must buy and pay for as a source of any sort of material activity, the decisive factor on the earth. Since we can increase this process of photosynthesis, since there are still portions of the earth that are not adequately utilized, it is conceivable that one of the solutions of the problem of the increasing demand for energy may be to grow more available energy, for example, in the Amazon basin, where there are forests that it does not pay to cut at the present time. We might, for instance, turn a vast amount of solar energy that is not being utilized at the present time, or that is being expended in a manner that we can not ourselves turn to account into starch and sugar, into industrial alcohol, and so get a substitute for gasoline. That is an idea that has been in the minds of chemists, of course, for many years. One does not know how economic conditions will develop. At all events, we have here the clue to an understanding of the sources of energy on the earth. Aside from the fixation of energy in the organic cycle, and aside from the water power and other sources of energy in the inorganic cycle, there is little enough of any kind of energy that is available. You might perhaps have expected me to say something about water in medicine, since this is a medical school lecture. Water is indeed important in medicine, but not, I suspect, in a manner that makes it possible for a lecturer to explain in two words its importance. There are diseases involving water. Of course dropsy involves the physiology of water in a remarkable degree. And there are processes that might be regarded as in a certan sense the opposite of dropsy, such as the curious dehydration of sick babies. In many cases they lose water, and it is difficult, or impossible, to get it back again. I can only say that perhaps because these are in some respects simple phenomena-I say in some respects-we know just enough about them to know that they are so complicated that it is really difficult to explain them or even to understand them at all. And so I shall, I fear, have to omit the more practical and immediate bearings of the physics and chemistry of water upon the organism, especially under pathological conditions. It is the principal constituent of our bodies, it is the principal substance that enters our bodies, it is the principal substance that leaves our bodies, and it is, as I have said, that substance whose movement in the inorganic world and in the organic world constitutes the first, the most fundamentally important, activity in the world that we live in. INTELLIGENCE TESTS OF CERTAIN By Professor KIMBALL YOUNG UNIVERSITY OF OREGON HE influx of the foreigner into this country only became a THR serious problem with the shifting of the Old World source of the immigration from North to South Europe. The early situation in our national history was relatively simple. We had up to the Revolution, and forty years beyond, what constituted a genuine colonization. In fact, it was only after 1820 that a definite count was made of immigration. Even from this date until the Civil War, though the arrival of new-comers from Europe was constantly accelerated, the type of migration made for colonization of our free land and permanent citizenship. In the two decades following the outbreak of the Civil War, the curve of yearly increase of immigration began to rise very rapidly, yet the source of the stream still remained Northern and Western Europe and the British Isles. The destination of this immigration, however, began to be more and more the rising industrial centers of our country and decreasingly so the rural districts-although it appears that the peasantry of Scandinavia and Germany often continued into the free lands of the Far West, the industrial workers of Great Britain, Germany and the bulk of the Irish went into the urban centers more particularly. Wherever this immigration went, it nevertheless fitted fairly readily into our socio-economic folkways and mores, and the biological amalgamation of the "Older Immigration," as it has been called, was in line with the racial stocks2 already in the country. 1 The existence of free land in America has had considerable influence upon our theories of government, our attitudes toward property, freedom and the socio-economic order generally. The significance of free land for racial amalgamation and cultural assimilation has been no less important, but less often noted. 2 Race is used in this article in the popular rather than in the strict anthropological sense. Properly speaking there are no "races" in Europe, but only "'sub-races." Cf. Retzius, "The So-Called North European Race of Mankind.” Jr. Roy. Anthrop. Institute, 39: 277-313. Cf. also introductory chapter in Reuter, E. B., The Mulatto (1918) on use of term "race.” Vol. XV.-27. With the ever-increasing concentration of industrial controls and the accompanying specialization, and withal simplification of production processes due to the introduction of machine methods, the demand for cheaper, semi-skilled and unskilled labor became imperative. The rise of Germany to industrial power, the reaching of a point of stable population growth in Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries eliminated them as sources of this cheap labor. In consequence, we have a noteworthy change to the South and Southeast of Europe, and even to Western Asia, for this supply. In the short span of twenty years the shift in the center of gravity of the immigration to this country became the "common talk" of economics, sociology, political science and demography. The following table illustrates the now familiar facts: TABLE 13 SHOWING THE SHIFT IN THE SOURCE OF IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES Country (In terms of percentages of total from various sources) Year Per cent. Year Per cent. Year Per cent. The complete significance of this change in the source of our immigration we do not yet know. If the theory of General F. A. Walker be true, we may doubt whether immigration has been as important or necessary for the growth of the country, since 1850 anyway, as some persons imagine. Had we had no immigration from the middle of the last century on, according to Walker, our