d is given by the very brightest
children. Most of these are able, when urged, to complete the
definition in a satisfactory manner.

REMARKS. The reader may be surprised that the ability to define common
abstract words should develop so late. Most children who have had
anything like ordinary home or school environment have doubtless heard
all of these words countless times before the age of 12 years.
Nevertheless, the statistics from the test show unmistakably that before
this age such words have but limited and vague meaning. Other vocabulary
studies confirm this fact so completely that we may say there is hardly
any trait in which 12- to 14-year intelligence more uniformly excels
that of the 9- or 10-year level.

This is readily understandable when we consider the nature of abstract
meanings and the intellectual processes by which we arrive at them.
Unlike such words as _tree_, _house_, etc., the ideas they contain are
not the immediate result of perceptual processes, in which even childish
intelligence is adept, but are a refined and secondary product of
relationships between other ideas. They require the logical processes of
comparison, abstraction, and generalization. One cannot see justice, for
example, but one is often confronted with situations in which justice or
injustice is an element; and given a certain degree of abstraction and
generalization, out of such situations the idea of justice will
gradually be evolved.

The formation and use of abstract ideas, of one kind or another,
represent, _par excellence_, the "higher thought processes." It is not
without significance that delinquents who test near the border-line of
mental deficiency show such inferior ability in arriving at correct
generalizations regarding matters of social and moral relationships. We
cannot expect a mind of defective generalizing ability to form very
definite or correct notions about justice, law, fairness, ownership
rights, etc.; and if the ideas themselves are not fairly clear, the
rules of conduct based upon them cannot make a very powerful appeal.[69]

[69] See also p. 298 _ff._

Binet used the words _charity_, _justice_, and _kindness_, and required
two successes. In the 1911 revision he shifted the test from year XI to
year XII, where it more nearly belongs. Goddard also places it in
year XII and uses Binet's words, translating _bonte_, however, as
_goodness_ instead of _kindness_. Kuhlmann retains the test in year XI