high or low capacity." It was evidently taken to mean "less important than character and temperament." The results of the questionnaire on this point are therefore not conclusive.

The writer's own opinion is that, if the individual's capacity is neither very high nor very low, his character and temperament determine to about the same extent the degree of his success in the ordinary undertakings of life as does his intellectual capacity. But this cannot be taken to represent the consensus of opinion.

The last specific problem which remains to be considered is the relation of intellectual capacity and non-intellectual traits to misconduct and crime. It is rather widely believed that intelligence tests have indicated that crime is usually caused by mental defect. This is the statement on this point: "Marked mental defect is an important factor in misconduct, but non-intellectual traits and environment are more important than intellectual capacity for the upper eighty or eighty-five per cent."

The most pronounced disagreement with this statement was expressed thus, "I doubt the marked importance of non-intellectual traits which you seem to imply." Another comment was, "I don't think we know about this." Otherwise the correspondents agreed, with only unimportant qualifications. We may regard it as fairly well agreed among psychologists, therefore, that so far as we can judge from present evidence, degree of intelligence is an important cause of crime in the case of those who are very defective, but that in the case of any but those of quite low-grade intelligence, character traits, temperament, and environment are the chief causes.

The final statement expresses a general sense of the value of intelligence tests. "If the above mentioned facts are all kept in mind, so-called intelligence tests are extremely valuable devices for use in educational administration." Only one qualification was suggested-that there are bad as well as good tests, and that only the good ones are valuable.

A few words in final comment. Do intelligence tests, particularly the army tests, indicate that forty-five per cent. of the entire population are stupid or that the average adult has a mental age of about thirteen and one-half years? These inferences from the army tests have been emphasized much more strongly by lay students of the subject than by psychologists. Psychologists have been somewhat puzzled to know how to interpret the army statistics, but we should be clear that the tests do not stand or fall with this particular interpretation.

These are the facts. What the army tests show concerning the intellectual capacity of typical Americans is that forty-five per cent. of us are duller than the other fifty-five per cent. That is all so far as the percentages are concerned. Taken by themselves, the tests do not indicate whether the letter grade D or the grade C represent dullness or mediocrity, except in relation to the persons who receive higher or lower grades. They indicate merely the degree of brightness which is defined as the degree possessed by a given percentage of the population. They do not further define this degree of brightness.

How, then, have the army tests come to be interpreted as indicating brightness or mental age, except on the basis of the percentage who receive

various grades? The interpretation has been based on a comparison of the scores which are made by children and by adults on the same tests. From such a comparison the army scores are translated into terms of mental age. We have learned to interpret various degrees of mental age as representing rather definite degrees of intellectual capacity, and to define the person's intelligence in terms of the mental age which he attains or is likely to attain when he is intellectually mature. Now, according to this usual mode of interpretation ultimate mental age of slightly over thirteen means dullness.

But notice the remarkable change which must have taken place in the common intelligence if we thus interpret the adult scores in mental-age terms. We should have to accept the astounding conclusion that the percentage of persons who have an ultimate mental age of twelve years increases from two and three tenths per cent. in childhood to over thirty per cent. in adulthood. This, of course, cannot be, making any allowance that is thinkable for an influx of dull adults through immigration. Conclusions, therefore, that are drawn from the interpretation of adult scores in terms of the mental age of children must be scrutinized with the greatest caution, and the scare-head announcement that nearly half of us are stupid must be taken strictly for what it is worth. One other final comment. Intelligence tests have been violently attacked because of their supposed bearing on the question of the effectiveness or the limitations of education. Properly interpreted, the tests shed little light on this general question. Not only do they not indicate how greatly human nature may be

modified by education; they do not even assume any definite theory on this point. What they do ordinarily assume is this: first, that human nature is not indefinitely modifiable by education, that is, that there are limits and degrees of modifiability, second, that the capacity of different persons to profit by education differs, and that common experience indicates that some are markedly limited in comparison to others; and third, that mental tests enable us, with a degree of accuracy that makes them practically serviceable, to pick out the persons who can profit largely by education and distinguish them from those who can profit slightly.

That all can profit by education psychologists affirm as vigorously as any. They only add that the kind and amount of education from which they can profit most is to a large degree determined by their original endowment. The interest in differentiating the education of those who differ in endowment is not antagonistic to the interest in improving the productivity of education in general. It is supplementary to it. In fact, the effort to give exceptional children a special type of education, far from indicating a disbelief in the value of education, is the best evidence possible of a faith in education. Else what difference could it make whether bright and dull children were given the same or different treatment? Unless the critics of intelligence tests are prepared to maintain that all children are best served by precisely the same kind and the same amount of education, they cannot rationally find ground of objection to the view that individual differences in capacity require differentiation in education.

A

SIA, the cradle of nations, religions, and laws, of the ruthless struggle for existence, the great historic cemetery of vast states, of magnificent cults, and of powerful cities; the land of beautiful, thousand-colored, but always terrible, landscapes, preserves unending echoes of ancient legends and prehistoric myths in its mountain gorges.

But these age-old echoes, reverberating from the earth, rocks, and walls of Himalayan ranges, Tibetan mountains, Pamirian clefts, Mongolian passes, and Chinese cloisters, died down for a time and then resurged into live, active, and powerful ideas; for in their diminuendo they only penetrated more profoundly, as the spring waters

penetrate the sand to form a subterranean lake which feeds the rivers and streams flowing on the surface of the earth.

