STATUS OF FACTORS IN PSYCHOLOGY 7

supposed to be the * primary abilities' that make up the
human mind.1 Other psychologists have gone on to claim
that, not only the intellectual or cognitive aspect, but also
the emotional or conative aspect of the mind can be described
in terms of definable factors.2 This branch of the work has
attracted less attention. Nevertheless, it would clearly be
a mistake to begin by identifying the c factors of the mind/
as Thurstone and Alexander appear to do, exclusively with
cognitive ' abilities.5

The catalogue no doubt is still incomplete ; but, we are
assured, the number of * fundamental traits ? that have
eluded discovery must now be very small. " It seems to be
a fact," says a leading exponent of the Spearman school,
" that there is only a limited number of such fundamental
tendencies in the human being : Spearman has found five
or so ; Thurstone specifies seven ; the Thorndike Unitary
Traits Committee expects to find anything between one and
twenty." And the writer concludes : " the implication is
that these few fundamental factors account for, explain, or
are the cause of, all human conduct " ([96], p. 208).

Still more recently, similar factors have been invoked to
explain the resemblances, not only between test-perform-
ances and temperamental traits, but also between human
individuals—resemblances which tempt us to class them
together in groups under the heading of ' mental types.' 3
As before the factors are deduced from sets of correlation
coefficients or covariances : only now we start by correlat-
ing, not the measurements for two tests, but the measure-
ments for two individuals, taking all possible pairs of persons,
just as previously we took all possible pairs of tests. Unlike
the * trait-factors,5 these tf type-factors,' it is declared, may
be exceedingly numerous. " There are," so we are told,
" only a few fundamental tendencies in the human being,

1 Cf, C. Spearman, he. cit.9 esp. pp. 411 et seq* A clear and convenient
summary of methods and results is to be found in Guilford, Psychometric
Methods, 1936, chap, xiv, esp, pp. 510 et seq.

a The first to be discovered were again the * general' factors—e.g. general
emotionality (Burt, Brit, Ass. Ann. Rep., 1915, pp. 694 et sty.) and a general
moral factor (Webb. Brit. J. Psych. Mon. Supp., 1915), the latter being
subsequently accepted by Spearman (kc. cit., p. 359),

8 Burt, * Correlations between Persons? [101] pp. 59-96.