government, and the results 
 of its undertaking to develop concretely a 
 rigidly communistic social organization. 
 
 Kalinin is a man of much native intelli¬ 
 gence, of apparent honesty and frankness, 
 and a good debater. He has had a limited 
 education, and speaks in a peasant patois. 
 My interpreter, a Moscow university man, 
 said, after the interview, that he had never 
 had a more difficult task of interpreting. 
 
 Our talk occurred just at the time that 
 the NEP, a new economic policy of the gov¬ 
 ernment, was being formulated and begin¬ 
 ning to be put into effect. Before this no pri¬ 
 vate trading had been permitted and all 
 surplus of the peasants’ grain production 
 over the amount actually needed as food for 
 the peasant families and their stock was req¬ 
 uisitioned by the state to go into the com¬ 
 mon pot for government distribution. Also 
 no industrial establishments could be pri¬ 
 vately controlled nor could there be any 
 private banking or general commerce. Na¬ 
 tionals of other countries in Russia were 
 subject to the same regulations, and hence 
 no foreign capital or industrial aid was com¬ 
 ing in from the outside. Everything was to 
 be undertaken and controlled by the whole 
 people as represented by the various com- 
 
SOCIETAL ORGANIZATION 83 
 
 missars who formed the government. There 
 was a tremendous civil list of functionaries 
 who were to direct all the people’s activities, 
 work the railways and mines, cut the for¬ 
 ests, collect and distribute the grain, manu¬ 
 facture the needed cloth and clothing, hats 
 and shoes, manage the hotels now become 
 “Soviet guest-houses,” conduct the public 
 schools and universities, and do all the rest 
 that needed doing in Russia for the comfort 
 and happiness and even mere existence of 
 the people. These functionaries were select¬ 
 ed by no competitive method. There was no 
 trace of vocational guidance in connection 
 with their assumption of special tasks. Any 
 man was held to be as capable as any other, 
 or if he were proletarian or peasant perhaps 
 a little more capable. 
 
 Well, as a result of this a few Americans 
 had to go to Russia to carry on a program 
 of food relief to save several millions of men, 
 women and children from starving to death, 
 or from death by simply controllable epi¬ 
 demic disease. There had been a tremen¬ 
 dous falling off in food production all over 
 the land (only partially accounted for by 
 drouth in the Volga basin); there was no in¬ 
 dustry; there were no medicines and no hos¬ 
 pital equipment; there was no coal to warm 
 the houses; there was no money to buy food 
 
84 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 or medicines or coal or manufactured cloth¬ 
 ing from outside countries. The people were 
 starving, freezing, fleeing in panic, dying. 
 
 “Yes,” said Kalinin, seriously, “we have 
 been disappointed. We have made mistakes; 
 we have been unable to do it. The govern¬ 
 ment and the people are in great difficulties, 
 in sore straits. We thought we could jump 
 at once from a state of capitalism and com¬ 
 petition to a communistic millennium. Well, 
 we haven’t been able to do it. 
 
 “We know now that it is a matter of evo¬ 
 lution. We must go through a series of 
 stages. So we are now going back to enter 
 the first of these. It may be called the stage 
 of state capitalism. Such large enterprises 
 as the railways, mines, a state bank, all 
 heavy industry, all export and import trade, 
 we shall keep entirely in the hands of the 
 state. But in agriculture and light industry 
 the peasants and small manufacturers may 
 carry on their affairs with only such state 
 control as is necessary to collect a tax in 
 kind from the grain producers and a share 
 of the profits from the little factories. This 
 is the basis of our new economic policy.” 
 
 By a few decrees NEP was put into effect. 
 The peasants have undisturbed possession 
 of their land, although they do not yet own 
 it in fee simple. They retain ownership and 
 
SOCIETAL ORGANIZATION 85 
 
 control of their surplus production, and may 
 sell it. Private trading is restored. The small 
 industrials may have their factories back, 
 on a sort of easy lease system—this to save 
 the face of nationalization—and may man¬ 
 age these factories themselves. 
 
