Intelligence and fertility : the effect of the differential birthrate on inborn mental characteristics / by Sir Cyril Burt.

  • Burt, Cyril, 1883-1971.
Date:
1952
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Intelligence and fertility : the effect of the differential birthrate on inborn mental characteristics / by Sir Cyril Burt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE The request for a second edition of this pamphlet has made it possible to correct a few slips and ambiguities in the text and to add a short appendix dealing, so far as space allows, with recent criticisms and further inquiries. A detailed answer to all the objections raised by different critics is scarcely possible here. A few, I hope, will be removed by the corrections made and the footnotes added in the text. A fuller dis¬ cussion of the remaining points will be found in the articles cited in the appendix. The following pages were originally drafted as a memorandum to the Royal Commission on Population; and their main purpose was to urge the need for a succession of psychological surveys to be carried out at appropriate intervals. There now seems considerable reason to hope that this may at length be undertaken. With the aid of grants made by the Eugenics Society and the Nuffield Foundation, the Scottish Council for Research in Education has initiated an inquiry of the kind proposed; and this, it is stated, is to be the first of a series of such surveys. A preliminary account of the results so far obtained has now been published. The investigators are careful to point out that no one associated with the proposal imagined that the survey would give a final answer to the question—is intelligence declining? Nevertheless, several reviewers, particularly in the popular press, have presumed that this was the original intention, and that the 'final answer' is really the exact opposite of what had been expected. Others have contended that, if we admit that the results are inconclusive, this of itself must cast doubt on the value of the original proposal. Accordingly, I have thought it desirable to add a few brief comments dealing both with the methods of the survey and with its results. I should like to thank first the numerous correspondents who have written about the subject of this paper, and secondly the new publishers, Messrs. Cassell & Company, both for suggesting that a fresh edition should be printed and for permitting me to make the additions I have described. c. b. January, 1952 3 «