imagination. If the house reminded me that she was in the habit of
receiving many strange things, the food was proof that her standard of
acceptance was very high. Steamed clams, real chicken, and delicious
vegetables, where they must have been by no means easy to procure;
lobster in a chafing-dish, fruit sherbet, and thoroughly sophisticated
coffee, formed our Sunday dinner. The conversation was no less
interesting, my opposite at table being a distinguished biological
painter. It had never previously occurred to me that of course there
must be such. Usually busied in evoking the outward form and semblance
of prehistoric creatures from their remains in museums, he was here
for semi-recreation, painting marine life from the aquaria of the
Fish Commission. I was later presented to the object of his current
admiration, a creature with the anatomy of a frying-pan and the manners
of the Bowery, popularly known as a ‘stingray’ because of a dangerous
weapon in its tail. His next sitter was to be a rare specimen of
parasite fish, which, although nearly two feet long, was deriving all
its locomotion about the tank from a much-embarrassed but helpless
shark, to the under side of which it was complacently attached by means
of a suction arrangement on the top of its head.
“Portia, like most of the other students, had lodgings in a private
house in the village, there being not more than half a dozen cottages
exclusively devoted to summer guests. She took her meals at the
laboratory mess, where the plain but adequate food was flavored with
abundant talk of distribution, variation, regeneration, mutation, and
the dynamics of protoplasm. Having once fixed these catchwords in mind,
I rapidly acquired the local language, and could shortly ask simple
questions without difficulty.
“In addition to the long, low mess hall, the laboratory occupied three
other square, two-story buildings of gray shingle, set off by dark
green paint. The largest, with several wings, contained class-rooms
and laboratories for two of the three regular courses of instruction
in physiology, morphology, and embryology. On the upper floor was an
excellent technical library with Agassiz’s motto, ‘Study nature, not
books.’ Around the sides of both floors and in the other buildings were
individual working rooms, in which the more advanced investigators
sentenced themselves to solitary confinement during the major part
of each day. These rooms and the students’ tables in the several
larger rooms were at the disposal of the colleges from whose annual
contributions most of the working funds of the laboratory are derived.
“During the six weeks of regular class instruction in July and August,
there are two or more public evening lectures each week, in which
visiting scholars present the more generally interesting aspects of
their special fields of study. I did not share Portia’s enthusiastic
anticipation of the coming of a lecturer who had just returned from
hunting a particular variety of snail in the South Sea Islands, but
the lecture changed my apprehension to appreciation, and, finally, to
admiration.
“Other lectures dealt quite as attractively with the development of
habits among birds, the detection of the minute organisms that cause
many human diseases, the study of heredity in families of rabbits
and guinea-pigs, and the creation of new forms of plant life. Every
considerable investigation of which I heard had definite relation
to some generalization that was capable of practical application--a
striking contrast to similar work in certain other sciences.
“Portia’s problem, which I was interested to find important enough to
deserve a private room, was the regeneration of planarians, minute
marine parasites which have the power, when divided, of developing
new heads or tails. Her endeavor was, by means of a microscope,
magnifying some twelve hundred times, to observe and trace the earliest
differentiation of the cells that were to form the several new organs.
Of the hundred or more students in residence, about half of them
young women, perhaps one-half were carrying on similar studies, of
varying degrees of difficulty. Among these were college professors and
instructors who were conducting researches that had extended over many
years. The volumes of the laboratory’s monthly publication, containing
records of the processes and results of such work, made more than
ordinarily interesting reading, even for the layman.
“The recreations of the place were as interesting as its labors. The
social life was that of a highly selected college community, where
everybody knows everybody else and his wife, and finds them well
worth knowing; and everywhere, always, there rose and fell a tide of
excellent talk.
“In short, I had so good a time that I visited Portia not three days,
but ten, and then departed with a regret that was not dispelled even
when she formally approved my conduct by inviting me to come again. She
was so smiling and sympathetic at the pier that I found myself asking a
question that had repeatedly suggested itself, but which had as often
been spontaneously repressed.
