but a series of very simple questions to be put by the examiner to the pupil, the replies to which must be recorded accurately, without alteration in any manner, but reproducing their incorrectness of speech, their hesitations, etc. In this way such a form of inquiry constitutes not only a first psychical examination, but also a first examination as to defects of speech, which is of much value and reproduces quite exactly the state of the subject at a given moment.

On the contrary, the sort of results obtained according to the older method, e.g.:

were practically worthless, especially in absence of any knowledge of the competence of the person who formulated these judgments.

Here is an example of a series of questions to be used as a psychic test, prepared by Professor Sante de Sanctis, and included in the Biographic charts of the Asylum-School for Defective Children at Rome:

  1. What is your name?
  2. How old are you?
  3. What is your mamma's name?
  4. Have you any brothers?
  5. Have you any sisters?
  6. What is your father's business?
  7. Is your father (or mother) old or young?
  8. At what age is one old?
  9. How do you know that a man is old?
  10. What is this? (a couch in the corridor).
  11. What is it for?
  12. What is this? (a table).
  13. What is it for?
  14. Do you always feel well?
  15. Are you hungry?
  16. When are you hungry?
  17. Do you ever dream at night?
  18. What do you dream?
  19. What time is it now, more or less?
  20. What year is it?
  21. What month is it?
  22. What season of the year?
  23. What day of the month is it?
  24. What day of the week?
  25. Where do you live?
  26. Where are you at the present moment?
  27. What are these? (two books or two pictures) and which of the two is the larger?
  28. Which of these three glasses has the most water in it?
  29. Which will weigh the most and which the least of the three?
  30. How many persons are there in your home?
  31. Is your home large or small?
  32. How many rooms are there?
  33. Whom do you love most?
  34. What would you do if (the person named) were hungry?
  35. What would you do if he were very sick?
  36. Or if he died?
  37. Do you love some playmate, or some friend? Why do you love him?
  38. Do you hate anyone? Why?
  39. Do you know the meaning of right and wrong?
  40. Do you know the meaning of rewards and punishments?

Out of all the existing forms of biographic charts I have selected four in their entirety; two are historical: 1. the first form for the individual examination of the pupil ever published in any treatise on pedagogy; and 2. the first form printed in Italy by the city authorities with the intention of having it introduced into the elementary schools.

The first of these is the biographic chart proposed by Séguin in his pedagogic treatise relating to the education of idiots (Traitement moral, hygiene, et éducation des idiots, 1846); the second is the one proposed by Sergi for the communal schools of Rome, and printed by the Commune with the intention (1889), never actually carried out, of introducing it into the schools; at all events, this is the first historic document representing an idea twenty years in advance of the time when the idea itself was destined to begin to be popularised.