XIV. POSSIBLE ORIGIN OF THE DISSOCIATION OF CERTAIN CAPACITIES
Why should certain capacities, like musical sensitivity and ability in representative drawing, be so loosely correlated with general ability, throughout the species? Why should other capacities, like ability to name opposites and to complete sentences, give such high and positive total correlation? We do not know with assurance the answers to these questions. Perhaps the evolutionary explanation is adequate. Those variants lived to transmit their hereditary constitution, whose functions were so correlated that life was well sustained. Perhaps functions are, therefore, loosely correlated, where nothing would be added to the probability of survival by high correlation.
It makes little difference in a world like ours whether an intelligent man can or cannot sing. It is of small moment whether one who can easily detect absurdities of statement can also produce fine representative drawings. It is very important for survival, on the other hand, whether one who can detect similarities can also detect differences, in the objects which surround him, and whether he can at the same time anticipate incomplete meanings in the sentences and gestures of those whom he meets.
The suggestion also arises as to whether those performances which do not cohere closely with performances in general are such as involve the sensori-motor apparatus to a special degree, as distinguished from the central nervous system. Those functions which depend relatively little upon equipment of eye, ear, or hand, but essentially upon the sensitivity and integrity of the cortical neurones, might be expected to cohere closely, constituting what we should properly call intelligence. Where performance depends largely on sense organs and muscles, the correlation with functions largely independent of sensori-motor apparatus might be expected to be only as great as the tendency to general organic quality would bring about. Certainly drawing, music, and mechanical ability, for example, involve eye, ear, and muscle to a much greater extent than does the detection of absurdities in life situations, or the learning of symbolic significances. The mechanical technique of reading clearly involves the sensori-motor apparatus to a much greater extent than does the comprehension of what is read.
It would be valuable to determine to what extent a hierarchy of correlations would be consistently maintained in the use of tests, selected for graduated degrees of involvement of equipment accessory to the central nervous system.[[8]]