“What, if any, was the definite or practical value of her summer’s
work, as compared with that which she had previously been doing in the
field of domestic science? That, she replied, was for me to determine.
Perhaps, when I thought it all over, some such bearing would occur to
me. I was afraid that she was going to be disappointed in me, after
all, and hastened to change the subject by inquiring why, since the
afternoon was so fine, she was wearing her long oilskin coat and
sou’wester hat. It was certainly a becoming costume, although it too
much concealed her trim figure--her color was now all that could be
desired.
“‘Oh, I don’t work in the laboratory all of the time,’ she answered.
‘I--that is, we--are going sailing.’ Just at that moment the
importunate mate’s ‘All aboard’ precluded further leave-taking. But as
I watched her from the deck of the receding steamer, after a farewell
wave of the hand, turn expectantly toward a jaunty sail-boat that was
skimming in the direction of the pier under the guidance of one of the
younger professors, I began to have glimmerings of at least one answer
to my question.”
XVIII
_Measuring the Mind_
When Professor Maturin discovered that his young friend Portia had
become a student of psychology, he expressed no surprise, having
learned where she was concerned to expect the unexpected. But he did
voice his impression that the science was one that had, as yet, but
an imperfect appreciation of the feminine mind. “Precisely,” replied
Portia; “listen to this,” and opening one of her note-books, she
read: “Our modern knowledge of woman represents her as primitive,
conservative, nearer the savage than man. She is lighter, weaker,
slower, less dexterous, less accurate, less individual. She is more
nervous, more emotional, more superstitious, and more often insane.
In short, her lack of accomplishment is due not to subjection, but to
fundamental inferiority.”
“Now that,” concluded Portia, “was undoubtedly written by a man, and
is therefore probably as mistaken as what men have usually written
about women in novels and poems. At any rate, I intend to see for
myself.” Professor Maturin immediately commended her intention, and
subsequently followed her progress with an interest which, after a
time, she rewarded by an invitation to visit the laboratory where she
was working. It was not long, by the way, before she discovered that,
although the particular statements of the German scientist she had
quoted were in the main correct, an obsession of the Kaiser’s “church,
children, cooking, and clothes” doctrine had made him ignore equally
striking facts on the other side. Her other discoveries shall be given
in Professor Maturin’s own words. “As we started on our expedition
she read me a counter quotation, from an even more famous authority:
‘Woman is more observant, more assimilative, more sympathetic, more
intuitional, more aesthetic, and more moral than man. She is more
typical of the race and nearer the superman of the future. Man in
comparison is senile, if not decadent.’
“My burst of admiration for a science that could solve the same
problem in such opposite ways, was checked by Portia’s remarking that
she attributed scarcely more importance to the latter than to the
former statement. She was quite in accord with the directors of her
laboratory, in considering much of what calls itself psychology to
be based on philosophic deduction or popular generalization, rather
than on scientific observation and experiment. As a matter of fact,
scientific psychology, as a development of the present generation,
was just beginning to find its accumulated facts sufficient for any
generalization. This statement gave me a sense of entering a theatre
just as the curtain was going up.
“After a glimpse at the general arrangement of the department’s score
or more of rooms, Portia proceeded to lead me systematically through
the suite devoted to physiological psychology. Concerning the sense
of smell, little seemed to be known, except that it is sufficiently
sensitive to detect a thimbleful of odorous gas diffused through a very
large room. Not much more is known concerning taste, except that it can
be stimulated electrically, as smell cannot be, and that sweet and sour
are distinguished chiefly by the tip of the tongue; bitter and salt by
the back.
