Balzac Takes the Stanford-Binet IQ Test by Thomas Lisk
"Dr. Bianchon-Binet is measuring the intelligence with amazing
accuracy," the man had said as they sat at dinner. Honoré was
talking on his left with handsome, fortyish Mme. de Greuze, a
misunderstood wife, a type Honoré had practically invented.
The man was on his right. At the mention of intelligence
Honoré 's ears pricked up, but he continued to rest his eyes
on Mme. de Greuze's gold-bedecked and powdered bosom while he
attended to her airy prattle.
"At the Institute of Psychological Studies," said the diner to
his right, evidently answering a question posed by the
interlocutor to his right. Then abruptly he rounded on
Honoré , "Perhaps M. de Balzac should take this test, to see
how effectively it measures genius."
Honoré was still facing Mme. de Greuze, but she batted her
eyes to indicate the man on Honoré 's other side, said,
"Monsieur," and politely shut up. Turning slowly, Honoré (who
had very much enjoyed the 1832 Grenache) stared penetratingly
at the man, who proceeded to explain about this intelligence
test, repeating what Honoré had already overheard. When he
finished, Honoré continued to stare, a slight smile curling
his lips.
"Monsieur," Honoré said after a dramatic pause, "the web of
intelligence -- anyone's intelligence, to say nothing of that
of a man of genius -- is so fine, so delicate, that to measure
it might be to destroy it." He pictured himself as a portly
spider about to net this buzzing fly. "And even if you were to
measure it, what would that tell you about the mystery of its
creation, eh?"
"Pas du tout," the man said. He had a rather greasy-looking
mustache, and a lock of unkempt (and unwashed) hair kept
falling over his brow. "Have you no faith in science,
monsieur? A web can be measured and analyzed so as to increase
our understanding. Why should not the mind be measured too?"
"A web exists in time and space, a mind does not," Honoré
said. "What is intelligence that it can be measured?" he
said, articulating the word measured with measured sarcasm.
"Is it knowledge? If so, I'm afraid I am very ignorant. Is it
memory? Alas, mine is unreliable. Is it wit? You are already
nearly besting me with yours. Is it creativity, sensitivity,
receptivity? Qui sait? But how can any of these delicate
processes, which all take place in here, and here," he said,
tapping his temple and sternum, "how can these be measured by
a machine?"
"Who said anything about a machine?" the man said. "Dr.
Bianchon-Binet simply administers an examination."
"What fun!" Mme. de Greuze said, clapping her hands in such a
way as to conceal momentarily her pearly cleavage. Honoré 's
mother's first child had died three weeks after its birth; she
had been unable to nurse it. Honoré himself had said, "I
never had a mother. I never knew a mother's love." Honoré ,
the second child, had been sent immediately to a wet nurse.
"And what results does this examination produce?" Honoré
demanded.
"A number, Monsieur, simply a number. Dr. Bianchon-Binet says
the intelligence of most of the population is between 90
and 110. A higher number denotes great acuity; a lower,
proximity to imbecility. Dr. Bianchon-Binet tells us that his
researches have revealed that only two or three percent of us
have intelligence numbers greater than 130."
"Three in a hundred," Honoré said, more or less accurately,
though numbers, limited as they are to right and wrong
answers, were not his forte.
"Surely the proportions are much higher in this group," Mme.
de Greuze said. ("Unless you bring down the average," Honoré
thought.) "I wonder what my number would be? Probably not so
high as a hundred."
"What number would a gentle lamb have, who," Honoré said,
politely substituting the lamb for the cow he originally saw
in his mind, "cannot write, or even speak?"
"You must take the examination," the man said, wiping his
mustache with a snowy napkin. His wine glass appeared to have
been untouched. He was speaking either to Honoré or to Mme.
de Greuze. "I would consider it an honor and a pleasure to
arrange it." And the next thing Honoré knew the man had
written Honoré 's address on a calling card, using a gold
mechanical pencil Mme. de Greuze detached from a gold chain
around her neck.
When Monsieur L. Lambert contacted him a week or so later to
arrange the meeting with Bianchon-Binet, Honoré realized what
he had agreed to and was stricken with remorse. But he had to
go ahead with what he had promised. His honor was at stake.