 The result is an immediate bettering of 
 grain production. There is also a beginning 
 in the rehabilitation of light industry. Heavy 
 industry, still in the hands of the govern¬ 
 ment, and managed by men selected on the 
 principle of any man being as good as any 
 other, still languishes. 
 
 I have given so much detailed attention 
 to the Russian situation because it is a bril¬ 
 liant illustration of the results of social or¬ 
 ganization based on a nearly complete dis¬ 
 regard of natural differences in men and 
 minds. 
 
 Such differences do exist, and not only in 
 Russia but in all the other countries of 
 Europe and of the world, for that matter. 
 And this fact may well be kept in mind 
 when we indulge ourselves in thinking or 
 talking or acting about the building up, the 
 consolidation and the future of the Ameri¬ 
 can nation. And just now is a time for all 
 good men to indulge themselves seriously 
 in just this sort of thinking, discussing and 
 acting. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
RACIAL TRAITS AND 
 IMMIGRATION 
 
 W e have before us the pressing prob¬ 
 lem of the so-called Americanization 
 of the people of America. A part of this 
 problem is that of analyzing and classifying, 
 on various bases, and, of course in no formal 
 way, our present population, to the end of 
 taking action educationally and socially to 
 try to fit each individual to be a useful and 
 contented citizen. Another part of this prob¬ 
 lem is that produced by the constant immi¬ 
 gration of new would-be Americans. Per¬ 
 haps some of these newcomers think less 
 about becoming Americans than about mere 
 escape to America from other at present less 
 comfortable countries; or than about just 
 finding jobs paid for in money that doesn’t 
 require reckoning in terms of astronomical 
 figures. Perhaps some of these newcomers 
 simply wish to follow the flow of gold, argu¬ 
 ing to themselves that no one can get gold, 
 the summum bonum in their understanding 
 of life, where there is no gold, and that any 
 one can probably get some gold where 
 gold is. 
 
 But for whatever reasons our immigrants 
 come, we feel pretty strongly, and certainly 
 
 [ 87 ] 
 
88 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 wisely, that these immigrants must be Amer¬ 
 icanized both as extensively and as inten¬ 
 sively as possible. By the very nature of our 
 political organization we are a congeries of 
 political groups rather than a single large 
 unit group, which is a condition that of it¬ 
 self creates enough serious problems. We do 
 not want to add even more serious ones by 
 permitting the development in America of a 
 kind of social organization, or, better, disor¬ 
 ganization, based on racial differences. An 
 important question, therefore, in connection 
 with immigration is that touching the real¬ 
 ity, and if real, the character of inherent ra¬ 
 cial differences, both physical and mental, 
 but especially mental. Have different races 
 different inherent mental levels? Or, as dif¬ 
 ferent mental levels undoubtedly do exist 
 inside of any racial or national group—they 
 certainly exist here in America—do some 
 races or nations send us, not fair samples of 
 all their mental levels, but only or prepon- 
 deratingly representatives of their lower lev¬ 
 els alone? Some recently obtained data 
 throw much light on the occurrence and dis¬ 
 tribution of these levels in our population, 
 both in that part of it that may be compar¬ 
 atively called native and in that part of it 
 composed of recent additions from various 
 foreign races and nationalities. 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 
 