“But discoveries in physics have made possible extensive studies of
sound sensation. The average ear has a compass for sounds of from
twenty-eight vibrations a second to twenty-two thousand, and can detect
differences caused by a variation of sixty. The figures for sight are
even more surprising. The sensation of red is caused by rays of light
which vibrate from four hundred and forty to four hundred and seventy
billion times a second. At this stage of my observations, I abandoned
my memory for a pencil and note-book. Increasingly rapid vibrations
produce the other colors, up to violet, which is caused by about seven
hundred and twenty-two billions.
“It is not surprising, therefore, that the sense of sight displays
considerable inertia. It takes a perceptible time for the eye to see
what is before it, and its images persist after the object is removed
or the eye is closed. Such after-images are at times like the object,
but show its complementary color if the sense is fatigued. This last
fact is said to be taken advantage of by department-store salesmen,
who change fabrics of which their customers are wearied for others
complementary in color. Pressure and temperature are felt only at
certain spots on the body, very close together, but quite unevenly
distributed. The forehead and the back, for example, are more sensitive
to cold than to heat. Some spots are sensitive to heat or cold alone,
seeming to indicate separate sets of nerves for these sensations.
“The lower limits of any sensation may be determined by gradually
diminishing a stimulus until its effect is not noted, or by increasing
a smaller stimulus until a sensation is produced. Delicacy of
perception is measured by noting the smallest increase or decrease of
stimulus needed to produce a change in sensation. Some persons can
distinguish, by touch, a difference of half an ounce in a pound weight.
Measured by the distance apart at which the points of a divider can
be separately felt, the cheek is but half as sensitive as the finger,
the finger but half as sensitive as the tongue. Hence, it is probably
in order to touch as well as to taste that infants carry everything to
the mouth. The direction of sounds is determined by the difference in
the relative intensity of the sensation in the two ears; the position
of the body, when the eyes are closed, is somehow felt by means of
semi-circular canals in the ear. Measured by moving a candle away
from an object until its shadow seems the same as that produced by a
fixed candle, or by rotating disks bearing black lines on white, the
eye can distinguish a difference of one one-hundredth in a quantity
of light. Judging distance by sight is said to involve at least ten
separate operations of perception and judgment, vision being really
mental interpretation, based on association and memory as well as
on sensation. Hence, errors in visual perception are so common that
painters, sculptors, and architects always take them into account.
Estimates of distance with one eye alone are usually inaccurate;
vertical seem longer than horizontal distances. The size of small
objects and the speed of larger ones are usually underestimated; the
speed of small bodies and the size of larger ones, exaggerated. Yet, in
judgment of space, sight is more accurate than touch.
“The most interesting rooms of this series were those devoted to
measuring the time of nervous and mental processes, by means of
complicated and delicate machinery, electrical for the most part,
and arranged so as to cause certain sense impressions, and to record
the time between these and a response in some form of motion.
Each experiment is repeated many times, with the same person, and
with many persons, in order to eliminate errors due to inertia of
after-impressions, to expectation or practice, to surprise or fatigue.
In even so simple a procedure as pressing an electric button with
one hand on feeling a touch on the other, nearly a dozen distinct
elements were considered--stimulus of the sense organ, conduction
through nerve and through brain, reception and transformation of the
impulse, reconduction through brain and through nerve, and, finally,
muscular action. The speed of nerve transmission being known as from
one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet a second, it is possible to
deduce the approximate rate of mental reception and action. It is not
flattering to learn that electricity is about one thousand times as
quick. The total reaction from hand to hand occupies from one-tenth
to one-fifth of a second; the ear has approximately the same rate of
action; the eye is about one-fourth slower. The mind’s interpretation
of sensation averages about one-twenty-fifth of a second; its
determination to act, a shade less.
“It takes less time to perceive color and form than letters or words,
and all of these differ among themselves. The number three seems a sort
of natural unit, it being almost as easy to perceive three objects
at once, as one; it is much harder to perceive four. The imaginative
reproduction of an image requires about one-fourth of a second; the
association of abstract ideas, about three times as long--all according
to the previous alteration or multiplication of the six hundred million
or more brain cells which are the average individual’s stock in trade.
