 Enquiries into human faculties in its development by Francis Galton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in a public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Preface to the second edition After some years had passed subsequent to the publication of this book in 1883, its publishers, Messrs McMillan informed me that the demand for it just, but only just warranted, a revised issue. I shrank from the great trouble of bringing it up to date because it, or rather many of my memoirs, heard of which it was built up, had become starting points for elaborate investigations both in England and in America, to which it would be difficult and very laborious to do justice in a brief compass. So the question of a second edition was then entirely dropped. Since that time the book has by no means ceased to live, for it continues to be quoted from and sought for, but it is obtainable only with difficulty and not much more than its original cost at sales of second hand books. Moreover it became the starting point of that recent movement in favour of the National Eugenics, C-note page 24 in the first edition, which is recognised by the University of London and has its home in University College. Having received a proposal to republish the book in its present convenient and expensive form, I gladly accepted it. Having first sought and received an obliging assurance from Miserys McMillan that they would waive all their claims to the country in my favour. The following small changes are made in this edition. The illustrations are for the most part reduced in size to suit the small form of the volume. The lettering of the composites is rearranged and the coloured illustration is reproduced as closely as circumstances permit. Two chapters are admitted on Theocratic Intervention and on the objective efficiency of prayer. The earlier part of the letter was too much abbreviated from the original memoir in the fortnightly review 1872. It gives, as I now perceive, a somewhat inexact impression of its object which was to investigate certain views then thought orthodox, but which are growing obsolete. I could not reinsert these emissions now with advantage unless considerable additions were made to the references, thus giving more appearance of personal controversy to the memoirs than is desirable. After all, the emission of the two chapters in which I find nothing to recant improves, as I am told the general balance of the book. Francis Galton End of Preface Section 1 of Inquiry into Human Faculty and its Development by Francis Galton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on the volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Leon Harvey Chapter 1 Introduction Since the publication of my work on Hereditary Genius in 1869, I have written numerous memoirs of which a list is given in an earlier page and which are scattered in various publications. They may have appeared desolatory when read in the order in which they appeared, but as they had an underlying connection it seems worthwhile to bring their substance together in logical sequence into a single volume. I have revised, condensed, largely rewritten, transposed old matter and interpolated much that is new, but traces of the fragmentary origin of the work still remain, and I do not regret them. They serve to show that the book is intended to be suggestive and renounces all clan to be encyclopedic. I have indeed, with that object, avoided going into details in not a few cases where I should otherwise have written with fullness, especially in the anthropometric part. My general object has been to take note of the varied hereditary faculties of different men, and of the great differences in different families and races to learn how far history may have shown the predictability of supplanting inefficient human stock by better strains and to consider whether it might not be our duty to do so by such efforts as may be reasonable. Thus exerting ourselves to further the ends of evolution more rapidly and with less distress than if events were left to their own course. The subject is, however, so entangled with collateral considerations that a straightforward step-by-step inquiry did not seem to be the most suitable course. I thought it safer to proceed like the survey of a new country, and endeavour to fix in the first instance as truly as I could the position of several cardinal points. The general outline of the results to which I have finally arrived became more coherent and clear as this process went on. They are briefly summarised in the concluding chapter. We must free our minds of a great deal of pledges before we can rightly judge of the direction in which different races need to be improved. We must be on our guard against taking our own instincts of what is best and most seemingly as a criterion for the rest of mankind. The instincts and faculties of different men and races differ in a variety of ways almost as profoundly as those of animals in different cages of the zoological gardens, and whoever diverse and antagonistic they are, each may be good of its kind. It is obviously so in brutes. The monkey may have a horror at the sight of a snake, and a repungence to its ways, but a snake is just as perfect an animal as a monkey. The living world does not consist of a repetition of similar elements, but of an endless variety of them that have grown body and soul through selective influences into close adaptation to their contemporaries and to the physical circumstances of the faculties they inhabit. The moral and intellectual wealth of a nation largely consists in the multifarious variety of the gifts of the men who compose it, and it would be the very reverse of improvement to make all its members assimilate to a common type. However, in every race of domesticated animals