An Introduction to Social Psychology

Chapter 14: General Sets, Powers and Intelligence

Luther Lee Bernard

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GENERAL ORGANIC STRUCTURES — The behavior of the organism is determined by the total organization of its protoplasms in reaction with the environment. In the human organism the protoplasmic systems are very complex. The nervous system alone has cells running into the billions. The neurons of the cerebral cortex are said to number approximately 9,000,000,000. The muscles are much less numerous, but these are composed of perhaps a larger number of separate cells than constitute the nervous organization. The osseous tissues and the various secretions and lymphs also disclose a vast physical and chemical complexity. While each organism of the same species is built according to the same general type and therefore possesses much the same powers and is sufficiently similar in the form of its protoplasmic organization to be readily recognized as a member of that species, there are always distinct differences of organization within the general patterns. We have a saying that no two blades of grass are alike. Also, people are similar, but not identical. They are different because they behave differently and because they look different and measure up to different specifications. And these ways of being different go back in the last analysis to individual differences in protoplasmic structure and organization.

We have already seen that such individual protoplasmic differences are not wholly, perhaps not even primarily, hereditary, but are produced largely as the effect of differentiation under environmental pressures. Protoplasmic structure and organization are constantly integrating along more or less individual patterns under the pressures of environment, which are in some degree different for every individual. Only the general structure of the organism, which characterizes it as

(207) a member of a particular species, is primarily the result of inheritance of the protoplasmic constitution instead of the product of environmental pressures. And even the species type is only approximate. No individual member can be said to be wholly typical of the species. That is, the term species is an abstraction, symbolic of a synthetic conceptual organization of similar traits. There is no inheritance of a type, but inheritance plays a part in the production of individuals who together by a process of logical or abstract synthesis and comparison are conceived to constitute collectively a distinct species. But even here there is sometimes difficulty in distinguishing species at the border lines.

THE FOUR GREAT HUMAN STRUCTURAL ORGANIZATIONS —  indicated above, differences in structure are of as many kinds as there are types and uses of protoplasm on the one hand, and as there are occasions for individual differentiation of protoplasm by functional adjustments to environmental pressures on the other hand. Both heredity and environment play their roles in producing organic and collective similarities, or types, and differences. The most obvious of the differences in protoplasmic organization — which influence the behavior of individuals and modify or help to mold the social or collective patterns are the general structures of the organism. They are perhaps in many ways the least important, although in other ways very important indeed. Four of these structural facts are foundational to all human collective or social organization and are therefore of the utmost importance in explaining man's supreme position, not only in the animal kingdom, but as the organizer of the vast system of collective behavior patterns which we term civilization as well. These four basic structural factors are his highly complex and structurally differentiated nervous system, his hands, the upright position, and his vocal apparatus.

His upright position gives the dominant part of his organism, his head, a better altitude for directing the behavior of the lower part, of the organism and provides a better orientation for the exercise of the exteroceptive senses, except smell and possibly taste. It also frees the hands from the primary function of locomotion and enables them to specialize in tactual

( 208) sensory and manipulative contacts. The evolution of the hands into the chief tactual sense organs makes it possible also for them to become the chief adjustment organs of the body on the response side. Man manipulates his environment as does no other animal, because his hands are free and their form permits of easy manipulation, and the location of highly differentiated sense organs in the fingers and palms permits of a close connection between stimulus and response in manipulation. The vocal apparatus enables man to develop verbal communication symbols which far surpass the non-verbal gestures and facial expressions in complexity, volume, and precision of meaning. An intellectual content to communication was scarcely possible before verbal language developed. The transference of vocal verbal symbols to written form brings the manipulative hand into the service of communication and greatly expands the service of language to collective behavior. Collective behavior is dependent primarily upon the language symbols, which in turn are rendered possible only by the vocal apparatus and the writing hand. Civilization, or collective behavior in its highest and most intellectual forms, dominated by cortical organization, is dependent primarily upon the volume and accuracy and permanency of written records.