 89 
 
 But before giving a brief special consider¬ 
 ation to these data I want to discuss for a 
 moment the question of the reality of in¬ 
 herent racial differences in mental traits. 
 Most of us, I take it, would declare, at first 
 blush, that there is no question at all about 
 it: races do differ in their mental manners, 
 as we may call them. But in saying this are 
 we not looking at the whole mental make¬ 
 up of the usual specimens we meet repre¬ 
 senting different races or nationalities? Are 
 we not failing to distinguish between the in¬ 
 herent (inherited) mental traits and general 
 capacity of these specimens and those traits 
 and manners acquired by environmental in¬ 
 fluences, the influences of tradition and imi¬ 
 tation, of kinds of education and politics 
 and religion characteristic of different races 
 or peoples? Of course these acquired charac¬ 
 teristics have a real importance in determin¬ 
 ing the susceptibility of these people to be¬ 
 ing more or less quickly made over into 
 American-mannered American citizens; to 
 being brought to look at social organization 
 and government from an American point of 
 view. But as these traditional or acquired 
 ways are really only acquirements, they 
 may be modified or supplanted more or less 
 easily and quickly by other acquirements 
 resulting from education in and by Ameri- 
 
90 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 can methods. They need not necessarily be 
 handed down to their children, as their in¬ 
 herent mental qualities surely will, in some 
 rather definite measure, be passed on to 
 these children by heredity. We are all used 
 to seeing the marked difference in mental 
 point of view and in individual and social 
 behavior of these immigrants, from our own 
 point of view and manners, but we are also 
 all used to seeing the marked differences in 
 point of view and behavior of the first and 
 second American generations of immigrant 
 foreigners from those of their immigrant 
 parents. Some of the loudest eagle-shriekers 
 and most declarative boosters of all things 
 American are Germans, Poles or Serbians 
 only one generation removed. I recall a very 
 large sign in my small college town in the 
 middle West which indicated the place of 
 business of “A. Urbansky, American tailor.” 
 
 We may have some confidence, then, that 
 through association and education we can 
 modify or replace foreign acquirements by 
 home-made ones, just as we see the incom¬ 
 ing foreign languages replaced by our own. 
 But we can have no such confidence with 
 regard to inherent or truly racial mental 
 traits. If there really are racial differences 
 in mental traits our immigrants are not only 
 going to bring them with them but they are 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 
 
 91 
 
 going to hold them—that is, they can’t get 
 rid of them—through all their lives. And 
 then they are going to hand them on, little 
 or not at all modified, to their children and 
 their children’s children. Therefore we have 
 in these conditions a much harder nut to 
 crack in the Americanizing, in our sense of 
 making like us, of these people. 
 
 In a most enlightening paper, published 
 twelve years ago, Professor R. S. Woodworth 
 of Columbia University pointed out that 
 what studies of racial differences in mental 
 traits had been made up to that time, failed 
 to reveal any pronounced or even any very 
 readily definable differences of this charac¬ 
 ter among the races studied. More recent 
 studies seem to confirm this conclusion. In 
 the various special senses these differences 
 are slight, and as to general mental capacity 
 as distinguished from mental culture it is 
 much less easy to say, with any of that con¬ 
 fidence so often displayed by superficial ob¬ 
 servers, that racial differences in innate in¬ 
 telligence of serious degree really obtain, at 
 least among the races of Europe and those 
 other countries which most of our immi¬ 
 grants represent. Perhaps it is true that the 
 so-called primitive living peoples, like the 
 Bushmen and Veddahs and native Austra¬ 
 lians, are truly biologically primitive, but 
 
92 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 they need not concern us; they don’t emi¬ 
 grate. 
 
 But there does after all seem to be fairly 
 good evidence that although there is much 
 overlapping of races with regard to mental 
 traits and capacity, so that it is hard to set 
 up differential criteria on the basis of differ¬ 
 ences in such traits, some races may be de¬ 
 clared to differ rather definitely in their 
 average or modal mental endowment. The 
 total range of variation in mental character 
 may be fairly similar in two races, but one 
 race may have a proportionally larger num¬ 
 ber of individuals below the mean of the 
 range than the other so that the weighted 
 average of this race or nation may be said 
 to be below that of another. There is more 
 chance, then, of our receiving, if we receive 
 a fairly distributed sample of each race, a 
 mentally poorer contribution from one race 
 than from another. Of course, we rarely do 
 receive a fairly distributed sample of a given 
 race. We almost always get a sample deter¬ 
 mined by economic or political or religious 
 or what not other discriminatingly deter¬ 
 mining conditions. Sometimes this is a sam¬ 
 ple of the better individuals of the race; 
 sometimes, and too often, of the poorer ones. 
 