Also, he was un petit peu curieux. What number would they
affix to his intelligence? What was a perfect score? A
hundred? A hundred fifty? Two hundred? A thousand? What had
the fool said about the average? And if he failed to score
perfectly, what difference would it make? Could they measure
his titanic creativity and indomitable will as well? Hah!
Honoré sat back down at the table strewn with the wrappings
of his three breakfast croissandwiches. Sweeping to one side
all but the white bag, which he tore open and flattened, he
took out the cork-stoppered ink pot and raven's quill pen he
carried in his coat pocket, the flexible pen nib protected by
a blackened chamois sheath. His black coat hid a splotch where
a previous ink bottle had leaked. He really preferred writing
in his own study at his own desk, where he routinely spent ten
or twelve hours a day. But when he was forced to be away from
his desk, sometimes ideas came, and he preferred to waste
nothing. He imagined the man he was about to meet.
When Honoré opened the door to the consulting rooms, Dr.
Bianchon-Binet had pince nez firmly pinced on his nez. A
black ribbon connected the spectacles to his lapel buttonhole
just behind the tricolor ribbon of the Légion d'honneur. The
lapel itself was black tightly woven wool bound in the finest
quality grosgrain. Honoré himself had flirted briefly with a
lorgnon, but he looked less like an elegantly bespectacled
auteur than like a butcher in spectacles. The lorgnon
ironically created the illusion of a blood-spattered work coat
in place of Honoré's own brocade waistcoat.
"M. de Balzac," the doctor said, rising from the chair behind
his mahogany desk.
"Dr. Bianchon-Binet," Honoré said. The doctor came around his
desk and the two men shook hands.
"Please sit down," the doctor said, and directed Honoré to a
chair across the desk from his own seat. "I am indebted
to M. Lambert for bringing us together," the doctor said. "It
is a great privilege for me merely to make your acquaintance,
let alone to -- simply that. A great honor and pleasure to
meet you. That you would condescend to participate in the
study, it is but too much."
"It's nothing," Honoré said. Actually it was a very great
deal. Already he had lost a precious hour of writing. Honoré
spent very little time with other people, away from his
writing desk. When he did abdicate his imagination, he
preferred the company of women, motherly women of a certain
age, not unlike Mme. de Greuze. But Honoré was not immune to
male flattery, and listened attentively to the doctor.
"I will take as little of your time as possible," the doctor
said. "The survey itself will occupy an hour or an hour and
fifteen minutes." He looked at Honoré expectantly.
"À votre service," Honoré said.
"Shall we begin, then," the doctor said. "First I will ask you
some questions of fact. Then we will move to the other
portions of the survey. I prefer to call it a survey rather
than a test or an examination. One cannot prepare for this
'test,' which is in effect not a measurement of knowledge but
of ability, not of accomplishment but of capacity." He opened
a desk drawer and took out some papers. Then he removed his
watch from his vest and placed it on the olive green blotter
on his desk. "If you please," he said: "What are the days of
the week?"
A ludicrously easy question, Honoré thought. He felt himself
relax. "Lundi," he began, and zipped through the seven.
"Now backward," the doctor said, and Honoré obliged.
The doctor asked him to name the three graces, the four points
of the compass, the five senses, the six best restaurants in
Paris, and the seven seas. (Six, he reflected, is evidently
not a naturally satisfying number.)
"The Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian, the Arctic, the
Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black and the North," Honoré
concluded with perfect confidence. "How about the seven deadly
sins, the seven days of creation, the seven gifts, the seven
heavens, the seven sacraments, or Christ's last seven
statements from the cross?" he added, feeling the need to
impress the doctor and gain a measure of control.
"That will not be necessary," the doctor said. As Bianchon-
Binet jotted notes, his expression gave away nothing. He was
as hard to read as Honoré 's father and as difficult to please
as his mother, who sent Honoré away to school of the Oratian
Brothers at Vendome at the earliest opportunity, and who never
complimented him, even when he wrote four thick books in eight
months, and more articles, letters and notes than she (or, for
that matter, he) could keep track of. "Count from 1975 to 2050
for me," the doctor said.
"Certainly," Honoré said. When he finished, the doctor said,
"Now backward." Fighting the impulse to stand up dos à vis
to Bianchon-Binet, Honoré reeled off the numbers in reverse
order and without pause, thinking as he ticked off the
numbers, "By the end of the next century my genius will be
recognized, my masterwork complete, my fame secure."