The high brain organization of man, especially the acquired cortical mechanisms which control the symbolizing processes and interpret conceptually the stored symbolic meaning complexes, makes possible the efficiency of manual and vocal differentiation and renders effective the better orientation of sight and hearing through the upright position. Man's collective behavior, or the organization of his social life, is thus dependent ultimately upon the inner organization of the cerebral cortex which is so responsive to all sorts of environmental pressures, especially those of the psycho-social environment which operate upon it primarily through the mechanisms of vocal and written symbols. This fact affords another illustration of Child's principle that the appearance of a new dominant organization in the protoplasmic system establishes a new gradient and a new system of behavior patterns. The general structural organization— upright body, hands, vocal apparatus, complex and highly differentiated nervous system— work

( 209) through the mechanism of the cerebral cortex and are controlled by them. And the cerebral cortex is itself now largely dominated by the stored symbolic content of the psycho-social environment.

OTHER GENERAL ORGANIC MECHANISMS, such as the length of hands, the joints, muscles and tendons, the eating, respiratory, digestive, circulatory, excretory, and reproductive systems, also influence behavior profoundly, but in relatively fixed ways. They serve as conditions and limitations to the functioning of behavior patterns set up in the neural protoplasm and, especially in man, in the flexible cortical system. They do not initiate new adjustment patterns, as does the cortical system. They are, in fact, relatively fixed elements in the old adjustment system of the organism. Any derangement of their functioning, due to disease or other unwonted environmental pressures, may seriously interfere with the adjustment patterns worked out in the highly flexible cortical organization. Because of this fact the cortex, with the aid of external stored mechanisms, has developed elaborate supplementary acquired social adjustment mechanisms intended to keep the functioning of the lower organic mechanisms as efficient and regular as possible. Among these are the techniques of medicine, hygiene, sanitation, recreation, etc. The cerebral cortex responding to stimuli from without, must take the initiative in making new adjustment patterns demanded by a changing environment and in providing for the regular functioning of the old ones, including the organic mechanisms, because of the highly flexible and responsive character of its neural organization.

INTELLIGENCE— Since the cerebral cortex is supreme in the organization and control of the higher forms of behavior, and since the functioning of this cortex is expressed evaluatively in what we call intelligence, it is necessary to examine to some extent the nature and conditions of intelligence. Intelligence is, of course, a synthetic or abstract term used to symbolize the effectiveness of adjustments made through cerebral functioning and control. Intelligence is the most significant of all of the individual powers serving the adjustment of the organism to its environment. It is a very complex system of phenomena, embracing all sorts of adjustment capacities

( 210) and techniques. It cannot be measured by facility in verbal symbols only, as some of the systems of mental tests would seem to imply.

The ability to form verbal concepts and to communicate these to others through language mechanisms is very important, but there are other aspects to intelligence also. Ability to make manual adjustments through the creation of transforming inventions, the capacity to do skilled artistic work, to play the rôle of the leader or to perform well and accurately the task assigned one, or even to formulate high and proper ideals of individual and collective behavior-social inventions— and to put these in practice, are other manifestations of intelligence which are also important. A good plumber, a good scholar, a skilled organist, an efficient legislator, and an able scientist must all be intelligent, although the forms and patterns which their several intelligences take may be very different.

But it should be noted that as all of the techniques of these and other skilled performers become more highly developed and scientific and quantitative in their procedure, more and more of the verbal or symbolic element comes into all intelligence processes. As invention, or constructive manipulation of the various environments, advances from the merely accidental and empirical to the abstract and symbolical level, where the adjustment process or invention is planned in detail before it is executed, the verbal element in thinking becomes dominant. This is true whether the invention is of the physical, social, or method type. Even the plumber cannot meet new situations without the use of the symbolic or verbal element. The artist is "creative" or "expressive" in the degree to which he can symbolize his situation and the adjustment which his environment demands. The scientist and the social reformer or leader create new worlds of adjustment technique by means of the manipulation of symbolic or verbal mechanisms. We should expect this growing dominance of the verbal and abstract element in intelligence in keeping with the increasing functioning of the cortical processes iii control over adjustment.

LEADING FORMS OF INTELLIGENCE RELATED— The usual contrast between types of intelligence is between the ability to

( 211) do things with one's hands or body, that is, to make the proper organic adjustments with relation to the form, distance, weight, color, etc., of objects and to do things with one's mind, that is, to use the abstracting or symbolic verbal mechanisms for the construction of mental pictures and symbols of things later to be done with the hands and body. The correlation between these two types of abilities or intelligence is very close and the differences are largely or wholly the result of differences of training in manual and abstract mental operations. In fact, there appear to be limits beyond which one cannot go in developing skill in one direction without having had at least initial practice in the other. At least, this is particularly true in the case of the development of verbal and abstract skills.