and especially in the rapidly changing race of men, there are elements, some ancestral, and others the result of degradation, the result of degeneration, that have little or no value or are positively harmful. We may of course be mistaken about some few of these and shall find in our fuller knowledge that they observe the public good in some indirect manner, but notwithstanding this possibility, we are justified in roundly asserting that the natural characteristics of every human race are met of large improvement in many directions easy to specify. I do not however offer a list of these but shall confine myself to directing attention to a very few hereditary characteristics of a marked kind, some of which are most desirable and others greatly in reverse. I shall also describe new methods of appraising and defining them. Later on in the book I shall endeavour to define the place and duty of man in the furtherance of the great scheme of evolution and I shall show that he has already not only adapted circumstances to race but also in some degree and often unconsciously raced to circumstance and that his unused powers and the letter direction are more considerable than might have been thought. It is with the innate moral intellectual faculties that the book is chiefly concerned but they are so closely bound up with the physical ones that these must be considered as well. It is more over convenient to take them so I will begin with the features. The differences in human features must be reckoned great in as much as they enable us to distinguish a single known face among those of thousands of strangers though they are mostly too minute for measurement. At the same time they are exceedingly numerous the general expression of a face is the sum of a multitude of small details which are viewed in such rapid succession that we seem to perceive them all at a single glance. If any one of them disagrees with the recollected traits of a known face the eye is quick at observing it and it dwells upon the difference. One small discordant sort ways a multitude of similarities and suggests a general unlikeness just as a single syllable in a sentence pronounced with a foreign accent makes one cease to look upon the speaker as a countryman. If the first rough sketch of a portrait be correct so far as it goes it may be pronounced an excellent likeness but a rough sketch does not go far. It contains but few traits for comparison with the original. It is a suggestion not a likeness it must be coloured and shaded with many touches before it can really resemble the face and whilst this is being done the maintenance of a likeness is imperiled at every step. I lately watched an able artist painting a portrait and endeavoured to estimate the number of strokes with his brush, every one of which was thoughtfully and firmly given during 15 settings of 3 working hours each. There is to say during 45 hours or 2400 minutes he worked an average rate of 10 strokes of the brush per minute. There were therefore 24000 separate traits in the completed portrait and in his opinion some I do not say equal but a comparably large number of units of resemblance with the original. The physiological difference between different men being so numerous and small it is impossible to measure and compare them each to each and to discover by ordinary statistical methods the true physiognomy of a race. The usual way is to select individuals who were judged to be representatives of the prevalent type and to photograph them but this method is not trustworthy because the judgment itself is fallacious. It is swayed by exceptional and grotesque features more than by ordinary ones and the portraits are supposed to be typical and likely to be caricatures. One fine Sunday afternoon I sat with a friend by the walk in Kensington Gardens that leads to the bridge and which on such occasions is thronged by promenaders. It was agreed between us that whichever first court side of a typical John Bull should call the attention of the other. We sat and watched Kingly for many minutes but neither was found occasion to utter a word. The prevalent type of English face has greatly changed at different periods. For after making large allowances for the fashion in portrait painting of the day there remains a great difference between the proportion in which certain cast of features are to be met with at different dates. I have spent some time in studying the photographs of the various portraits of English worthies that have been exhibited at successive loaner collections or which are now in the National Portrait Gallery and have traced what appear to be the indisputable signs of one predominant type of face sub-planting another. For instance the features of the men painted by and about the time of Holbein have usually high cheekbones, long upper lips, thin eyebrows and length dark hair. It would be impossible I think for the majority of modern Englishmen so to dress themselves and clip and arrange their hair as to look like the majority of these portraits. Englishmen are now a fair and British race as may be seen from the diagram taken from the report of the Anthropometric Committee to the British Association in 1880 and which gives a proportion in which the various colours of hair are found among our professional classes. The diagrams displayed on the page with a list of albino, very fair, fair, light brown, brown, dark brown, black brown, black, red brown, dark red, red and golden, light red. I take the professional classes because they correspond with the class of English Worthies better than any of the others from which returns have been collected. The diagram I work gives the fair representation of other classes of the community. For instance, I've analysed the official records of the very carefully selected crews to the