 I want now to refer briefly to those re¬ 
 cently obtained data which throw some 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 
 
 93 
 
 light—and a rather startling light, it is—not 
 only on the existence and distribution of 
 mental levels, or degrees of intelligence, 
 among our present population, but, by inci¬ 
 dence, on the mental levels of the samples 
 of foreign population coming to our coun¬ 
 try from across the seas. 
 
 I have earlier referred to the penetrating 
 analysis made by Professor Brigham in his 
 recent book, called “A Study of American 
 Intelligence,” of the results of the psycho¬ 
 logical examination of a large fraction of the 
 American army during the war period. This 
 analysis will give any of its readers much 
 food for serious thought. While the book is 
 not primarily offered as a discussion of the 
 immigration problem I quite agree with 
 what Dr. Yerkes says of it in a foreword, 
 namely: “It is not light or easy reading, but 
 it is better worth re-reading and reflective 
 pondering than any explicit discussion of 
 immigration which I happen to know.” 
 
 In the first place it is apparent that when 
 the white contingent in the army draft is 
 compared with the negro draft the scoring 
 of the whites on the intelligence tests is 
 much higher than that of the blacks. When 
 the white draft is divided into two groups, 
 namely white officers and white privates, 
 the scoring of the white officers is above 
 
94 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 that of the white privates while the white 
 privates score higher than the black draft. 
 The average scores on the basis of the so- 
 called combined scale, which has a possible 
 maximum of 25, are about 19 for the white 
 officers, 13)4 f° r the white privates and 
 10)4 for the black draft. With regard to the 
 general distribution of intelligence in the 
 three groups, the analyzed data show that 
 98.87% of the white officers score above the 
 average score of the white privates, while 
 99.97% score above the average of the negro 
 draft. Of the white privates 86.31% are 
 above the average of the negro draft, while 
 only 13.13% of the negroes score above the 
 average of the white privates. But these 
 facts, concerning the relation of the scores 
 of the whites to the blacks, interesting and 
 important as they are, do not concern the 
 immigration problem and may pass without 
 further comment. 
 
 When the white draft is divided into two 
 groups, one of native born and one of for¬ 
 eign born men, the data show that 74.8% 
 of the native born exceed the average score 
 of the foreign born. Now, when the foreign 
 born draft is divided into five groups deter¬ 
 mined by years of residence of the individ¬ 
 uals in the United States as from 0 years to 
 5, 6 to 10, 11 to 15, 16 to 20, and over 20 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 
 
 95 
 
 years, the interesting result is found that 
 the average scores of these groups increase 
 somewhat with length of American resi¬ 
 dence. The average score of the first or 0 to 
 5 year group is 11.41, of the 6 to 10 year 
 group, 11.74, of the 11 to 15 year group, 
 12.47, of the 16 to 20 year group, 13.55, and 
 of the over 20 year group, 13.82. 
 
 Various explanations have been offered 
 for this interesting state of affairs. One is 
 that residence in the United States con¬ 
 duces to an improvement in native intelli¬ 
 gence, a flattering explanation but one not 
 in line with the assumption of the intelli¬ 
 gence testers that the native or inherent in¬ 
 telligence of an individual is fixed some years 
 before attaining the minimum age of army 
 service, and that the intelligence tests do 
 test this inherent mental capacity. Another 
 is that the more intelligent immigrants suc¬ 
 ceed and therefore remain in this country, 
 an explanation which is weakened by the 
 fact that we know that many of the most 
 successful immigrants return to Europe to 
 spend their saved money. 
 
