he protest of the critical faculty. The latter,
indeed, is only a name for the tendency of intellectually irreconcilable
elements to clash. If there is no clash, if the elements remain apart,
it goes without saying that there will be no power of criticism.

The critical faculty begins its development in the early years and
strengthens _pari passu_ with the growing wealth of inter-associations
among ideas; but in the average child it is not until the age of about
10 years that it becomes equal to tasks like those presented in this
test. Eight-year intelligence hardly ever scores more than two or three
correct answers out of five. By 12, the critical ability has so far
developed that the test is nearly always passed. It is an invaluable
test for the higher grades of mental deficiency.

As a test of the critical powers Binet first used "trap questions"; as,
for example, "Is snow red or black?" The results were disappointing, for
it was found that owing to timidity, deference, and suggestibility
normal children often failed on such questions. Deference is more marked
in normal than in feeble-minded children, and it is because of the
influence of this trait that it is necessary always to forewarn the
subject that the sentence to be given contains nonsense.

Binet located the test in year XI of the 1908 scale, but changed it to
year X in 1911. Goddard and Kuhlmann retain it in year XI. The large
majority of the statistics, including those of Goddard and Kuhlmann,
warrant the location of the test in year X. Not all have used the same
absurdities, and these have not been worded uniformly. Most have
required three successes out of five, but Bobertag and Kuhlmann require
three out of four; Bobertag's procedure is also different in that he
does not forewarn the child that an absurdity is to follow.

The present form of the test is the result of three successive
refinements. It will be noted that we have made two substitutions in
Binet's list of absurdities. Those omitted from the original scale are:
"_I have three brothers--Paul, Ernest, and myself_," and, "_If I were
going to commit suicide I would not choose Friday, because Friday is an
unlucky day and would bring me misfortune._" The last has a puzzling
feature which makes it much too hard for year X, and the other is
objectionable with children who are accustomed to hear a foreign
language in which the form of expression used in the absurdity is
idiomatically correct.

Th