present population would be as large as it is to-day, but racially we should be a much more homogeneous people, or, at least, in the way of becoming so. Now the meaning of the coming of the "New Immigration," as that from Southern Europe has been called, in the matter of racial mixture is an unknown quantity. The writer believes, however, that there is accumulating evidence from studies in general 3 Table compiled from Ellwood, C. A., Modern Social Problems (1913) and reports of immigration. The term "Russian Empire" in the table included Russian Poland and other sections now cut away from the former empire. Racially most of the contribution from Russia was Hebraic or Polish rather than strictly Russian. intelligence of certain immigrant groups, at least, which material, coupled with the results of researches in the inheritance of mental traits, should cause us to consider rather carefully the bearing which these facts may have on features of the racial mixture that will surely come out of the shift in the source and nature of immigration.* The present paper will deal specifically with certain samples of the South European immigration in terms of general intelligence. The special question is: Leaving aside physical characteristics, differences in emotional traits and cultural contacts, what are the significant findings of psychology concerning the general intelligence of certain of these immigrant groups that have come to us so overwhelmingly in the past thirty years? The nature of general intelligence need not detain us here. The uninformed should refer to the long series of important studies upon this question initiated by Binet in France, and expanded by Stern and his pupils in Germany, and particularly by Goddard, Terman, Thorndike and Yerkes in the United States, and more recently still taken up by a group of English psychologists-Webb, Burt, Hart and others. There are obviously several problems as to the exact nature of so-called general intelligence, its growth, its importance in successful life career, and especially as to its innateness (that is in potentia). On the latter point, the evidence at hand seems sufficiently valid to establish that general as well as specific abilities are transmitted by heredity. The precise biological nature of the units involved we do not yet know. Special talents may actually turn out to be due to the presence of separate units in the germ plasm, and all-around ability may be due to a conflux of several factors-multiple and difficult to segregate in the chromosomes. Whether in fact, general intelligence is shown to be simply a convergence of special traits in certain patterns, as Thorndike might assume, or whether due to a more general factor as Spearman seems to hold is unimportant for our present paper. Though the entire data on the mechanism of inheritance are not at hand, and even admitting that the subtle influences of environment have not always been completely segregated and controlled in the studies. made, the writer believes that our social programs for education, Americanization, amalgamation of the foreigner racially, can not nonchalantly ignore these important implications. 4 Studies of the second and third generation of certain immigrant stocks are beginning to accumulate, but so far we lack psychological measures of the mental capacity of these various generations,-more especially of the strains that have gone into the mixtures. The writer, however, is in much sympathy with such studies as Drachsler's and others. The studies of Galton, Woods, Pearson, Davenport, Thorndike, Earle, Starch, and others revealing the inheritance of intellectual traits appear reliable enough, irrespective of the peculiar biological form which subsequent research may reveal, to make the present status of the mentality of immigrant groups, if known, rather prognostic, to say the least, of what the mentality of the future generations of these peoples will be. In other words, the evidence appears rather conclusive for the inheritance of mental abilities, and if general intelligence tests reveal a given level of intelligence in an immigrant group may we not assume that we can predict something of the mental endowment which such a group will add to the future mixtures with other racial groups? It is well recognized by all persons interested in racial mentality and has been recently reiterated by Major Leonard Darwin' that what we want is a high average intelligence in the masses, not a small group of selected superior intelligences, with the bulk of the population of low or inferior intelligence. Out of the constantly changing matrix of a high average intelligence will arise the superior-minded persons who will be able to make the outstanding cultural contributions of the future, while the good average mentality of the masses makes for solid citizenship, appreciation of high cultural values and successful group spirit. Any mixture which will lower the level of intelligence of a group and restrict the variability of the same will be deleterious. For instance, if the average intelligence of certain of the South European stocks which have come to us in the past twenty-five years should prove to be as high as that of the older American stock (i. e., of North European ancestry) the problem of mixing the older and the newer stocks, so far as general intelligence is concerned, will not be serious. However, on the other hand, if the Latins, say, who come to us should prove to be but four fifths as intelligent on the average and less variable when compared with the North European offspring in this country, the racial mixture between the two may be damaging to the welfare of the country. With the methods of testing general intelligence that have come out of psychological investigation and with the implication of heredity in mental endowment, let us review the significant studies which throw light on the matter of immigrant mentality. On the basis of these we may then be able to note certain important bearings of these findings on the problem of immigration as it relates to racial mixture and the general intelligence of our future population. Darwin, L., "The Field of Eugenic Reform." MONTHLY, 13: 392. THE SCIENTIFIC |