 Both of these hypotheses have been taken 
 into account by Professor Brigham and 
 tested by him through ingenious analysis of 
 the wealth of data at his command, and are 
 found incapable of explaining the fact of 
 
96 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 this difference of intelligence among the for¬ 
 eign-born who have been resident in the 
 country for shorter or longer periods. But 
 another hypothesis is left, which seems real¬ 
 ly to be the true solution of the riddle, and 
 that is that the immigrants that have been 
 more recently coming to us are of a lower 
 grade of intelligence than the incomers of 
 former years. This in turn indicates a change 
 in the character of recent as compared with 
 earlier immigration. An analysis of the 
 available data shows, indeed, that this lat¬ 
 ter assumption of a change in character of 
 immigration is correct. 
 
 In the years from 1887 to 1897 the immi¬ 
 grants, who are the ones composing now the 
 ‘‘over 20 years in residence” group of the 
 foreign-born army draft, included consider¬ 
 able numbers from England, Scotland, Ire¬ 
 land, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden 
 and Germany, but these numbers decreased 
 materially after 1897 and in recent years 
 have been comparatively small. On the other 
 hand the immigration in recent years has 
 included large contingents from Russia, It¬ 
 aly, and Greece. Austria has sent over large 
 contingents through all of the past twenty- 
 five years. An analysis of the intelligence 
 scores of the foreign-born recruits represent¬ 
 ing the various European countries in the 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 
 
 97 
 
 army draft shows a marked variation in 
 these scores with the English, Scots, Dutch, 
 German and Scandinavian groups ranking 
 much higher than the Russian, Greek, Ital¬ 
 ian and Polish groups. For example, of the 
 recruits born in England, 19% were ranked 
 in the A and B intelligence groups; of those 
 born in Scotland, 13.1%; in Holland, 12.4%; 
 in Germany, 10%; in Denmark, 7%; in 
 Sweden, 5.9%; in Norway, 5.3%; while only 
 3.3% of those born in Russia ranked in 
 these groups, 2.2% of those born in Greece, 
 1.5% of the Italians and 1.1% of the Polish. 
 On the other hand, 63.8% of the Polish- 
 born recruits were in the D and E (lowest) 
 groups, 60.5% of the Italians, 55.7% of the 
 Russians, 44.6% of the Greeks, 23.2% of 
 the Swedes, 17% of the Danes, 16.2% of the 
 Germans, 13.5% of the Scotch, 12% of the 
 Dutch, and 8.8% of the English. 
 
 If we group these nationalities—they can 
 hardly be called races—according to a racial 
 classification, now in much favor, as Nor¬ 
 dics, Alpines and Mediterraneans, it be¬ 
 comes apparent that of the immigration 
 from 1840 to 1890 from 40% to 50% was of 
 so-called Nordic blood, the rest being about 
 equally divided between Alpine and Medi¬ 
 terranean blood. Since 1890, however, the 
 Nordic blood has dropped to 20% or 25%, 
 
98 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 the Alpine stock has increased to about 
 50%, and the Mediterranean has remained 
 at about 25%. And with this change, from 
 earlier years to later ones, of the propor¬ 
 tions in the various racial stocks coming to 
 America from Europe there has been also 
 a change for the worse in the average intel¬ 
 ligence of the immigrants coming to merge 
 into our population. 
 
 But it is to be noted that while the marked 
 change in proportion of Nordic blood to Al¬ 
 pine-Mediterranean began about 1890 the 
 marked drop in immigrant intelligence came 
 only in 1902 and later. Which indicates that 
 it was not alone, or even perhaps principal¬ 
 ly, the change in proportion of racial stocks 
 that produced the change in average intel¬ 
 ligence, but that there was a change in 
 character of the incoming samples of all the 
 stocks as between earlier and later years. 
 The natural conclusion of Professor Brig¬ 
 ham is, then, that the obvious decline 
 in intelligence of the immigrants of later 
 years as compared with that of those of ear¬ 
 lier years is due to two factors; first, a change 
 in the proportion of races migrating to this 
 country, and, second, a change for the worse 
 in the incoming samples of each race. 
 