“The numerical records of all such experiments are transformed
graphically into diagrams, whose bases represent the number of
experiments, and whose heights represent the varying accomplishment.
Such surfaces of frequency, as they are called, show at a glance
the entire performance of the trait studied, and are therefore much
superior to the ordinary method of averages. The intellectual average
of a town that contained a university and an insane asylum would be
about that of a town that had neither. A diagram, however, would show
not only the average, but the much more significant distribution.
Attention is also paid to the ‘mode,’ or measure that occurs most
frequently, and to the ‘median,’ or record above and below which half
of the measurements lie. Then, by calculating the average deviation
from the average, and certain similar ratios, it is possible finally
to obtain a small group of figures which contain the essence of the
entire distribution. This, in turn, makes possible the measurement and
the comparison not only of particular mental functions, but of the
characteristic ability of individuals and of groups. In this way, for
example, it has been found that mental activities vary in much the same
manner as do the functions of most of the natural organs that have been
measured by biologists, anthropologists, and physicians. In general,
two-thirds of all mental performances lie within the middle third of
ability. Average efficiency is very near to the most common, and both
lie about half-way between the two extremes.
“Perhaps the most striking result of such study is the discovery, by
means of a large number of measurements, that mental functions are
much more independent of one another than is usually thought, and that
a change in one function alters another only so far as the two have
identical elements. There is, for example, only a slight correlation
between remembering numbers and remembering words, and no perceptible
relation between perception of time and perception of rhythm, or
between sense perception in general and memory. Judged from the grades
given by instructors to several thousand school and college students,
the natural sciences are closer to Latin, in the kind of ability they
require, than they are to mathematics. Algebra and geometry are almost
as different from one another as mathematics in general are from
non-mathematical subjects.
“Such facts certainly seemed to warrant the conclusions of the
professor to whose guidance Portia now consigned me: ‘The mind is not
a functional unit, nor even a collection of general faculties which
work irrespective of particular material. It is rather a multitude of
separate functions, each closely related to only a few of the others,
and to most in so slight a degree as to elude measurement. It is
impossible to infer success in one field from success in another, or
success in an entire subject from success in a part of it. To estimate
the general ability of any individual requires the separate measurement
of traits sufficiently numerous and well-chosen to represent fairly all
of his capacities. By means of such specific measurements, however, we
can determine pretty definitely an individual’s capability for any of
the highly specialized activities, such as music or painting.’
“The rooms devoted to the study of genetic psychology, or mental
development, contained much interesting data concerning the mental
life of children, collected usually through very simple tests, such as
estimating the size of geometrical figures, the length of lines, or
the duration of sounds; arranging in graduation a series of weights,
or the shades of a color; or recalling series of related or unrelated
letters or words. While the material thus obtained seems to indicate
the existence of certain general laws of mental growth, it is not yet
considered sufficient to establish them. The implications are that the
masculine mind is slightly more variable, the feminine slightly better
in perception; and that the relation between early and later ability is
one not of antagonism, but of resemblance.
“I wished that I might linger over the studies of rapidity of
movement, tested by tapping; and of precision, tested by drawing
lines in a narrow, intricate path, or by tapping in a small circle
without touching the sides; and I would gladly have spent a day
examining the ingenious contrivances for recording and measuring the
attention demanded and the emotions aroused by different sorts of
reading. But our time was growing so short that I was hurried on,
after only a glimpse at a mass of material that would have delighted
or distressed--I had not time to learn which--the heart of a spelling
reformer--the records of the spelling of thirty-three thousand
children! In this connection the professor remarked that his own
experiments had convinced him that good spelling depended not on memory
or on observation in general, but upon a certain specific ability to
notice small differences in words, by means of sight, hearing, or, in
the case of the blind, through touch.