Intelligence is not necessarily conscious, although the higher forms of intelligence are very likely to be so. Intelligence is a character or complex of characters imputed to the organism functioning effectively in an adjustment process. The association of intelligence and consciousness in the popular mind is due to the fact that they are so frequently found together.

FACTORS BASIC TO INTELLIGENCE —  Woodworth has attempted to summarize the factors which are basic to intelligence. The first of these he calls retentiveness. Intelligence involves the use of past experience— "not for instinctive reactions, but for previously learned reactions. Though the Binet tests attempt to steer clear of specific school knowledge, they do depend upon knowledge and skill picked up by the child in the course of his ordinary experience. They depend on the ability to learn and remember." But intelligence is not best indicated by sheer power of memory. There must be power to apply what one learns and retains to other problems which arise. The one whose intelligence is being examined "has to see the point of the problem now set him, and to adapt what he has learned to this novel situation." This ability is what the mental tests attempt to measure. Therefore, Woodworth includes responsiveness to relationships as a second general factor iii intelligence. Certain mural or impulsive factors are also of importance. There must be persistence. Otherwise there will not be sufficient attention to fix the matter in hand and enable the subject to build up an effective attitude towards

( 212) it. Without persistence the adjustment to the situation is never sufficiently complete to be adequately functional, and we pronounce the flighty or inattentive person unintelligent because he appears to be incapable of mastering a situation or of carrying anything through. But if the person is too persistent, is stubborn, his adjustment is also likely to be defective. He attempts to do things he cannot accomplish, or he retains an attitude after the occasion for it has gone by. He may be quite as much out of line with reality as the person who cannot stick with a proposition or a situation until he masters it. We say of such a person that he is not intelligent enough to know when he has had enough or when to let go of the situation or when he has extracted the meat from the pie. Hence a certain degree of submissiveness is necessary to intelligent behavior. Perhaps, as some moralists do, we should speak of it as humility, for, it is said the truly great and wise are also humble. Still another factor in intelligence is curiosity. Without this quality of behavior there can be no attention, hence no analysis and no adequate orientation in behavior. A condition of intelligence is undoubtedly constant alertness to new situations, to be able to sense new problems, to understand them, and then to solve them. This last involves the factor of persistence.

All of these factors in intelligence are of course abstract value terms. They are not concrete behavior patterns, but they are synthetic attitudes toward concrete behavior patterns which count much for effectiveness— another synonym for intelligence— in adjustment.

DRIVES AND INTELLIGENCE— While the foregoing factors, most of them mentioned by Woodworth, may be said to cover satisfactorily the background of intelligence, many psychologists also use the term drive conspicuously in this connection. Another term employed with closely related meaning is motivation. Drive and motivation are among the most essential factors in stimulating the organism to intelligent behavior. Many times the chief distinction between an intelligent and an unintelligent child or adult lies in the degrees of incentive which activate them. Without drive, which is in large measure an organic, if not an inherited, trait, the child is not capa-

( 213) -ble of acquiring intelligence skills. Without motivation, which is primarily social rather than organic in its inception, the child will not acquire intelligence, however great may be his capacity for doing so. Motivation is largely dependent upon the postnatal environment, especially the psycho-social environment. Drive is basically an organic fact, and bears a close relationship to what Allport terms the prepotent impulses.

The drive does not depend upon an independent mechanism of its own, but makes use of all of the behavior mechanisms, instinctive or acquired, which the organism possesses. Habits function in the expression of drives quite as much, if not more than, reflexes and instincts. Without such pattern organization the drive can scarcely be said to exist or find expression. The organization itself constitutes an important aspect or constituent element of the drive. The underlying organic condition which makes the drive effective is probably chemical, especially the physiology of the neurons and of the endocrines. It is not wholly unlike that physiology which is basic to temperament. In fact, drive might be considered as a phase of temperament. Both drive and temperament are closely related to intelligence. The major organic drives are intimately connected with the organic needs or dispositions of the organism, such as food, water, sleep, and sex expression. We may also speak of drives in connection with social contacts and security, and even clearly acquired interests of any sort, such as religious, intellectual, moral, or for play, the success of the group. But these latter drives are built up in the habit mechanisms rather than in the original organic constitution. The organic drives also build up a large number of supplementary stimulus-response patterns which predispose us to aim not merely at food, sleep, and sex, but also at food and sex satisfactions of certain qualities, and at sleep under certain conditions.

