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Fare ye well, ye streams and lakelets,
Fertile fields and shores of ocean,
All ye aspens on the mountains,
All ye lindens of the valleys,
All ye beautiful stone lindens,
All ye shade trees by the cottage,
All ye junipers and willows,
All ye shrubs with berries laden,
Waving grass and fields of barley,

Arms of elms, and oaks and alders,

Fare ye well, dear scenes of childhood,
Happiness of days departed.

Ilmarinen returns (in Rune 25) to Wainola with his Pohjola bride, to receive an heroic welcome at the hands of Lakko, hostess of Wainola. Lakko recounts in great detail the numerous comforts awaiting the bride and concludes with a few effective words descriptive of the village setting. This description characterizes equally well a typical Finnish farm location of the present day.

Thou hast here a lovely village,
Finest spot in all of Northland,
In the lowlands sweet the verdure,
In the uplands, fields of beauty,
With the lake-shore near the hamlet,
Near thy home the running water,
Where the goslings swim and frolic,
Water-birds disport in numbers.

The Finn's favorite trees are the gracefully clustered whitetrunked birch, the stately symmetrical towering evergreen and the cheerful red-berried mountain ash. The birch is the most economic tree, for in addition to fuel it supplies numerous utensils. Wainamoinen (in Rune 44) wandering across the field and through the forests seeking his lost kantele, comes upon a weeping birch. He inquires into all this sadness and the tree responds as follows: I, alas! a helpless birch tree, Dread the changing of the seasons,

...

I must give my bark to others,
Lose my leaves and silken tassels.
Often come the Suomi children,

Peel my bark and drink my life-blood;
Wicked shepherds in the summer,
Come and steal my belt of silver,
Of my bark make berry baskets,
Dishes make, and cups for drinking.
Oftentimes the Northland maidens
Cut my tender limbs for birch brooms,
Bind my twigs and silver tassels
Into brooms to sweep their cabins;
Often have the Northland heroes

Chopped me into chips for burning;
Three times in the summer season,
In the pleasant days of springtime,
Foresters have ground their axes
On my silver trunk and branches,
Robbed me of my life for ages.

Thus the valued birch acquires personality and through the words of the folk-song permanent expression is given to the Finn's appreciation of its services.

No discussion of Finnish life could possibly be considered complete without reference to the bath. The Finn swears by the bath. It is an institution of no mean value, for it not only helps him preserve his health but, to his mind, serves also as a cure for all ills. The bathhouse is one of the first of the numerous structures to be erected upon a Finnish farm site. It is a small frame shack containing a glacial-boulder fire-place. The fire-place projects well into the room and is without a chimney. A hole in the roof of the building permits the smoke to escape, or sometimes the cracks between the timbers are relied upon as substitutes for the chimney. In the preparation of the bath, the stones of the fire-place are first heated to a high temperature. Then the fire is put out and cold water is thrown upon the stones. Great clouds of condensed steam fill the room. Around the walls of the room are shelf-like platforms upon which the bathers lie. the blood circulation, the bather beats himself with a bundle of birch or aspen twigs. After some ten or twenty minutes immersion in the steam, he enters a small adjoining room and there throws cold water upon himself. The cold "shower" is sometimes applied out-of-doors instead of in a room. He then retires to his house to dress. In winter it is not unknown for a bather to roll in the snow immediately after the bath. The shock of course is great, but with training from childhood the Finn withstands the ordeal and develops tremendous physical endurance.

As the steam stimulates

The Finn's faith in the bath is unbounded and to find it immortalized in his national epic is rightly to be expected. In the "Birth of the Nine Diseases," (Rune 45), there follows an interesting description of the bath and a prayer that its curative qualities may endure:

Wainamoinen heats the bathroom,

Heats the blocks of healing sandstone,
With the magic wood of Northland,

Gathered by the sacred river;

Water brings in covered buckets

From the cataract and whirlpool;

Brooms he brings enwrapped with ermine,

Well the bath the healer cleanses,

Softens well the brooms of birch-wood;
Then a honey-heat he wakens

Fills the room with healing vapors,
From the virtue of the pebbles
Glowing in the heat of magic,
Thus he speaks in supplication:
"Come, O Ukko, to my rescue,
God of Mercy, lend thy presence,
Give these vapor baths new virtues,

Grant to them the powers of healing.

Reference has been made to the minor key in which these runes are sung. Finnish music is impressive because so full of character. Its melodies reveal nature's severity, yet they also reflect her forebearance. Life is never so hard but that it has its compensating days. So the minor key reflects at times a somewhat sombre atmosphere and a certain degree of sadness, yet the absence of heavy accents helps to create a feeling of hopefulness and high spirit. One easily recognizes the rushing streams with alternating rapids and reaches, or the clear sparkling glacial waters playing in the brilliant northern sunshine. Nature seems to direct in every song.