After perhaps ten minutes of numerical questions involving
cardinal and ordinal numbers, and the basic arithmetical
skills, the doctor took out several pages and handed them to
Honoré . Relieved that the mathematical portion of the
examination had not been difficult, Honoré sighed.
"Beginning with sheet number one," the doctor said, "please
tell me what is missing from each of the pictures."
"A doorknob," Honoré said unhesitatingly of the first
picture. And the others: a strap from the horse's bridle, a
leg from the low table in the background, a pair of spokes
from the wheels of the charabanc on the left -- all as easy
as pie. If this was a test of his observational powers, Honoré
concluded he was succeeding brilliantly.
The doctor gave him more pages, each one containing a drawing
of an unusual machine. "You need not identify the apparatus
in the drawing," the doctor said. "Indeed, it would be
impossible. Your task is but to tell what is missing from each
machine."
"Ah," Honoré said. "At last, a real task." He wished he
could have a cup of coffee as he settled to the work. He had
a slight headache, and the bacon from his croissandwich had
risen once or twice to his palate. Coffee often helped his
headaches.
In the first picture he saw cogwheels, pulleys and straps in a
box. "Whatever this machine is intended to do, obviously
unless the cogwheels are engaged, it will not work," Honoré
said to himself. What was this box of wheels intended to be?
"A picture of the brain as the good doctor imagines it,"
Honoré thought with some mirth. "If my brain looks like that,
no wonder I have the headache." It struck him that, removed
from its box and with minor modifications, this machine would
be the very thing to transport the silver ore from his
Sardinian mines. Incurring another massive debt, he had bought
the mines in expectation of gaining une fortune rapide by
using modern methods to extract the silver the Romans, with
their relatively primitive mining techniques, had abandoned.
"M. Balzac?" the doctor said. "Your answer?"
"Dr. Bianchon-Binet, may I respectfully request the privilege
of making a copy of this drawing after I have completed your
examination?"
"Yes, monsieur. But the survey. What is missing from the
picture?"
But, having put the silver-mining machine aside, Honoré was
looking at the next picture. The problem with this one was
clearly a missing axle. Tumbrils rolled in his imagination.
He had written about the Napoleonic wars and their effects,
and all that was the result of the inexhaustible subject, the
Revolution, in which his own father, who was fifty when
Honoré was born in 1799, had played an important role.
Though a royalist and by nature an outspoken man, he had made
his fortune during the Revolution and its Napoleonic
aftermath. Like his father, Honoré loved aristocrats. How
to do justice to the old man? That was a good question.
Honoré fumbled in his coat for his raven's quill and,
oblivious to Dr. Bianchon-Binet, turned over the sheet on
which the drawing appeared, reached for the ink pot on the
doctor's desk, and began writing.
"Mais M. Balzac, que faites-vous?" the doctor said. "Have
your forgotten the question?"
"Ah, eh? A thousand pardons, doctor," Honoré said. "I
forgot myself for a moment. Please forgive me."
Eyeing the precious drawings of imaginary machines, one of
which Honoré had set aside and another of which was spoiled
by Honoré 's messy handwriting on the back, the doctor said,
"If you will be so kind as to hand me those drawings, we will
move on to the next part of the survey."
Having taken possession of the drawings, the doctor brought
forth a box of brightly colored flat wooden blocks and cleared
a space on his desk between Honoré and him. "Please put away
your pen, monsieur. For this part of the survey you will
need only your eyes and your memory. I have here two
identical sets of blocks in geometrical shapes. I will arrange
one set of these blocks in a pattern. In the first phase I
will leave the arrangement in place where you see it, and ask
you to arrange the second set of blocks in front of you into a
pattern corresponding to the one I have arranged. Is that
clear?"
"Absolutely."
"In the second phase I will ask you to study the arrangement
for thirty seconds. At the end of the thirty seconds I will
disarrange the pattern and ask you to recreate it from memory,
using your set of blocks."
"A game of concentration, eh?" Honoré said, but the doctor
did not respond. He was busy arranging his blocks.