“In the next, so-called ‘heredity room’ were records showing that
children of the same parents are slightly more like one another than
they are like the average, in height, color of eyes and hair, and in
all the mental traits that have been studied in this connection. The
physical traits of parents tend to alternate, their mental traits to
blend, among their children. Eminent men are almost always found to
have near relatives of eminence. Family resemblances are most marked in
traits, like musical ability, that are least affected by environment.
Here, too, were the life histories of many twins, showing that those
closely alike at birth and in early rearing usually remained so in
spite of later changes in environment; and that those unlike at birth
remained so in spite of identity of nurture. From such and similar
facts the department drew the conclusions that nature predominates
greatly over nurture, that inheritance is specialized rather than
general, and from the original nature of the parents rather than from
acquired traits.
“Individuals who are subjected to the influence of a particular
environment are usually so much more influenced by the forces that
select them for that environment, that accurate knowledge in this
field is obtainable only with difficulty. The fact, for example, that
most Congressmen are college graduates is probably due not so much
to their education as to their early giving evidence of ability that
demanded such training. In the words of the professor: ‘The factor of
selection is commonly neglected, the influence of environment commonly
overestimated. Environment does not create, but merely selects and
stimulates natural abilities. About all that education can do is
to supply facilities for and remove obstacles to the growth of the
brain, encourage desirable activities by making them pleasurable, and
inhibit their opposites by making them uncomfortable. Mental hygiene,
opportunity, and incentive are the foundations of the teacher’s
Blackstone.’
“I was prepared to be impressed most of all by what Portia called the
‘human-nature room,’ for here were printed records of many studies
based on answers to widely circulated ‘questionnaires.’ From one set
it was deduced that half of us have favorite sounds, open vowels and
liquid consonants leading; one-fourth are fond of particular words,
‘murmur’ being the choice of the majority; most people are fond of
particular names, ‘Helen’ being the prime favorite. Similar records
showed that women read more than men, but reach the period of maximum
reading sooner, the greatest reading age being about twenty, the
average amount small after thirty-five, most people reading for
emotional rather than intellectual reasons. Yet others indicated that
muscular power increases and attention decreases in summer, the mind
being at its best from December until April.
“I was concluding that here was a very mine of richness for the
novelist, when the professor remarked: ‘We attribute small importance
to this sort of thing. Conclusions based on reports from artificially
selected and incompetent observers and combined in an unscientific
manner have no general validity. Only direct expert observation of
representative cases, and accurate statistical study of all the factors
involved, can bring reliable results. We may base our educational
ideals on philosophic or popular theories, but our study of the nature
of mind and the ways of affecting it, to be at all valuable, must be
rigidly scientific.’
“Well, I had learned enough and to spare without these suggestive, if
inaccurate, observations of general human nature, and without even
looking into certain rooms, where zoölogists and psychologists united
in studying the development of mind in the animal world.
“‘I presume,’ I remarked to Portia as we left the building, ‘that when
you come to consider suitors for your daughters, you will inquire into
not their social and financial standing, but their personal equations
of perception and motor-activity, and request statistics concerning
the central tendency and variability of each of their mental and moral
traits?’ ‘Undoubtedly,’ she replied, ‘and I should want to know similar
facts for their parents, and also the details of their reaction to
humidity and to heat.’
“‘Shall you require similar data concerning the prospective father of
those daughters?’ I asked. ‘Perhaps,’ she concluded; ‘but considering
the present undeveloped state of the science, I should insist on
conducting those investigations myself. Just now I have no time for
such experiments. I must to a lecture. Good-bye.’
“Thus Portia left me to proceed to my lunch and to cogitate alone, a
more confirmed perfectibilian than ever, marvelling at the achievement
of this generation, and half prepared to accept as true an inscription
that I had seen in the last room we visited: ‘Psychology has a message
to the world, richer and more original than that of the Renaissance.’”
XIX
_The Club of the Bachelor Maids_