 One hastens to say that neither Professor 
 Brigham nor anyone else would necessarily 
 
RACIAL TRAITS 
 
 99 
 
 conclude from an analysis of the intelligence 
 status of the European immigrants to this 
 country in the last half century anything 
 definitively with regard to the average in¬ 
 telligence of the different nationalities or 
 racial stocks represented by these immi¬ 
 grants—although one might strongly sus¬ 
 pect something. But what one does conclude 
 definitively is that the samples of the differ¬ 
 ent European nationalities and races mak¬ 
 ing up this total immigration do reveal 
 marked differences in average intelligence 
 and that, unfortunately, the recent samples 
 of all the races have been poorer than the 
 earlier ones, and the samples of the South¬ 
 ern and Eastern European peoples, have 
 been poorer than the samples of the North¬ 
 ern and Western peoples. 
 
 It is quite certain that we have received 
 from Europe since the beginning of this cen¬ 
 tury millions of immigrants with an average 
 intelligence markedly below that of our na¬ 
 tive-born population. A considerable frac¬ 
 tion of this immigrant population has an 
 average intelligence even distinctly below 
 that of our negro population. To the extent 
 that this foreign population mixes by mar¬ 
 riage with our native population, there is 
 going on through the positive influence of 
 heredity a lowering in the average mental 
 
100 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 capacity of the American nation. If there is 
 any immediate political advantage in such 
 a blending of blood, so that these foreigners 
 may become less foreign and more Ameri¬ 
 can, or be Americanized, as we say, there is 
 on the other hand a biological or evolution¬ 
 ary disadvantage in this happening, for the 
 general biological results of a blood-mixing 
 of higher and lower orders of intelligence 
 must be an approximation of a mean be¬ 
 tween these orders. While, then, political or 
 immediate economic expediency may sug¬ 
 gest one course of action, science suggests 
 another. Politics and economics may sug¬ 
 gest a free inflow of unselected immigrants 
 to meet the needs for labor, especially mere 
 manual labor, and an 4 ‘Americanization’’ of 
 this inflow through assimilation into the 
 native population by education and inter¬ 
 marriage. Science suggests a checking of this 
 inflow, or at least a strongly selective con¬ 
 trol of it. 
 
HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 
 IN MIND DETERMINATION 
 
 lthough it is obvious, I hope, that the 
 
 first intention of this discussion of mind 
 
 is especially to call attention to the reality 
 and significance of the heredity factor in 
 the determination of the character and ca¬ 
 pacity of mind, I hope my emphasis of the 
 fact of direct inheritance of mental traits 
 and capacity comparable in manner and de¬ 
 gree with the inheritance of physical traits, 
 will lead no one to believe that I overlook 
 the reality and importance of other factors 
 in mind determination. There are, of course, 
 other important factors. Some of these also 
 have a strong heredity element in them: 
 others are almost strictly environmental 
 factors. 
 
 Our new knowledge of the extraordinary 
 influence of the secretions of the ductless 
 glands on the growth, development and gen¬ 
 eral metabolism of the animal (including 
 the human) body, affecting various organs 
 of the body in very positive ways both as to 
 structure and functioning, includes a reve¬ 
 lation of the immense importance of these 
 secretions in relation to our mental and gen¬ 
 eral nervous make-up. We have for long 
 
 ’[ 101 ] 
 
102 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 been accustomed to think of the nervous 
 system as the general manager of the body. 
 We must now recognize the secretions of the 
 ductless glands as, in some degree, general 
 manager of the nervous system. Although 
 these secretions, called hormones (“exci¬ 
 tants”), are produced in comparatively very 
 small quantities, yet, like the equally small 
 quantities of vitamines and enzymes, they 
 have very powerful effects. 
 