In order to satisfy to the best advantage these inherited and acquired dispositions of the organisms, intelligent behavior is developed. Originally this behavior is merely the restlessness which comes from an unsatisfied organic need or appetite and is not intelligent. But this restlessness, like random movements, is later organized or transformed into adaptive behavior

( 214) which serves to adjust the organism to those environmental conditions which will satisfy its needs. This adaptive behavior which grows out of the original restlessness is at first the product of trial and success, but it finally becomes in man projective or previsional. It is in this last form that it may be said to be truly intelligent. Civilized men plan collectively for the satisfaction of their individual and collective needs. In this way they satisfy their drives in the most intelligent way possible, with the aid of science and those institutions which make scientific knowledge available. The coöperative or collective situation of mutual stimulation gives men the motivation through the stimulation of rivalry which is necessary for the satisfaction of their drives. The coöperative social system not only gives the individual mechanisms for the satisfaction of his desires, but it also gives him incentive or motivation to seek their satisfaction.

MENTAL TESTS — Various methods of testing the behavior qualities of individuals, especially intelligence, emotionality, personality, etc., have been devised. The ones that have been perfected with the greatest degree of accuracy are the intelligence tests. These were first given prominence by Binet, a French psychologist, and later modified by various educational psychologists. Terman's adaptations are most used in the United States. The original aim of the tests was merely to pick out those children who were suspected of mental defect in order that they might be referred to the physician for further examination. Further refinements and applications in the tests have come with their continued use.

The intention of the testers is not to limit the tests merely to knowledge or facility gained by formal instruction. Accordingly text book knowledge is carefully avoided and tasks are set in "information and skill picked up by the child from his elders and playmates in the ordinary experience of life." Also the tests are as widely distributed over the whole field of easily accessible experience as possible. The reason for these precautions is that tests are likely to approach inure closely to 01C substratum of organic inheritance by taking those experiences which have a chance to come to every child and on this basis find out what the child has been able to achieve. But of course

( 215) this attempt to get back of individual differences in training and opportunity for training is only partly successful. As Watts says, "the fact cannot be denied that they favor children to whom a superior social status or education has given a greater range of knowledge as well as a more facile understanding of language with increased capacity for its use." Attempts have been made to overcome this difficulty by the use of the Yerkes point-scale tests, and the performance tests which test manual and sensory instead of language skills. But even here experience and training count, and it does not appear that differences in training can ever be eliminated sufficiently to enable the tests to reveal inherited capacity exclusively or fully. Even if it were possible to eliminate differences in acquisitions of knowledge there would still be the problem of locating differences in acquired organic mechanisms or conditioning factors, both prenatal and postnatal. This difficulty would seem to be at present quite insuperable.

The Alpha tests of the U. S. Army are perhaps the most up-to-date intelligence tests and it has been claimed for them that they actually do get back of educational acquirement and training to inborn intelligence, or to the inherited capacity to acquire intelligence skills. Yet it has been shown that even these tests discriminate against certain types of persons. They, too, apparently have not eliminated the differential factor of cultured homes and intellectual associations such as may be had in school. It has also been charged that they discriminate against women because some of these tests call for arithmetical training, and that they discriminate against manual as contrasted with clerical workers because they demand an accurate knowledge of the meaning of certain words that do not commonly occur in everyday vocabularies, such as adventitious, equivocal, lugubrious, maudlin, encomium, abstruse, recondite. Such defects might also work strongly against rural populations in more isolated geographic sections.

IS INTELLIGENCE INHERITED— If intelligence depends upon such general and diverse synthetic factors as those mentioned above, can we say that it is inherited? Most of the intelligence testers are inclined to hold that it is a matter of inheritance. Their chief argument in support of this position is that

( 216) the intelligence quotient remains essentially the same throughout life, the inference being that if intelligence were not inherited it would either improve or deteriorate under the influence of favorable or unfavorable environmental pressures. The fact that the dull child must also perforce become a man or woman of less than average achievement appears to them to be conclusive proof of their contention.

