Part 9

“Within an hour, on a smaller steamer, we sighted the red brick, yellow shingle, and green slate buildings of a station of the United States Fish Commission. It was because of this station, devoted to everything that affects our fisheries, and of its especial facilities for collecting and preserving marine life, that a group of college scientists established the biological laboratory by its side, some twenty years ago. Their leader was still the director, and although most of the administrative details were now delegated to younger men, he was still regularly in residence, in a cottage erected by his appreciative colleagues to replace one destroyed by fire, and surrounded by hundreds of carefully reared pigeons, which for years he had made the basis of minute studies in heredity, with the aid of two Japanese artists, who painstakingly recorded the contour and coloring of every peculiar bird.

“The slow and careful entrance of the steamer into the landlocked harbor, through passages so tortuous as to make a local pilot often necessary, indicated the peculiar geographical character of the locality. So great has been the sea’s erosion that it is difficult to say whether the rocky shore line most resembled the margin of a cake at which youthful teeth had been at work, or the end of a flag whipped into tatters by the wind. It is this intricate character of the region that makes it the congenial home of many sea creatures elsewhere obtainable only with difficulty.

“Portia met me at the pier, explaining her somewhat tempered summer bloom by the fact that she was spending the sunniest hours of the day indoors in the laboratory. She conducted me through a typical, old-time New England village of perhaps five hundred inhabitants, through streets almost as devious as the waterways, and similarly appropriated by science. Next to the village church, which displayed the usual placard that the ladies of the congregation were about to hold a fair where refreshments and a large assortment of aprons might be had, the village store made the unusual announcement that pure paraffin and proof alcohol were always on hand, and that microscopes with all attachments might be ordered. This emporium was even the subject of a biological joke, which Portia kindly explained to me: ‘Why was Portrope’s shop like an amoeba?’ ‘Because it was a single cell with all the functions.’ This comforted me with the feeling that even if the scientists did take themselves seriously, they yet preserved the saving grace of humor.

“I was led to the most remarkable lodgings that I have ever occupied, kept by a publisher’s reader, who had elected to spend her summer in this way for the sake of variety. I am convinced that she got it, or at any rate, that she gave it. Her furnishings were of the simplest, and the strangest, having been leased from the amoeba at ten per cent of their cost for each month of use--an arrangement which, like the furnishings, would scarcely have been acceptable to any but an imagination that had been subjected to the severest strains.

“The roof also leaked, but in such a desultory fashion that it was about the only thing in the place that impressed me as free from the influence of scientific efficiency. But the house was directly on the harbor, my room overlooking that and the laboratory, which occupied a compound next to the commission. Portia departing to finish a drawing before the bathing hour, I was left to observe with interest, at a window opposite, an assiduous young man intently bent over his work, which, Portia informed me later, was a study of the coagulation of lobster’s blood. Subsequent observation of a few of his neighbors convinced me that at least some of the investigators were not unacquainted with academic leisure. Down by the shore an officer of our regular army nurses was living in a specimen hospital tent, for the purpose of testing the capabilities of its construction, texture, and color for service in the field.

“The taste of the publisher’s reader was equal if not superior to her imagination. If the house reminded me that she was in the habit of receiving many strange things, the food was proof that her standard of acceptance was very high. Steamed clams, real chicken, and delicious vegetables, where they must have been by no means easy to procure; lobster in a chafing-dish, fruit sherbet, and thoroughly sophisticated coffee, formed our Sunday dinner. The conversation was no less interesting, my opposite at table being a distinguished biological painter. It had never previously occurred to me that of course there must be such. Usually busied in evoking the outward form and semblance of prehistoric creatures from their remains in museums, he was here for semi-recreation, painting marine life from the aquaria of the Fish Commission. I was later presented to the object of his current admiration, a creature with the anatomy of a frying-pan and the manners of the Bowery, popularly known as a ‘stingray’ because of a dangerous weapon in its tail. His next sitter was to be a rare specimen of parasite fish, which, although nearly two feet long, was deriving all its locomotion about the tank from a much-embarrassed but helpless shark, to the under side of which it was complacently attached by means of a suction arrangement on the top of its head.

“Portia, like most of the other students, had lodgings in a private house in the village, there being not more than half a dozen cottages exclusively devoted to summer guests. She took her meals at the laboratory mess, where the plain but adequate food was flavored with abundant talk of distribution, variation, regeneration, mutation, and the dynamics of protoplasm. Having once fixed these catchwords in mind, I rapidly acquired the local language, and could shortly ask simple questions without difficulty.