 Nearly three tons of fresh thyroid gland 
 tissue have to be used to get one ounce of 
 thyroxin, the hormone secreted by the thy¬ 
 roid. But if there is too little thyroxin secret¬ 
 ed into the blood by the thyroid gland of a 
 child, this whole gland weighing hardly 
 more than an ounce, that child may become 
 a cretin with not only dreadful physical de¬ 
 formity but with the deformed or incom¬ 
 plete mind of an idiot. If there is a little too 
 much the child may have a goiter, protrud¬ 
 ing eye-balls, a too rapid heart, and a rest¬ 
 less, irritable brain. The pituitary gland 
 weighs one-sixtieth of an ounce, but if it is 
 removed death ensues. If its secretions are 
 too small in amount during childhood, 
 growth is inhibited and a dwarf is produced, 
 usually with psychic derangements; if too 
 large in amount giantism occurs often with 
 accompanying imbecility. The secretions 
 
HEREDITY AND ENVITONMENT 103 
 
 (called adrenaline) of the adrenal glands, 
 two small bodies lying near the kidneys and 
 weighing about one-seventh of an ounce 
 each, have, almost certainly, a marked ef¬ 
 fect on our nervous system, revealed by 
 strong emotional responses to the variation 
 in the amount of the secretions. Crile de¬ 
 clares that “apparently adrenaline alone 
 can cause the brain greatly to increase its 
 work.” And Professor Cushing, in an article 
 suggestively entitled, “Psychic Disturb¬ 
 ances Associated with Disorders of the 
 Ductless Glands,” says, “it is quite prob¬ 
 able that the psycho-pathology of every¬ 
 day life hinges largely upon the effect of 
 ductless gland discharges upon the nervous 
 system.” Thus psycho-analysis with its ex¬ 
 planations of dreams, symbolisms, etc., may 
 come to the necessity of basing itself on 
 study of the hormones. 
 
 The reference to emotional reactions in¬ 
 troduces us conveniently to a word about 
 the part that the emotions, as contrasted 
 with intelligence and reason, play in deter¬ 
 mining our mental make-up and our activi¬ 
 ties. 
 
 Hugh Elliott in a recent book, called 
 “Human Character,” presents a strong brief 
 for what he calls “the all-importance of the 
 emotional states in the determination of be- 
 
104 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 havior. . . . Emotions are the represen¬ 
 tation in consciousness, the subjective side, 
 of the complex series of automatic reactions 
 which in animals we call instincts, and 
 which, in their case, we only occasionally 
 endow with emotional attributes. Thus the 
 quest for food, flight from an enemy, pur¬ 
 suit of a mate, are all automatic reactions 
 which are shared by man with the lower ani¬ 
 mals, but in the case of man we say they are 
 due to the emotions of hunger, fear and love. 
 
 . . . Man’s life thus becomes,” says Elliot, 
 “a series of instinctive reactions differing 
 from those of the lower animals only in their 
 greater complexity and in the extent to 
 which they are varied as the result of indi¬ 
 vidual training or education. Reason does 
 not dictate behavior. ... It is but the 
 instrument for the safer and more successful 
 carrying out of a reaction which will satisfy 
 the prevailing emotion.” 
 
 We need not follow these rather dogmatic 
 assertions any farther than we please, but 
 most of us will see some element of truth in 
 them. Without undertaking in any least de¬ 
 gree a scientific study of the relation of emo¬ 
 tions, temperament, disposition, the affect¬ 
 ive qualities in general, to behavior, most of 
 us will recognize and admit this relation to 
 be an intimate one. We see illustrations of it 
 
HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 105 
 
 in ourselves, in the different members of our 
 family, in our friends and acquaintances. 
 We know how we and they will react to va¬ 
 rious stimuli because we know the character 
 of these qualities in them. We distinguish 
 readily these temperamental differences 
 even among strangers whom we meet for 
 the first time at dinner, in clubs, in public 
 meetings, in traveling. We find some minds 
 distinctly congenial and some antipathetic 
 without regard to the acquirements of in¬ 
 formation or the polish of education or its 
 lack. 
 
