The meritocratic philosophy drew its strength from a cluster of related beliefs, fervently held by almost all these psychologists: their passion for evolutionary theory, their faith in scientific method, their commitment to national efficiency, engineered by scientific selection, social mobility, and eugenic reform, and their support for the expansion of state education and the extension of the social services.

The world view of mental measurement

The psychometrists rested their social arguments on the intellectual foundations of the biological sciences. They habitually interpreted social phenomena through biological categories, more or less ignoring alternative sociological and environmental interpretations. They insisted on regarding the human population as a collection of individuals endowed by nature with differing biological qualities and, for them, the most important and interesting of these qualities was ‘intelligence’. Their professional training tended to emphasise the importance of biology, since psychology was at that time in the process of shaking off its links with philosophy and establishing itself as a reputable science. In so far as they encountered any rigorous intellectual opposition to their interests in the early part of the century, it tended to come from philosophers and metaphysicians rather than from sociologists: Burt's tutor, for example, warned him that it was heresy to experiment on the human soul. They consequently acquired the habit of regarding all opposition to their ‘scientific’ arguments as inspired by political bigotry or religious obscurantism. They derived considerable pleasure from mocking people who were disturbed by the application of scientific theory to the human mind.