“In addition to the long, low mess hall, the laboratory occupied three other square, two-story buildings of gray shingle, set off by dark green paint. The largest, with several wings, contained class-rooms and laboratories for two of the three regular courses of instruction in physiology, morphology, and embryology. On the upper floor was an excellent technical library with Agassiz’s motto, ‘Study nature, not books.’ Around the sides of both floors and in the other buildings were individual working rooms, in which the more advanced investigators sentenced themselves to solitary confinement during the major part of each day. These rooms and the students’ tables in the several larger rooms were at the disposal of the colleges from whose annual contributions most of the working funds of the laboratory are derived.

“During the six weeks of regular class instruction in July and August, there are two or more public evening lectures each week, in which visiting scholars present the more generally interesting aspects of their special fields of study. I did not share Portia’s enthusiastic anticipation of the coming of a lecturer who had just returned from hunting a particular variety of snail in the South Sea Islands, but the lecture changed my apprehension to appreciation, and, finally, to admiration.

“Other lectures dealt quite as attractively with the development of habits among birds, the detection of the minute organisms that cause many human diseases, the study of heredity in families of rabbits and guinea-pigs, and the creation of new forms of plant life. Every considerable investigation of which I heard had definite relation to some generalization that was capable of practical application--a striking contrast to similar work in certain other sciences.

“Portia’s problem, which I was interested to find important enough to deserve a private room, was the regeneration of planarians, minute marine parasites which have the power, when divided, of developing new heads or tails. Her endeavor was, by means of a microscope, magnifying some twelve hundred times, to observe and trace the earliest differentiation of the cells that were to form the several new organs. Of the hundred or more students in residence, about half of them young women, perhaps one-half were carrying on similar studies, of varying degrees of difficulty. Among these were college professors and instructors who were conducting researches that had extended over many years. The volumes of the laboratory’s monthly publication, containing records of the processes and results of such work, made more than ordinarily interesting reading, even for the layman.

“The recreations of the place were as interesting as its labors. The social life was that of a highly selected college community, where everybody knows everybody else and his wife, and finds them well worth knowing; and everywhere, always, there rose and fell a tide of excellent talk.

“In short, I had so good a time that I visited Portia not three days, but ten, and then departed with a regret that was not dispelled even when she formally approved my conduct by inviting me to come again. She was so smiling and sympathetic at the pier that I found myself asking a question that had repeatedly suggested itself, but which had as often been spontaneously repressed.

“What, if any, was the definite or practical value of her summer’s work, as compared with that which she had previously been doing in the field of domestic science? That, she replied, was for me to determine. Perhaps, when I thought it all over, some such bearing would occur to me. I was afraid that she was going to be disappointed in me, after all, and hastened to change the subject by inquiring why, since the afternoon was so fine, she was wearing her long oilskin coat and sou’wester hat. It was certainly a becoming costume, although it too much concealed her trim figure--her color was now all that could be desired.

“‘Oh, I don’t work in the laboratory all of the time,’ she answered. ‘I--that is, we--are going sailing.’ Just at that moment the importunate mate’s ‘All aboard’ precluded further leave-taking. But as I watched her from the deck of the receding steamer, after a farewell wave of the hand, turn expectantly toward a jaunty sail-boat that was skimming in the direction of the pier under the guidance of one of the younger professors, I began to have glimmerings of at least one answer to my question.”

XVIII

_Measuring the Mind_

When Professor Maturin discovered that his young friend Portia had become a student of psychology, he expressed no surprise, having learned where she was concerned to expect the unexpected. But he did voice his impression that the science was one that had, as yet, but an imperfect appreciation of the feminine mind. “Precisely,” replied Portia; “listen to this,” and opening one of her note-books, she read: “Our modern knowledge of woman represents her as primitive, conservative, nearer the savage than man. She is lighter, weaker, slower, less dexterous, less accurate, less individual. She is more nervous, more emotional, more superstitious, and more often insane. In short, her lack of accomplishment is due not to subjection, but to fundamental inferiority.”