INTELLIGENCE MEASURED IN TERMS OF ACQUIRED SKILLS— Two things, however, seem to have been overlooked or underestimated in making this contention. The first is the fact that intelligence is measured in terms of acquired mental or manual skills. Mental tests are based upon the acquired knowledge of the individual tested, for native or natural capacity is an abstraction, and capacity of any sort can be observed and tested only through the skills which one has shown himself able to acquire. But the test is not so much of what one is able to acquire as of what he has acquired under the environmental conditions in which he has been placed. The testers themselves admit this. Woodworth states it clearly when he says, "The intelligence of an individual at any age depends on what he has learned previously." Intelligence therefore consists of acquired skills and is measured in terms of these skills. All of us are born without these skills. Some develop them with great difficulty or not at all, while others acquire them, under favorable environmental conditions, with comparative ease. What is it that determines whether or not the child born without the skills which constitute his intelligence will be able to acquire them? Most of these determining factors are perhaps organic and are subjective to the individual, but others are environmental and objective. Both of these condition in the individual certain patterns for the discharge of energy which determine in large degree the kind and quality of future development in behavior.

It is extremely difficult to determine whether the organic limitations upon the development of intelligence are inherited or acquired. It is sometimes assumed that inherited capacity and organic capacity are the same. Such, of course, is not the case, for inherited capacity may be lowered by acquired organic modifications of the protoplasmic structures by disease, or

( 217) other agencies. The analysis in Chapter VII showing how toxins, infections, hormones, and traumatisms may affect the development of the child in the prenatal period should render us extremely hesitant about assuming off-hand that all native defects are also inherited. `ale cannot be sure, for example, that even the small brains of idiots or the defective functioning of neural mechanisms in the dullard, who may nevertheless possess a normal sized brain, are not due to some toxic condition which has prevented the normal development of neural or other tissue. Nor is it clear that some prenatal physicochemical condition has not disturbed the endocrine balance or the chemistry of the neurons in such a way that the nervous system never can function properly. Some chronic defect in the nutrition of the cells or of neuro-muscular tonus may prevent the normal development of responses or of sensitivity to stimuli.

It is clear that the intelligence tests measure acquired skills developed on an inherited substratum. The former quantum may always be represented as a smaller circle within a larger one, for probably no one ever achieves all of the behavior patterns of which he is organically capable. Nor does he develop the degree of efficiency in the use of these patterns which might be attained under the most favorable circumstances. Thus the tests, even if they functioned perfectly, could not reveal native intelligence as fully and as accurately as acquired intelligence and skill. It is obviously not possible, however, for the tests to reveal a greater intelligence than there is inherited capacity for.

There is here no intention to deny the possibility of the inheritance of these underlying conditions which inhibit the development of those neuro-psychic skills constituting what we call intelligence. It should, however, be admitted that such inheritance is not proved. The fact that defects in intelligence run in families and that they occur according to certain typical statistical curves which characterize Mendelian inheritance is not conclusive proof of the inheritance of the underlying organic conditions of intelligence. We should expect environmentally induced traits to run in families also, for families constitute relatively segregated environments. Also, the curves for environmental transmission are essentially the same as those

( 218) for transmission by biological inheritance. As has been intimated, nothing car. be proved in this respect by statistics. Statistics merely counts cases, and does not determine causes. As yet the subject must be regarded as an open question to be settled later, as knowledge accumulates on both sides.

