irls
under twelve average almost the same, year by year, according to the
Binet tests. In various other tests, calling for quick, accurate work,
girls have on the average slightly surpassed boys of the same age, but
this may result from the fact that girls mature earlier than boys;
they reach adult height earlier, and perhaps also adult intelligence.
College women, in the Alpha test, score on the average a few points
below college men, but this, on the other hand, may be due to the fact
that the Alpha test, being prepared for men, includes a few questions
that lie rather outside the usual range of women's interests. On the
whole, tests have given very little evidence of any significant
difference between the general run of intelligence in the two sexes.

Limitations of the Intelligence Tests

Tests of the Binet or Alpha variety evidently do not cover the whole
range of intelligent behavior. They do not test {282} the ability to
manage carpenter's or plumber's tools or other concrete things, they
do not test the ability to manage people, and they do not reach high
enough to test the ability to solve really big problems.

Regarding the ability to manage concrete things, we have already
mentioned the performance tests, which provide a necessary supplement
to the tests that deal in ideas expressed in words. It is an
interesting fact that some men whose mental age is below ten,
according to the Binet tests, nevertheless have steady jobs, earn good
wages, and get on all right in a simple environment. There are many
others, with a mental age of ten or eleven, who cannot master the
school work of the upper grades, and yet become skilled workmen or
even real artists. Now, it takes mentality to perform skilled or
artistic work; only, the mentality is different from that demanded by
what we call "intellectual work".

Managing people requires tact and leadership, which are obviously
mental traits, though not easily tested. It is seldom that a real
leader of men scores anything but high in the intelligence tests, but
it more often happens that an individual who scores very high in the
tests has little power of leadership. In part this is a matter of
physique, or of temperament, rather than of intelligence, but in part
it is a matter of _understanding_ people and seeing how they can be
influenced and led.

Though the intelligence tests deal with "ideas", they do not, as so
far devised, reach up to the great ideas nor make muc