“Now that,” concluded Portia, “was undoubtedly written by a man, and is therefore probably as mistaken as what men have usually written about women in novels and poems. At any rate, I intend to see for myself.” Professor Maturin immediately commended her intention, and subsequently followed her progress with an interest which, after a time, she rewarded by an invitation to visit the laboratory where she was working. It was not long, by the way, before she discovered that, although the particular statements of the German scientist she had quoted were in the main correct, an obsession of the Kaiser’s “church, children, cooking, and clothes” doctrine had made him ignore equally striking facts on the other side. Her other discoveries shall be given in Professor Maturin’s own words. “As we started on our expedition she read me a counter quotation, from an even more famous authority: ‘Woman is more observant, more assimilative, more sympathetic, more intuitional, more aesthetic, and more moral than man. She is more typical of the race and nearer the superman of the future. Man in comparison is senile, if not decadent.’

“My burst of admiration for a science that could solve the same problem in such opposite ways, was checked by Portia’s remarking that she attributed scarcely more importance to the latter than to the former statement. She was quite in accord with the directors of her laboratory, in considering much of what calls itself psychology to be based on philosophic deduction or popular generalization, rather than on scientific observation and experiment. As a matter of fact, scientific psychology, as a development of the present generation, was just beginning to find its accumulated facts sufficient for any generalization. This statement gave me a sense of entering a theatre just as the curtain was going up.

“After a glimpse at the general arrangement of the department’s score or more of rooms, Portia proceeded to lead me systematically through the suite devoted to physiological psychology. Concerning the sense of smell, little seemed to be known, except that it is sufficiently sensitive to detect a thimbleful of odorous gas diffused through a very large room. Not much more is known concerning taste, except that it can be stimulated electrically, as smell cannot be, and that sweet and sour are distinguished chiefly by the tip of the tongue; bitter and salt by the back.

“But discoveries in physics have made possible extensive studies of sound sensation. The average ear has a compass for sounds of from twenty-eight vibrations a second to twenty-two thousand, and can detect differences caused by a variation of sixty. The figures for sight are even more surprising. The sensation of red is caused by rays of light which vibrate from four hundred and forty to four hundred and seventy billion times a second. At this stage of my observations, I abandoned my memory for a pencil and note-book. Increasingly rapid vibrations produce the other colors, up to violet, which is caused by about seven hundred and twenty-two billions.

“It is not surprising, therefore, that the sense of sight displays considerable inertia. It takes a perceptible time for the eye to see what is before it, and its images persist after the object is removed or the eye is closed. Such after-images are at times like the object, but show its complementary color if the sense is fatigued. This last fact is said to be taken advantage of by department-store salesmen, who change fabrics of which their customers are wearied for others complementary in color. Pressure and temperature are felt only at certain spots on the body, very close together, but quite unevenly distributed. The forehead and the back, for example, are more sensitive to cold than to heat. Some spots are sensitive to heat or cold alone, seeming to indicate separate sets of nerves for these sensations.

“The lower limits of any sensation may be determined by gradually diminishing a stimulus until its effect is not noted, or by increasing a smaller stimulus until a sensation is produced. Delicacy of perception is measured by noting the smallest increase or decrease of stimulus needed to produce a change in sensation. Some persons can distinguish, by touch, a difference of half an ounce in a pound weight. Measured by the distance apart at which the points of a divider can be separately felt, the cheek is but half as sensitive as the finger, the finger but half as sensitive as the tongue. Hence, it is probably in order to touch as well as to taste that infants carry everything to the mouth. The direction of sounds is determined by the difference in the relative intensity of the sensation in the two ears; the position of the body, when the eyes are closed, is somehow felt by means of semi-circular canals in the ear. Measured by moving a candle away from an object until its shadow seems the same as that produced by a fixed candle, or by rotating disks bearing black lines on white, the eye can distinguish a difference of one one-hundredth in a quantity of light. Judging distance by sight is said to involve at least ten separate operations of perception and judgment, vision being really mental interpretation, based on association and memory as well as on sensation. Hence, errors in visual perception are so common that painters, sculptors, and architects always take them into account. Estimates of distance with one eye alone are usually inaccurate; vertical seem longer than horizontal distances. The size of small objects and the speed of larger ones are usually underestimated; the speed of small bodies and the size of larger ones, exaggerated. Yet, in judgment of space, sight is more accurate than touch.

“The most interesting rooms of this series were those devoted to measuring the time of nervous and mental processes, by means of complicated and delicate machinery, electrical for the most part, and arranged so as to cause certain sense impressions, and to record the time between these and a response in some form of motion. Each experiment is repeated many times, with the same person, and with many persons, in order to eliminate errors due to inertia of after-impressions, to expectation or practice, to surprise or fatigue. In even so simple a procedure as pressing an electric button with one hand on feeling a touch on the other, nearly a dozen distinct elements were considered--stimulus of the sense organ, conduction through nerve and through brain, reception and transformation of the impulse, reconduction through brain and through nerve, and, finally, muscular action. The speed of nerve transmission being known as from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet a second, it is possible to deduce the approximate rate of mental reception and action. It is not flattering to learn that electricity is about one thousand times as quick. The total reaction from hand to hand occupies from one-tenth to one-fifth of a second; the ear has approximately the same rate of action; the eye is about one-fourth slower. The mind’s interpretation of sensation averages about one-twenty-fifth of a second; its determination to act, a shade less.

