One is constantly hearing stories of how the
intelligence of school children has been improved by some treatment
which improved their general health, but these stories are rarely
presented in such a way as to contribute evidence of scientific value.
It was desirable to know what exact measurement would show. The
intelligence of all the children in fourteen schools was measured in its
correlation with weight and height, conditions of clothing and teeth,
state of nutrition, cleanliness, good hearing, and the condition of the
cervical glands, tonsils and adenoids. It could not be found that mental
capacity was closely related to any of the characters dealt with.[8] The
particular set of characters measured was taken because it happened to
be furnished by data collected for another purpose; the various items
are suggestive rather than directly conclusive. Here again, the
correlation in most cases was less than .1, as compared with the general
heredity correlation of .5.
The investigation need not be limited to problems of bad breeding.
Eugenics, as its name shows, is primarily interested in "good breeding;"
it is particularly worth while, therefore, to examine the relations
between heredity and environment in the production of mental and moral
superiority.
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