ress (to borrow a figure from physics) which
will give dominance to those associative tendencies pointing in the
right direction. Even the feeble-minded child of imbecile grade has in
his vocabulary a great many words which rhyme with _day_, _mill_, and
_spring_. He fails on the test because his verbal associations cannot be
subjugated to the influence of a directing idea. The end to be attained
does not dominate consciousness sufficiently to create more than a faint
stress. Instead of a single magnetic pole there is a conflict of forces.
The result is either chaos or partial success. _Mill_ may suggest
_hill_, and then perhaps the directing idea becomes suddenly inoperative
and the child gives _mountain_, _valley_, or some other irrelevant
association. The lack of associations, however, is a more frequent cause
of failure than inability to inhibit the irrelevant.

If any one supposes that finding rhymes does not draw upon the higher
mental powers, let him try the experiment upon himself in various stages
of mental efficiency, say at 9 A.M., when mentally refreshed by a good
night of sleep and again when fatigued and sleepy. Poets questioned by
Galton on this point all testified to the greater difficulty of finding
rhymes when mentally fatigued. In this and in many other respects the
mental activities of the fatigued or sleepy individual approach the type
of mentation which is normal to the feeble-minded.

It is important to note that adults make a less favorable showing
in this test than normal children of corresponding mental age,
Mr. Knollin's "hoboes" of 12-year intelligence doing hardly as well as
school children of 10-year intelligence. Those who are habitually
employed in school exercises probably acquire an adeptness in verbal
associations which is later gradually lost in the preoccupations of real
life.

There has been more disagreement as to the proper location of this test
than of any other test of the Binet scale. Binet placed it in year XII
of the 1908 scale, but shifted it to year XV in 1911. Kuhlmann retains
it in year XII, while Goddard drops it down to year XI. However, when we
examine the actual statistics for normal children we do not find very
marked disagreement, and such disagreement as is present can be largely
accounted for by variations in procedure and by differing conclusions
drawn from identical data. In the first place, Binet gave but one trial.
This, of course, makes the test much harder