“It takes less time to perceive color and form than letters or words, and all of these differ among themselves. The number three seems a sort of natural unit, it being almost as easy to perceive three objects at once, as one; it is much harder to perceive four. The imaginative reproduction of an image requires about one-fourth of a second; the association of abstract ideas, about three times as long--all according to the previous alteration or multiplication of the six hundred million or more brain cells which are the average individual’s stock in trade.

“The numerical records of all such experiments are transformed graphically into diagrams, whose bases represent the number of experiments, and whose heights represent the varying accomplishment. Such surfaces of frequency, as they are called, show at a glance the entire performance of the trait studied, and are therefore much superior to the ordinary method of averages. The intellectual average of a town that contained a university and an insane asylum would be about that of a town that had neither. A diagram, however, would show not only the average, but the much more significant distribution. Attention is also paid to the ‘mode,’ or measure that occurs most frequently, and to the ‘median,’ or record above and below which half of the measurements lie. Then, by calculating the average deviation from the average, and certain similar ratios, it is possible finally to obtain a small group of figures which contain the essence of the entire distribution. This, in turn, makes possible the measurement and the comparison not only of particular mental functions, but of the characteristic ability of individuals and of groups. In this way, for example, it has been found that mental activities vary in much the same manner as do the functions of most of the natural organs that have been measured by biologists, anthropologists, and physicians. In general, two-thirds of all mental performances lie within the middle third of ability. Average efficiency is very near to the most common, and both lie about half-way between the two extremes.

“Perhaps the most striking result of such study is the discovery, by means of a large number of measurements, that mental functions are much more independent of one another than is usually thought, and that a change in one function alters another only so far as the two have identical elements. There is, for example, only a slight correlation between remembering numbers and remembering words, and no perceptible relation between perception of time and perception of rhythm, or between sense perception in general and memory. Judged from the grades given by instructors to several thousand school and college students, the natural sciences are closer to Latin, in the kind of ability they require, than they are to mathematics. Algebra and geometry are almost as different from one another as mathematics in general are from non-mathematical subjects.

“Such facts certainly seemed to warrant the conclusions of the professor to whose guidance Portia now consigned me: ‘The mind is not a functional unit, nor even a collection of general faculties which work irrespective of particular material. It is rather a multitude of separate functions, each closely related to only a few of the others, and to most in so slight a degree as to elude measurement. It is impossible to infer success in one field from success in another, or success in an entire subject from success in a part of it. To estimate the general ability of any individual requires the separate measurement of traits sufficiently numerous and well-chosen to represent fairly all of his capacities. By means of such specific measurements, however, we can determine pretty definitely an individual’s capability for any of the highly specialized activities, such as music or painting.’

“The rooms devoted to the study of genetic psychology, or mental development, contained much interesting data concerning the mental life of children, collected usually through very simple tests, such as estimating the size of geometrical figures, the length of lines, or the duration of sounds; arranging in graduation a series of weights, or the shades of a color; or recalling series of related or unrelated letters or words. While the material thus obtained seems to indicate the existence of certain general laws of mental growth, it is not yet considered sufficient to establish them. The implications are that the masculine mind is slightly more variable, the feminine slightly better in perception; and that the relation between early and later ability is one not of antagonism, but of resemblance.

“I wished that I might linger over the studies of rapidity of movement, tested by tapping; and of precision, tested by drawing lines in a narrow, intricate path, or by tapping in a small circle without touching the sides; and I would gladly have spent a day examining the ingenious contrivances for recording and measuring the attention demanded and the emotions aroused by different sorts of reading. But our time was growing so short that I was hurried on, after only a glimpse at a mass of material that would have delighted or distressed--I had not time to learn which--the heart of a spelling reformer--the records of the spelling of thirty-three thousand children! In this connection the professor remarked that his own experiments had convinced him that good spelling depended not on memory or on observation in general, but upon a certain specific ability to notice small differences in words, by means of sight, hearing, or, in the case of the blind, through touch.