The Measure of Mind

It is a simple proposition: democratic and republican governments function on the principle that all citizens deserve equal treatment. And it is a difficult question to answer: how, then, can such governments justify the inequality that derives from the disparity of intelligence and talents among individuals? In a study that ranges over two centuries and two nations that pioneered in republicanism, and among a great array of theorists and practitioners, John Carson takes up these questions. His work will give any reader much to think about. For indeed, any reflecting citizen must form some conclusions about these matters. Does nature arrange that some individuals or human types are inherently superior to others, or is society or special privilege mostly responsible for these effects? If nature is decisive, how far should a democratic state go in allowing a social elite to exercise power? Does it merit that power? Should the talented have an education different from the rest? And what are talents and intelligence anyway? How do we define and measure them? What understanding of these terms befits a democracy, such that it can properly justify the inequalities that derive from them and prevail in the social order?

At the outset Carson himself seems to endorse some notion of collective intelligence, as his sprawling introduction might suggest. But he has read very widely and his ample endnotes will benefit any persons interested in this subject and peripheral ones. The Measure of Merit is an impressive piece of scholarship. Of course, many studies in intellectual history have tackled this question, mostly by examining political theories and social philosophies.¹ Carson hopes to shed more light by looking at mental philosophers and psychologists among a larger group that has explored the subject of mind and intelligence. Doing so, of course, places great expectations on this group of thinkers, and it is not always the case that they intended their explorations of mind to have social readings or yield political policies. Carson, to his credit, is sensitive to social and political context and relates his subjects to the changing worlds of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. And his study takes on much interest when he does. But sometimes he builds a bridge too easily traversed from the scientific realm to the social.

Carson finds John Locke a useful starting point for his discussion. Indeed, Lockean ideas had considerable influence in both the countries he examines. In France Carson finds Lockean schools of associationists and sensationists, and also the influence of the (partly) Lockean rivals, the Scottish Common Sense philosophers. The author brings under review the French Enlightenment thinkers—Condillac, Condorcet, Helvétius, Rousseau. Together they reflected a concern of their movement, that the ancient regime faced a crisis of legitimacy: the old order could no longer be justified, but how might they reclaim a place for elites within a reformed system? Even with this concern as a background commonality, Carson finds much difference among the philosophes, as here and throughout his study he reads the texts with great sensitivity. Thus, for example, Condorcet may have insisted that all people, even the most savage, are natively equal, and with such confidence, he could call for a comprehensive system of education, available to all, but becoming progressively selective. Such a system would develop the talents of a new elite, trained in the sciences. A more skeptical view came from Voltaire, however: "No one will convince me that all minds are equally suitable to science," he wrote, "and that they differ only in regard to education. Nothing is more false" (p. 25).

Americans also make an appearance in this first chapter. Thomas Jefferson set the terms of discussion for the young republic in articulating his concept of a natural aristocracy and his preference for it. That "natural aristocracy among men," rooted in virtue and talents as opposed to wealth and birth, Jefferson believed, could secure democracy on a safe foundation. John Adams had...