HMS Alert and Discovery in the Arctic Expedition of 1875-6 and find the proportion of various shades of hair to be the same among them as is shown in the diagram. Seven tenths of the crews have complexions described as light, fair, fresh, ready or freckled and the same proportion had blue or grey eyes. They would have contrasted strongly with Cromwell's regiment of iron size who were recruited from the dark-eyed men of the Fen Districts and who are said to have left the impression on contemporary observers as men of a particular breed. They would also probably have contrasted with the body of thorough-going Puritan soldiers taken at haphazard, for there is profanence of dark hair among men of a Trabilius and sour temperament. If we may believe caricaturists, the fleshness and obesity of many Englishmen and women in the early years of this century must have been prodigious. It testifies to the growth conditions of life in those days and makes it improbable that the types best adapted to prevail then would be the best adapted to prevail now. Chapter 4 Composite Portraitor As a means of getting over the difficulty of procuring really representative faces, I can try the method of composite portraitor, which has been explained of late on many occasions, and of which a full account will be found in Appendix A. The principle on which the composites are made will best be understood by a description of my earlier and now-discard method. It was this. One. The photographic portraits of different persons, all of whom had been photographed in the same aspect, say full face, and under the same conditions of light and shade, say with light coming from the right side. Two. I reduced their portraits photographically to the same size, being guided as to scale by the distance between any two convenient points of reference in the features. For example, by the vertical distance between two parallel lines, one of which pass through the middle of the pupils of the eyes and the other between the lips. Three. I superimposed the portraits like the successive leaves of a book, so that the features of each portrait lay as exactly as the case admitted in front of those of the one behind it, eye in front of eye and mouth in front of mouth. This I did by holding them successfully to the light and adjusting them, then by fastening each to the preceding one by a strip of gum and paper along one of the edges. Thus I obtained a book, each page to which contained a separate portrait, and all the portraits lay exactly in front of one another. Four. Fasten the book against the wall in such a way that I could turn over the pages in succession, leaving in turn each portrait flat and fully exposed. Five. I focused my camera on the book, fixed it firmly, and put a sensitive plate inside it. Six. I began photographing, taking one page after the other in succession without moving the camera, but putting on the cap Wilstyfe was turning over the pages so that an image of each of the portraits in succession was thrown on the same part of the sensitive plate. Only a fraction of the exposure required to make a good picture was allowed to each portrait. Suppose their period was 20 seconds, and that there were 10 portraits, then exposure of two seconds would be allowed for each portrait, making 20 seconds normal. This is the principle of the process, the details of that which I now use are different and complex. They are fully explained in the works for the use of those who may care to know about them. The effect of composite portraiture is to bring into evidence all the traits in which there is agreement, and to leave by the ghost of a trace of individual peculiarities. There are so many traits in common in all faces that the composite picture when made from many components is far from being a blur, and is altogether the look of an ideal composition. It may be worth mentioning that when I take any small bundle of portraits selected by hazard, I have generally found it easy to sort them into five groups, four of which have enough resemblance among them to make as many fairly clear composites, while the fifth consists of faces that are too incrogious to be grouped into single class. In dealing with portraits of brothers and sisters, I can generally throw most of them into a single group of success. In the small collection of composites given in the plate facing page 8, I have purposely selected many of them that I have previously published, and whose originals, on a larger scale, I have at various times exhibited to gather with their components in order to put the genuineness of the results beyond doubt. Those who see them for the first time can hardly believe that one dominant face has overpowered the rest, and that they are composites only in name. When however the details are examined, this objection disappears. It is true that with careless photography, one face may be allowed to dominate, but with the care that ought to be taken and with the pleasures described in the appendix, that does not occur. I have often been amused when showing composites and their components to friends to hear a strong expression of opinion that the predominance of one face was evidence, and then on asking which face it was to discover that they disagreed. I have even known a composite in which one portrait seemed unduly to prevail to be remade without the component in question, and the results to be much the same as before, showing that the reason of the resemblance was that the rejected portrait had a close approximation to the ideal average picture of the rest. These small composites give a better notion of the utmost capacity of the process, and the larger ones, from which they are reduced. In the latter, the ghosts of individual peculiarities are more visible, and usually the equal traces left by every member of a moderately sized group can be made out by careful inspection. But it is hardly possible to do this in the pictures in the plate, except in a good light and in very few of the cases. On the other hand, the larger pictures do not contain more detail or value than the smaller ones. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Description of the composites The medallion of Alexander the Great was made by combining the images of six different metals with the view of obtaining the type of features that the makers of those metals concurred in desiring to ascribe to him. The originals were kindly selected for me by Mr. R. Stuart Poole from the Collection in the British Museum. This composite was one of the first I ever made, and is printed together with its six components in the Journal of the Royal Institution in Illustration of a Lecture I gave there in April 1879. It seems to me that it is possible on this principle to obtain a truer likeness of a man than in any other way. Every artist makes mistakes, but by combining the conscientious work of many artists, their separate mistakes disappear, and what is common to all their works remains. So as regards different photographs of the same person whose accidental momentary expressions are got rid of, which an ordinary photograph made by a brief exposure cannot help recording. On the other hand, any happy, sudden trait of expression is lost. The composite gives the features in repose. The next pair of composites, full face and profile on a plate, has not been published before. The interest of the pair lies chiefly in their having been made from only two components, and they show how curiously even two faces that have a moderate family likeness will blend into a single one. Then neither of these predominated in the present case will be learned from the following letter by the father of the ladies, who is himself a photographer. I am exceedingly obliged for the very curious and interesting composite portraits of my two children. Knowing the faces so well, it caused me quite a surprise when I opened your letter. I put one of the full faces on the table for the mother to pick up casually. She said, When did you do this portrait of A? How like she is to be, or is it B? I never thought they were so like before. It has puzzled several people to say whether the profile was intended for A or B. Then I tried one of them on a friend who has not seen the girls for years. He said, Well, it is one of the family for certain, but I don't know which. The table is displayed on the previous page titled, Specimens of Composite Portraiture divided into three sections. The personal and family health, disease, criminality, consumption and other maladies. I have made several other family portraits, which to my eye seem great successes, but must candidly own that the persons whose portraits are blended together seldom seem to care much for the result, except as a curiosity. We are all inclined to a pseudo-individuality and to stand on our own basis and to object to being mixed up indiscriminately with others. The same feeling finds expressions when the resident in a suburban street insists on calling his house a villa with some fantastic name and refuses so long as he can to call simply numbers so and so in the street. The last picture in the upper row shows the easy way in which young and old male and female combined a form and affected picture. The components consist in this case of the father and mother, two sons and two daughters. I exhibited the original of this together with the portraits from which it was taken at the Lone Photographic Exhibition at the Society of Arts in February 1882. I also sent copies of the original of this same composite to several amateur photographers with a circular letter asking them to get from me family groups for the purpose of experiments and to see how far the process was suitable for family portraiture. The middle row of portraits illustrates health, disease and criminality. For health I have attained the portraits of 12 officers of the Royal Engineers with about an equal number of privates which were taken by me by Lieutenant Darwin R.E. The individuals from whom this composite was made, which has not come out as clearly as I should have liked, differed considerably in feature and they came from various parts of England. The points they had in common were the bodily and mental qualifications required for a mission into select corps and their generally British descent. The result is a composite having an expression of considerable vigor, resolution, intelligence and frankness. I have exhibited both this and others that were made respectfully from the officers from the whole collection of privates, 36 in number and from that selected portion of them that is utilised in the present instance. This face and the quality it connotes probably gives a clue to the direction in which the stock of the English race might most easily be improved. It is the essential notion of a race that there should be some ideal typical form on which the individuals may deviate in all directions, but about which they chiefly cluster and towards which their descendants will continue to cluster. The easiest direction in which a race can be improved is towards that central type, because nothing new has to be sought out. It is only necessary to encourage as far as practical the breed of those who can form most nearly to the central type and to restrain as far as maybe the breed of those who deviate widely from it. Now there can hardly be a more appropriate method of discovering the central, physiogenomical type of any race or group than that of composite portraiture. As a contrast to the composite of the Royal Engineers, I give those of two of the course low types of face found among the criminal cases. The