Phase one was easy enough. Any idiot could duplicate a
pattern he had before him. The doctor put a triangular piece
together with a trapezoid, a narrow rectangle and a disk in
such a way that Honoré was reminded of the wooden galleries
of the Palais Royal, all glass and geometric shapes. Honoré
quickly duplicated the pattern of blocks. When he was
finished and leaned back in his chair, Bianchon-Binet arranged
the blocks in a new pattern, without praising Honoré for the
quickness with which he had imitated the first pattern, indeed
without showing Honoré any expression whatsoever.
"What does he think of me?" Honoré wondered. "He is clearly
a brilliant man himself to have conceived of such a test. I
would value his good opinion. But his intelligence is of a
different order from mine. He focuses on facts and has no room
for imagination. I must will myself to concentrate so
completely on this examination that I will earn an excellent
score."
But a dozen questions bedeviled him: What was this block game
supposed to show about his intelligence? How would a number
result from this examination? How can intelligence be
separated from knowledge and imagination? One would have to
know something of machines to analyze even an imaginary
machine. And clearly Bianchon-Binet had used his imagination
when he devised the test. Was this a cat and mouse game the
doctor was playing with him?
The doctor appeared to be forty-five or fifty, trim and
presentable, but certainly looking no younger than his years.
What role had the doctor's family played in the Revolution?
Had his father made himself a fortune by hard work and will
power, as Honoré's had? Why does one man become a successful
physician and another a novelist? Honoré himself had become
a novelist for two reasons: he wanted to make a great deal of
money, and he could work at his writing with a minimal outlay
of capital. The creation of novels gave his imagination free
play and allowed him to use his will without relying on anyone
else. He could force himself to rise at midnight after four
or five hours sleep, write until midday and spend the
afternoon on his correspondence and business affairs. How
would this examination measure the power of his will, the
panorama of his imagination. Was not the entire Comédie
humaine to be a more accurate and astonishing measure of all
Honoré's capacities?
"Monsieur," the doctor said. "I fear I have lost you again."
"Not at all," Honoré said. "I am at your service -- I and my
will and imagination and intelligence."
"Now we will deal with similarities," the doctor said. "This
part of the survey asks you to recognize the accuracy of
comparisons. For example, 'oak' is to 'tree' as 'poodle' is
to 'dog.'" German pudelhunds had recently become popular in
Paris. Honoré had considered securing one for himself, but he
had decided it would be too much trouble, like caring for a
child, eh? "This you will do by marking the lettered item
which best corresponds with the example." He handed Honoré
three or four pages.
"Analogies," Honoré said. He pushed back a greasy lock of
hair and looked at the first question: Roof is to building as
head is to (a. tail, b. foot, c. body, d. hat). C. "body" was
obviously the correct answer. "Bianchon-Binet is to
intelligence as a poodle is to an arbor," he thought, trying
to invent a nonsensical analogy. But the more he thought about
it, the more he liked the analogy. Just as a dog might seek
shade under an arbor intertwined with grapevines, so Bianchon-
Binet rested comfortably under Honoré
Petite (5 feet 2 inches) and rotund (180 pounds), but larger-than-life,
Honoré drew himself another cup of coffee from the
samovar at McDonald's. Fuelling himself for marathon writing
sessions in his rooms upstairs at rue Cassini, some days he
drank twenty cups of his own brew -- Bourbon, Martinique and
Mocha coffees, a recipe he thought of selling to the fast food
chain, which produced burgers the way Honoré produced novels.
Coffee put his stomach in knots these days, but that was
another story he didn't have time for now. This day he was
out and about, on his way to the Institut des E'tudes
Psychologiques because a man he had met at a gathering
arranged by Mme. Delphine Gay and her daughter had convinced
him to take a test that would measure his intelligence. Well
along in the evening, after at least his share of the several
bottles of wine served with the meal, Honoré agreed. This
man's face was hazy in Honoré 's memory, and he couldn't quite
recall the name. But what did it matter? If he needed to use
the man in one of his fictions, Honoré could invent a new
face and name as quick as snapping his fingers.
When Monsieur L. Lambert contacted him a week or so later
to arrange the meeting with Bianchon-Binet, Honoré realized what he had
agreed to and was stricken with remorse. But he had to go ahead with
what he had promised. His honor was at stake.