The Finn, stolid and phlegmatic at times, but persevering and tenacious, possessed of remarkable physical endurance and a stout heart, has given his brain cells opportunity for growth. His countrymen show the highest percentage of literacy among the nations. He loves to read. In his long hours of solitude he digests his readings and allows his imagination full freedom to build upon the ideas absorbed. Thus the Finn has evolved a vivid imagination which has contributed to the development of literature of exceptional merit. His poetry, including both folk-songs and modern works, having been conceived amid the influences of nature, show her unmistakable impress. The reflection of the environment is perfect, and in the Kalevala, especially, the character of Finnish life is accurately and strikingly imaged.

WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE AND WHO HAS IT?

INT

By Professor LIGHTNER WITMER

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

TNTELLIGENCE is the ability to solve a new problem. An unsurmounted difficulty is a new problem so long as its solution is unknown. It is easy enough to cut the Gordian knot, or to stand an egg on end, after one has learned how these historic intelligence tests were solved. When a problem is difficult enough, or the solution sufficiently novel and important, the intelligence displayed in successful invention will be considered "genius."

Life confronts us with problems, new and old. Just to keep one's self alive is a very old one. "To live by one's wits" is to solve it by an exercise of intelligence. From the cunning of a horse trader to the genius of an Aristotle is a long step up on the scale of intellectual competency; but intelligence may appear at any intellectual level, even a low one, and is divined from what the individual makes of opportunity and resources. We ascertain how much knowledge and skill enter into a performance in order to disregard them, for the intelligence displayed in successful adventure is measured not by the resources employed, but by the risks involved and the difficulties overcome. If, for example, the Russian Soviet is in fact a weak form of government, and the Bolshevists are as entangled in ignorance, insanity and crime as would appear from the reading of our daily newspaper, then it follows that the intelligence of a Lenine or a Trotzky must be given a higher rating than the genius of statesmen who have tried in vain to sink this defective ship of state, despite the fact that they have had at their command the intellectual resources of the most cultured and efficient nations of the world. Intelligence is not to be measured by conventional standards, but by the successful out- x come of performance. The discrimination of intelligence from other abilities is concerned only with the criteria that distinguish the variable and novel creations of free initiative from the more constant and familiar effects of established habits. The originality of a performance is proportional to the number of novel elements entering into its composition, and to the amount by which a successful creation of the productive imagination varies from the prevailing mode.

The really serious problems of daily life, the primeval and yet

recurrent problems of mere existence were solved long ago by our pre-human ancestors. As a consequence, we are now able to get up in the morning, cook and eat our breakfast, swallow and digest it, without an exertion of intelligence or intellect, employing for the purpose inherited habits which are physiological mechanisms called "instincts" and "reflexes." Throughout a busy day, full of varied performance, one gets on with the day's work, solving problem after problem, many of them difficult enough, some of them possibly beyond the proficiency of all but the most expert or the best informed; but rarely will a new problem emerge from the comfortable routine of a well-ordered existence.

Education is the device of civilization to keep us from encountering new problems. The method employed is showing the pupil how to solve problems instead of letting him solve them for himself. It thus makes the exercise of his intelligence unnecessary. The school presents the paradigm, and when life confronts the graduate with a new problem, he solves it by virtue of an acquired intellectual habit, and in conformity to the scholastic model.

Endow a child with intellect, let him acquire knowledge and efficiency, teach him to conform his conduct, thought and feeling to the prevailing mode, and you go far to assure him a useful life at a high intellectual level. If he has intelligence, it may facilitate the schoolmaster's task, but pupil and teacher can, and do, get along without it. They must, however, avoid an excess of stupidity. They must not try to solve new problems if every attempt brings failure. They must do what the timid do, who fear failure more than they desire success; they must check initiative, censor the imagination, suppress revolt, curb aspiration and refrain from adventure. At this task the pupil will be aided and abetted by the greater number of schoolmasters who will direct his progress from the first year of the elementary school to the commencement day, which yields the certificate of intellectual proficiency called a "diploma." To discover how much intelligence the graduate of this educational system really has, one would have to surprise him at a moment when he is confronted by some accidental obstacle in an otherwise well-ordered existence-a missing suspender button, for instance, for which he must quickly invent a substitute, or some other difficulty connected with the sempiternal problem of making both ends meet.

Competency is an aggregate of many congenital abilities, some of them specific abilities, like talking and singing; others more general, like intelligence, intellect, discernment, will and motivation. By the time a child is six years old he will ordinarily display

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