photographs on which they were made are taken from two large groups. One are those of men undergoing severe sentences for murder and other crimes connected with violence, the other of thieves. They were reprints from those taken by order of the prison authorities for purposes of identification. I was allowed to obtain copies for use in my inquiries by the kind permission of Sir Edmund Ducane, H.M. Director of Prisons. The originals of these and their components have frequently been exhibited. It is unhappily a fact that fairly distinct types of criminals breeding true to their kind have been established and are one of the saddest disfigurements of modern civilization to this subject I shall occur. I have made numerous composites of various groups of convicts which are interesting negatively rather than positively. They produce faces of a main description with no villainy written on them. The individual faces are villainous enough but they are villainous in different ways and when they are combined the individual peculiarities disappear and the common humanity of a low type is all that is left. The remaining portraits are illustrations of the application of the process to the study of the physiognomy of disease. They were published a year ago with many others together with several portraits from which they were derived. In a joint memory by Dr. Mohd and myself in volume 25 of the guy's hospital reports. The originals and all the components have been exhibited on several occasions. In the lower division of the plate will be found three composites. Each made from a large number of faces, unslected except on the ground of the disease under which they were suffering. When only few portraits are used there must be some moderate resemblance between them or the result will be blurred but here dealing with as many as 56 150 cases respectively the combination of any medley group results in an ideal expression. It will be observed that the composite of 56 female faces is made by the blending of two other composites both of which are given. The history was this. I took the 56 portraits and sorted them into two groups. In the first of these were 20 portraits that showed a Tennessee to thin features and the other group there were 36 that showed a Tennessee to thickened features. I made the composites of each of them as shown in the plate. Now it will be remarked that notwithstanding the attempt to make two contrasting groups the number of mediocre cases were so great that the composites of the two groups are much alike. If I had divided 56 and the two have hazard groups the results would have been closely alike. As I know from a bundle experience of the kind the co-composite of the two will be observed to have an intermediate expression. The test and measure of statistical truth lies in the degree of recordings between results obtained from different factors of instances of the same generic class. It will be gathered from these instances that composite portraiture may attain statistical constancy within them it's not easily distinguished by the eye after some 30 haphazard portraits of the same class have been combined. This at least has been my experience thus far. The two faces illustrative of the same type of tubercular disease are very striking. The uppermost is photographically interesting as a case of predominance of one peculiarity. Happily of no harm to the effect of the ideal wan face it is that one of the patients had a sharply checked black and white scarf whose pattern has asserted itself unduly in the composite. In such cases I ought to throw the two clearly defined picture a little out of focus. The way in which the variant brightness of different pictures is reduced to a uniform standard of illumination described in the appendix. It must be clearly understood that these portraits do not profess to give the whole story of the physiognomy of Phithesis. I have not room to give illustrations of other types namely that with coarse and blunted features or the stroomest one nor any of the intermediates. These have been discussed chiefly by Dr. Mahond in the memoir alluded to above. In the large experience I have had of sorting photographs, literally by the thousand while making experiments with composites, I have been struck by certain general impressions. The consumptive patients consisted of many hundred cases including a considerable proportion of very ignoble specimens of humanity. Some were scoffulous image-shaven or southern from various loathsome forms of inherited disease most were ill nourished. Nevertheless, as studying their portraits the pathetic interest prevailed. And I returned day after day to my titty's work of classification with a liking for my materials. It was quite otherwise with the criminals. I did not adequately appreciate the degradation of their expressions for some time. At last a sense of it took firm hold of me and I cannot now handle the portraits without overcoming by an effort to the aversion they suggest. I am sure that the method of composite portraiture opens a fertile field of research to ethnologists but I find it very difficult to do much single handed on account of the difficulty of obtaining the necessary materials. As a rule the individuals must be especially photographed. The portraits made by artists are taken in every conceivable aspect and variety of light and shade. But with the purpose in question, the aspect in the shade must be the same throughout. Group portraits would do the work wrong, where it not put the strong out of the door light under which they are necessarily taken which gives an unwanted effect to the expression of the faces. Their scale also is too small to give a sufficiently clear picture when enlarged. I may say that the scale of the portraits need to be uniform. As my apparatus