EARLY ORIGIN of FUNDAMENTAL DISPOSITIONS —  The other matter which has teen neglected by those who hold that intelligence is inherited is that the organism gets its fundamental acquired sets and powers early. It is in the first months and years of infancy that the human brain is freest from dominant and perfected behavior patterns. But rapidly these acquired patterns and dispositions are organized under the dominance of environment, and the general attitudes and powers of the child become relatively fixed. The child probably makes more fundamental and basic pattern adjustments in his first two to six years than in all the rest of his life. He acquires those rather intangible, but nevertheless very effective, emotional and attitudinal sets which later dominate the range and powers of his contacts with others, and which determine whether he is to be aggressive and self-confident and a leader with initiative, or whether he is to have an inferiority complex and is to be timid, unexpressive, and easily dominated. Also his major interests are likely to be fixed in this period. He develops aversions and likes, and a whole host of conventional attitudes. All of these are likely to remain fairly constant in their fundamental aspects throughout life, although he may compensate superficially for some of them. Changes of attitude made subsequently are not likely to go very deep into fundamental character. This is as true of the organic sets or dispositions acquired in infancy, such as food preferences, posture, sensory adjustments, speed in response, etc., as it is of the emotional and psychic ones. In many cases, because of fear or some other complex, the young child builds up such definite inhibitions upon expression that he develops what Burnham has aptly called pseudo feeble-mindedness. To all appearances the child is feeble-minded and will actually become so permanently, unless the cause of the repression or conflict can be discovered and removed clinically.

The conditions which determine the intelligence quotient are

(219) doubtless primarily organic, although by no means entirely so. Also most of these organic conditions are apparently fixed before or soon after birth, either in the inheritance or by such prenatal and postnatal environmental factors as have been mentioned here. But it is by no means inconceivable that a postnatal environment, especially in his earlier years, may induce those organic or emotional and psychic dispositions in the child, which give a permanent set to his personality and fix or limit his power to learn in certain directions. In fact there appear to be excellent reasons for believing that such is the case. All of us undoubtedly receive permanent organic and emotional and intellectual biases in our early years ,vli1ch we never fully overcome. Indeed, it is not abnormal for us to do so. It is part of the process of our character determination, for childhood is the period in which character is most easily and deeply fixed.

ALL INTELLIGENCE SPECIAL— SPECIAL TESTS —  Since intelligence tests measure acquired knowledge and skills it is not possible for any usable test to be so extensive and inclusive that it would cover all possible experience. Therefore all intelligence tests are discriminatory. There is no such thing as general native or inherited intelligence, except in the sense of an unrealized abstraction. All intelligence is special to the type of experience and interests of the subject. Consequently any general test, however nearly perfect, can only approximate in its results an average level of the subject's intellectual abilities. It is necessary to devise numerous special tests in addition to this preliminary general test to determine specific abilities along different lines in which inheritance or training and experience may have equipped the subject. From the results of the various special tests it may then, as Watts suggests, be possible to construct an "intellectual index" of an individual to be used as a more dependable indication of his "general" capacity. But in the meantime we do well to use the prevailing tests for what they are worth, not forgetting that they measure only within the limits of inherited capacity acid nut the NN hide of that capacity, that no method has been devised for eliminating the differential influence of environment, and that the accuracy of the tests in determining the general level or average of intelli-

( 220) -gence of any individual is only approximate, with numerous chances for error.

SPECIAL ABILITIES— An interesting phase of intelligence is that of highly developed special abilities. Many kinds of these have been recorded, such as exceptional ability to do the simpler mathematical processes, in the performance of unusual feats of memory, in color analysis and matching, for finding one's way, with tools and in understanding machinery, in language, in the writing of verses, in rhythm and in dancing, in playing or recalling and reproducing music once heard, etc. Phenomenal stories are told of "prodigies" who are able to perform feats of one kind or another and thereby to astonish the crowd. Often this special ability is wholly out of proportion to the other abilities of its possessor. The biologist S. J. Holmes gives some examples of special aptitudes. He says, "Blind Tom who possessed a phenomenal aptitude for playing any piece of music he may have heard was practically an imbecile. Often these `idiot savants' possess remarkable memory, as in the case of the boy described by Langdon Down, who could repeat verbatim pages from a book that he had once read. Some of the mathematical prodigies are otherwise mentally defective. Heron reports a boy, nearly an idiot, who when given a man's age could calculate quickly the number of minutes he had lived. Another boy could multiply any three figures with any three others almost as rapidly as they were written, although he was of a very low grade of mentality."[1] But this association of a low level of intelligence in general with a special ability is apparently the exception rather than the rule. Abilities of all types in the individual tend to correlate rather than otherwise, unless some are developed through training to the neglect of others. And this last is probably what had happened in most of the cases just cited.

