“Still far too ignorant of the one I ought to know best, I took all the Yerkes army tests and the dozen or so shorter series devised for adults, and even put myself through the Binet-Simon series and their modifications by Terman; also the de Sanctis fool-finding series and at least a score of the tests for special avocations. In fact my friends have spoken rather slightingly of my passion for collecting and trying out tests, of which I have some hundreds. Judged by the Edison stunts, I was a near-moron, and in the Stenquist series much below the average; while I cannot even yet understand the Royce Ring. Some college entrance tests would bar me from entering the freshman class, while in many of the simpler ones my intelligence quotient indicated a mental age of at least 100.
“In Harman’s test of the higher mental processes and the Bonser reasoning test, for example, I was surpassed by a girl of eleven. The results of all seem, thus, so confusing that I recall the chameleon which, when placed on a red cloth turned red, on blue, green and yellow, turned these colors, but when placed on a bit of Scotch plaid died trying to make good.”
Time-limit tests are not only the hardest but tend to discredit the slow-but-sure type of person who really does so much of the world’s best work. The tests merely test a kind of superficial mental quickness. They do not, and cannot be made to, exclude accidental advantages due to special experience or special knowledge. We have no way of testing the testers, some of whom have only enough brains to ask questions and write down other people’s answers. There is no way of testing native ability. Persons old enough to take the tests have acquired much of their abilities from experience; and there is no way of separating what they were born with from what they have learned or acquired.
Dr. Hall says, on the other hand, that the tests he found trustworthy in estimating a young man’s chances for success are these:
1. Health. It is true that Darwin fought neurasthenia all his life, that Nietzsche was always fighting megalomania, that Spencer was everlastingly coddling himself, that Stevenson contended with tuberculosis. But health was required to make the fight—great, excessive vital force—and particularly was the psychic health exceptional and the psychic force strong so to have held off the bodily enemy while great work was done. “The study of 200 biographies shows that the list of great original minds who were supernormal in health is about fourteen times as large as the list of great invalids.”
2. Second breath. Corresponds to “second wind” in athletics. A state of mental exaltation, inspiration or ease, often coming after we have worked long and hard and past our usual hour of sleep at night. No one is likely to succeed who does not learn while young to tap this mental reservoir.
3. The ability to pass quickly and easily from one extreme of feeling to the other. What is called the “pleasure-pain scale” extends all the way from despair and suicide up to the most transcendent happiness. Settled moods of long duration are bad. If the soul cannot run up and down the scale frequently, swiftly and flexibly it will have its pressures relieved in some other way, usually by setting up a dual personality—jekyll-hydeism, insanity, etc.
4. Sympathy. Confucius called it “reciprocity”; Buddha, pity; Aristotle, friendship; Plato, friendship; Jesus, love; Paul, charity; Adam Smith and Darwin, sympathy; Comte, altruism; Renan, the enthusiasm of humanity; Kropotkin, mutual aid; Matthew Arnold, humanism; Giddings, consciousness of mankind; Trotter, the herd instinct. It is a power to feel for others and must be sufficiently strong to influence action at times.
5. Love of nature. This is the root. There are many flowers—poetry, music, literature, art of whatever form, religion. The mind first feels love and awe, then worship, then a desire for cold, outward study—the order is always the same. But in spite of the mind’s insistence on going to extremes, the feeling must be kept alive and must be adequately fed.
6. Sublimation. Teeth, lips and tongue were created or developed to eat with; we have made them serve us to speak with, also. The senses first served to warn us of danger and to find and test food; we now use them in a thousand ways. Anger began as blind rage, but we have gone some way to control and direct it. We cannot be too angry if we are angry aright. As for love, which began on the physical plane, “every real interest sets a back-fire to lust.”