 And most of us will also recognize the es¬ 
 sentially inherent or native character of 
 these qualities. They show themselves early 
 in childhood; they persist until death or se¬ 
 nility. They are not acquirements. Environ¬ 
 ment or education does not create them; it 
 only gives them opportunity or tries to in¬ 
 hibit them. 
 
 This brings us finally to the matter— 
 truly an immensely important matter—of 
 the environmental and educational factors 
 in the determination of mental make-up, of 
 kinds of minds. With direct inheritance of 
 mental capacity, with the inheritance of 
 emotions and temperament, and with the 
 inheritance of differences in the functioning 
 of the ductless glands whose secretions pow- 
 
106 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 erfully affect both emotions and intelligence, 
 we have an imposing array of inherited fac¬ 
 tors in mental and nervous make-up, in a 
 word, in mind. How imposing and impor¬ 
 tant are the environmental and educational 
 factors? Can we nullify or ameliorate bad 
 mental inheritance by good environment 
 and education? How far can we compensate 
 for inherited weakness by acquired strength? 
 Can good teachers make Class A minds out 
 of Class B brains? Can we put a thousand 
 dollar education into a hundred dollar boy? 
 
 I am not going to try to answer these 
 questions. I am not going to discuss the 
 values and methods of education. I am pre¬ 
 senting the unpopular side of the problem 
 of kinds and grades of mind; the side espe¬ 
 cially unpopular in a political democracy 
 committed to democratic education. I may 
 express, though, in order not to be too un¬ 
 popular, my conviction that nothing that 
 our knowledge of mental inheritance teaches 
 us prevents us from putting a large faith 
 and hence a large effort in education, and in 
 democratic education at that. Only my idea 
 of a democratic education is not gained 
 from shouting the slogan of the equality of 
 all men but from shouting the slogan of the 
 equality of opportunity for all men. I was a 
 university teacher for twenty years and 
 
HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 107 
 
 more. And I tried to do my utmost for my 
 students. But I do not remember that I 
 ever outfought nature with my weapon of 
 nurture. I do remember, however, helping a 
 variety of young minds toward the attain¬ 
 ment of a variety of possibilities open to 
 these minds. That is my idea of true democ¬ 
 racy in education. Nature without nurture 
 can make nothing out of us; nor can nur¬ 
 ture without nature make anything out of 
 us. With either alone we are nothing. We 
 must have both to be anything, and there is 
 a special right kind of nurture for each espe¬ 
 cial kind of nature. Heredity and environ¬ 
 ment are complements, not antitheses, in all 
 development. 
 
 The chief concern of our universities is 
 education, and education seems to be at an 
 experimental stage. Many universities in re¬ 
 cent years have been swinging back and 
 forth between fixed courses and elective 
 ones; between encouraging the classics and 
 encouraging the sciences; between an espe¬ 
 cial devotion to the inferior students and a 
 special attention to the superior ones; be¬ 
 tween general education and vocational ed¬ 
 ucation. Perhaps we educators have de¬ 
 voted more time to the trial and error 
 method of learning our business than to 
 the method of finding out fundamental 
 
108 
 
 MIND AND HEREDITY 
 
 facts about human make-up and possi¬ 
 bilities. 
 
 In Russia they assume that anyone can 
 do anything, the only problem being to de¬ 
 fine the different things needing to be done 
 and to assign by lot each person to a speci¬ 
 fied task. We do not believe in quite so sim¬ 
 ple a solution of the problem of social or¬ 
 ganization. I have tried to show one of the 
 reasons why it isn’t so simple. This reason 
 is the influence of heredity in determining 
 mental make-up. It remains for someone to 
 determine the character and potency of the 
 environmental and educational factors in 
 the determination of mental make-up; in 
 the levelling up—or down—of mind, or in 
 the amelioration of bad heredity and the re¬ 
 inforcement of good heredity. 
 
Date Due 
 
*