he least speak against the
significance of such a method. On the other hand, I emphasize that
this first series meant only the beginning of the investigation, and
it can hardly be expected that at such a first approach the best and
most suitable methods would at once be hit upon. A continuation of the
work will surely lead to much better combinations of test experiments
and to better adjusted schemes. But it would be most desirable that
such studies be undertaken at various places according to various
schemes in order to come nearer to the solution of a problem which is
economically important to the whole public and to many thousands of
employees. As soon as methods are really perfected it would seem not
at all impossible that by a short experiment of a few minutes
thousands of applicants might be saved long months of study and
training which are completely wasted. For us here the detailed
analysis of this particular case did not mean a suggestion to use
to-day in the telephone offices of the country the special scheme
which we applied, but it stood only as a clear, simple illustration
of a method by which not the specific work itself is tested, but by
which the industrial work of the individual is resolved into a long
series of parallel functions each one of which is tested
independently. The experimental aid which the laboratory has to supply
in such cases is not a newly invented device, such as we needed in the
case of the motormen, but simply the methods well known as so-called
mental tests.

The experiments with such tests by which single mental functions are
measured approximately in short quick examinations, has been much
discussed in psychological circles. For a long while the thorough
scholars remained very reluctant to accept such an apparently
superficial scheme, when these tests were proposed especially for the
pedagogical interests of the schoolroom. It was a time in which the
scientific efforts were completely devoted to the general problems of
the human mind and in which individual differences were very little
considered. Moreover, the questions of applied psychology still seemed
so far distant that the true scholar instinctively took his standards
from the methods of purely theoretical research. Seen from such a
point of view, it could not be denied that the tests were not
sufficient to give us a complete scientific analysis of the
personality in its subtler structure. The theorists knew too well that