How can such unusual traits or capacities be accounted for? Are they inherited or acquired? Formerly, of course, like all other peculiarities or pathological traits, they were explained as the product of inheritance, \\'e are not go certain now. The normal special abilities, such as facility in music or in some other relatively concrete performance, tend to run in families,

( 221) but this is as much to be expected on the basis of an explanation by environment as by inheritance. Apparently those special abilities which are not concrete and easily observed, and therefore easily imitated, do not run by families to the same extent as do the more concrete ones. This fact is a point in favor of the theory of the environmental origin and transmission of special abilities. Neither do they appear according to any definite Mendelian ratio.

UNDERLYING INHERITED STRUCTURES— No doubt there are frequently inherited structures which aid in the acquisition of special abilities. There could be no special development of ability at piano playing without flexible wrists and hands and long fingers, and these may be inherited. Musical ability of any kind is not possible without that particular nervous structure in the inner ear which renders acute pitch discrimination possible. And singers must have vocal cords and throat and mouth cavities of certain types if they are to be remarkably superior. It is possible even that the occurrence of an unusually large supply of neurons of a particular physico-chemical quality in certain regions of the brain may facilitate the development of powers, especially of memory associations, in those regions. But this raises the question of the localization of particular functions in definite regions of the brain, a question which is still undecided.

But the inheritance of these underlying structures, if it could in all cases be established, would not prove the inheritance of special abilities. While the special abilities could not be developed without the underlying structures, the existence of the structure by no means guarantees the development of the ability. In any case the ability, which we know as a special technique, or skill, is always acquired, whatever its underlying biological bases. It should also be realized that special abilities are not so remarkable and unusual as they appear to the popular mind. Only those special abilities which we meet infrequently seem so astonishing and so difficult to account for. All of us use every day just as remarkable skills and think nothing of this fact, or do not even realize it, because they are of such frequent occurrence. Our use of a language, the ability to read or write, the habit of finding our way about the streets

( 222) of a great city with which we are familiar, with a minimum of conscious attention, the art of crossing a busy corner, the society woman's social technique, the gambler's ability to play his hand, the professional athlete's mastery of his game, the business man's habit of reading letters at a glance, or of the vaudeville mystery man's "tricks," or for that matter the mere ability to walk or talk, are quite as remarkable from the standpoint of technique as the unusual skills achieved by the "prodigies" at whom we marvel.

ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS— The fact that the performer can give no account of how he acquired the skill is not significant with regard to the rival claims of heredity and environment as causes. The same is true of many of the more commonly distributed skills. A bias in the direction of counting things, due to the fixation of some hysterical trend or merely to the random selection of a play interest in early childhood, would suffice to account for the phenomenal adders, subtracters, multipliers, etc. Accountants often trained themselves to similar expertness on purpose before the days of calculating machines. It is to be noted that many of the musicians who "play any tune they have heard" are blind. The sense of hearing has been stimulated to compensate for the lost sense of sight. In many cases the unusual special ability has been developed on the basis of a lead or interest in attention developed by accident and thereafter persisted in because of lack of interference. The fact that many of the "prodigies" have not developed intelligence equally or even normally in other directions would tend to show that their mental life had been isolated and introverted, and there subjected to the development of more or less hysterical fixations. Studies of these types might reveal hysterical biases and possibly in many or all cases show that their subnormal intelligence in other directions was not the result of inheritance but of those environmental and organic conditions which produce what Burnham has called pseudo feeble-mindedness.

These rarer and more sensational types of special abilities which have caught the attention of the psychologists are not of very great significance for our collective life. But the more common special abilities or skills have the greatest significance

( 223) for society. Civilization advances through the development of a high grade of skill along these more functional or useful, and therefore more common, lines. The art of a Paderewski or of a Rachmaninoff is even more phenomenal than that of a Blind Tom and at least as difficult to attain, but it surprises us less because we understand the technique of its attainment. The ability to count and measure electrons is much more remarkable than that of multiplying three numbers by three other numbers rapidly, and we know that the former technique was acquired. So may the latter be acquired by the accountant in a perfectly normal manner. It is only when we find an apparently imbecile boy performing such feats that we are astonished. We need to know more about hysteria and fixations and the working of the subnormal mind in personalities isolated by their defect to supplement our theories of inheritance, if we are to understand better the occurrence of unusual abilities.

MATERIALS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Notes

  1. The Trend of the Race, p. 29

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