The ideas and currents of culture of the thirteenth century are for Asia these rivers and streams. The life and spirit of the descendants of Jenghiz Khan, of the great Tatar dynasty Yüan, of the rulers of Asia from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea, have persisted and permeated all Asia these nine centuries and are yet full of charm and of natural mysticism mixed with awe. In this atmosphere of ancient times which have passed to return no more on the whole earth, secluded Asiatic nations and tribes lead a life of different, but always elemental, forms

of social and patriarchal régime. But privileged castes exist in all these nations, the caste of princes, descendants of the once powerful rulers, and the caste of the priests.

These, in their silken tents, in magnificent palaces, in mysterious cloisters, study the science of the spirit, delving deep into questions which have either not yet become the problems of contemporary humanity, or which have been forgotten by it, just as it has forgotten the history and even the names of vanished tribes through its absorption in the struggle for existence and in the strife of personalities, peoples, and states.

But we are not to suppose that all the scions of the ancient rulers of Asia or the whole clergy, Buddhist, Lamaic, Chinese, Shintoist, or Mussulman distinguish themselves by a special spirituality. Not at all.

A struggle for political influence, an invidious, destructive, and relentless fight, rages everywhere. Throughout all Asia the natives suffer from the exactions of the priests of all creeds; but above it all remains the secluded caste of those initiated into the highest forms of speculative sociology and psychology, into the mysterious problems of the strongly twisted road of causes and effects, a road along which we see blind humanity groping its way -humanity, this smallest molecule of the esoteric cosmos.

From this craving for the proper road that could lead humanity to God is born a mystic shibboleth which is profoundly penetrating the minds of the Asiatics. It is a watchword based in politics, a watchword proclaiming the superiority of the spiritual strength of the East, and affirming the necessity of forcing all humanity to accept its

will and its world-outlook, even at the cost of general blood-spilling, even by hurling Asiatic multitudes upon the nations rotting in the bog of European civilization.

Accordingly, at the fires of the nomad shepherds of the prairies, in the Tzaidam marshes in northern Tibet, in the Himalayas, on the banks of the Hind and the Ganges, in Asia Minor, in Iran, in the valleys of the Yang-tse and the Hwang-ho, people of different colors, tribes, races, and creeds, but united by the common bond of Asiatic ideology, talk, discuss, sing, and dream about the approaching hour, when the hand of the Asiatic will be the hand of karma and will execute the decrees of fate. Awakened Asia!

Asia took the first step in this direction in 1900, when the foreign armies, fighting with the "great fist" in China showed in such a magnificent way their moral downfall.

Then came the Russo-Japanese War, with its defeat of Russia by Japan, the enfeeblement of all states during the World War, and the complete ruin of the Muscovite power. Echoes of these events had their repercussion everywhere: on the shores of the Pacific, of the Indian Ocean, of the Mediterranean Sea; and the natives of the arctic tundras whisper the terrific story of Russia, as the Mongolian tribes on the Volga, in the Urals, and in Siberia carry on their backs the whole burden of the catastrophe. Asia has raised its head in a really terrible concentration of mind, has turned to the West its mysterious eyes, and is listening. And only occasionally the dull murmur of eight hundred and fifty millions of Asiatics is heard in the Occident.

"Has He and has His time already come? Is the Great Unknown among us?"

Such impressions crystallized themselves in my mind after my journey through central Asia, when I had the occasion and the chance to penetrate to places that are most difficult for a European to reach.

Englishmen bombarded a number of Tibetan towns, took Lhasa, but did not see the dalai-lama, did not discover the secret of his influences, and are disturbed and puzzled by this. Englishmen imprisoned Mahatma Mahatma Ghandi and Battur-Ul-Sheih, but have not resolved the problem of Indian insurrections, and they see with consternation that this consuming human fire grows fiercer and more scorching every day.

Who has really studied and discerned whence came the bold politics of Turkey, this exhausted country and needy people that speak haughtily with the powerful victors of the World War?

The idea of the Great Unknown exerts a strongly vitalizing influence upon the political and spiritual phenomena of the Asiatic continent. It is the antithesis of the idea of the antichrist, which is now accepted readily not only in Russia, but by many persons in other countries.

Antichrist, a negative greatness, hostile, bringing death. The Great Unknown, a positive greatness, beneficient to humanity, giving life.

In the mountains of Ulan Taiga I met the first evidences of this idea of the Great Unknown, otherwise called the King of the World. Near some sulphuric springs I saw a rock with a cavern in it. A runic inscription on the wall said, "This is the entrance to the State of the King of the World,

to the subterranean country of Agharti" and a simple Mongolian, guiding my steps near this place, whispered: "Here is the entrance to Agharti. Be silent and concentrate your mind."

Ereksen-Sodzog, brother of prince Todzi of the land of the Toobes, or Urianhai, once over our night fire at the time when we went from Kara Khem to the Little Yenisei to elude the Red partizans, told me the following tale:

"Once in the principality of Soldjak, between Koso-gol and parts of the Tannu Ola mountains, in the cloister of Teri-Noor, appeared a Sayan hunter. He told the monks that he had found in the mountains a cleft from which vapor issued. Being of an inquisitive turn of mind, he entered it and penetrated inward to deep caverns, where he found men, flourishing sciences, and great order, and where peace had reigned for thousands of centuries. These people were ruled by one whom they called the Great King of the World, recognized as the summit of the triangle, omnipotent and merciful. The hunter told many other things, but the Living God of Kemchik heard about him and summoned him to his presence. After having heard his story, he ordered the hunter's tongue cut out to prevent him from telling further about what he had seen and heard in the subterranean country of the unknown nation. hunter, although dumb, retained an expression of happiness and exaltation. When he had grown old, he saddled his horse and journeyed again to the mouth of the cave, where he evidently entered once more the Kingdom Agharti, for the horse returned alone to camp, and the hunter never was seen again."

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