| Measurements | Binet's figures | Montessori's figures | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pupils chosen for intelligence | Pupils chosen as backward | Difference | Pupils chosen for intelligence | Pupils chosen as backward | Difference | |
| Maximum circumference of cranium. | 540 | 530 | +10 | 527 | 518 | +9 |
| Length of cranium | 181 | 177 | +4 | 180 | 177 | +3 |
| Breadth of cranium | 150.4 | 146.2 | +4.2 | 143 | 140 | +3 |
| Height of cranium | 123.3 | 124 | -0.7 | 130 | 127 | +3 |
| Minimum frontal diameter. | 104 | 102 | +2 | 99 | 98 | +1 |
| Height of forehead | 46 | 45.5 | +0.5 | 57 | 56 | +1 |
By calculating the cranial capacities according to Broca'a method, I obtained:
| Cranial capacity | in the best pupils chosen | 1557 cu. cm. |
| the worst pupils chosen | 1488 cu. cm. |
From all these manifold researches above cited, we can reach no other conclusion than that individuals of greater intelligence have a larger quantity of brain; or else that individuals with a greater quantity of brain are more intelligent.
There is a subtle distortion of this principle, which many sociological anthropologists have taken as their starting-point, especially in Germany, in their attempt to establish a biological basis for the Schopenhauerian theories of Friedrich Nietzsche.
According to these, the persons who have acquired high social positions are biologically superior (possessing a greater cerebral mass), and the same may be said of conquering races as compared with the conquered. Differences in caste are to be explained in the same way, and on this ground nature sanctions the social inferiority of woman.
This is a question of the greatest importance, which merits a vast amount of discussion.
What Sort of Man is the Most Intelligent?—Straightway, a first serious objection suggests itself: What sort of persons are the most intelligent? Are they really those who have attained the higher academic degrees and the most eminent social positions? Consequently, is the Prime Minister more intelligent than the Assistant Secretary of State, and the latter more intelligent than the Head of a Department, and he again than the door-keeper?
Are literary productions and the acquisition of laurels reliable tests of intelligence? Is this man a doctor because he is more intelligent, and that man a hospital attendant because he is less intelligent?