enlarges or reduces as required has the same time that it superposes the images. But the portraits of the heads should never be less than twice the size of that of the queen on a half penny piece. I hardly wish that amateur photographers would seriously take up the subject of composite portraiture as applied to different subtypes of the varying races of men. I have already given more time to perfecting the process and experimenting with it than I can well spare. The portraits of anthropometry are easily dealt with and are becoming widely registered in many countries. We are unfortunately destitute of trustworthy measurements of Englishmen of past generations to enable us to compare class with class and to learn how far the several sections of the English nation may be improving or deteriorating. We shall, however, hand useful information concerning our own times to our successors. Thanks principally to the exertions of the anthropometric committee established five years ago by the British Association who have collected and partially classified and published a large amount of facts besides having induced several institutions such as Malibu Row College to undertake a regular system of anthropometric record. I am not, however, concerned here with the labors of this committee nor with the separate valuable publications of some of its members. Otherwise, then in one small particular which appears to show that the English population is a whole or perhaps I should say the urban portion of it is in some sense deteriorating. It is that the average stature of the older persons measured by or for the committee have not been found to decrease steadily with their age but sometimes in reverse. This contradicts observations made on the heights of the same men at different periods whose stature, after middle age, is invariably reduced by the shrinking of the cartilages. The explanation offered was that the statistical increase of stature with age should be ascribed to the survival of the more stalwart. On reconsideration I am inclined to doubt the adequacy of the explanation and partially to account for the fact by a steady, slight deterioration of stature in successive years in the urban population or into the conditions of their lives and in the rural population or into continual draining away of the more stalwart of them to the towns. It cannot be doubted that town life is harmful to the town population. I have myself investigated its effect on fertility, Sea of Penix B, have found that taking on the one hand a number of rural parishes and the other hand the inhabitants of the medium town, the former reared nearly twice as many adult grandchildren as the latter. The vital functions are so closely related that an inferiority in the production of healthy children very probably implies a loss of eco-generally, one sign of which is a denunation of stature. Though the bulk of the population may deteriorate, there are many signs that the better house and a fed portion of it improves. In the early years of this century the so-called manly sports of boxing and other fetus strength ranked high among the national amusements. A man who was successful in these became the hero of a large and demonstrative circle of admirers and it is to be presumed that the best boxer, the best pedestrian and so forth was the best adapted to succeed through his natural physical gifts. If he was not the most gifted man in those respects in the whole kingdom, he was certainly one of the most gifted of them. Therefore does no injustice to the men of that generation to compare the feats of their foremost athletes with those of ours who occupy themselves in the same way. The comparison would probably err in their favor because the interests in the particular feats in which our grandfathers and great-grandfathers delighted are not these that chiefly interest the present generation and are notwithstanding our increased population. There are fewer men now who attempt them. In the beginning of this century there were many famous walking matches and incomparably the best walker was Captain Baroclay of Uri. His paramount feat, which was once very familiar to the elderly men at the present time was that of walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, but of late years that feat has been frequently equal to an overpassed. I am willing to allow much influence to the modern conditions of walking on a shelter and subject to improved methods of training. Captain Baroclay himself originated the first method which has been greatly improved since his time. Still the fat remains that in executing this particular feat the athletes of the present day are more successful than those who lived some 80 years ago. I may be permitted to give an example bearing on the increased stature of the better house and fed portion of the nation. In a recollection of my own as to the difference in height between myself and my fellow collegeans at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1840 to 4. My height is 5 feet 91 inches and I recollect perfectly that among the crowd of undergraduates I stood somewhat taller than the majority. I generally looked a little downward when I met their eyes. In later years whenever I have visited Cambridge I have lingered in the ant chapel and repeated the comparison. Now I find myself slightly shorter than the average of the students. I have precisely the same kind recollection and the same present experience of the height of crowds of well-dressed persons. I used all ways to get a fair view of what was going on over or between their heads. I rarely can do so now. The athletic achievements at school and college are much superior to what they used to be. Parties no doubt due to the skillful methods of execution but not all. I cannot doubt that the more wholesome and abundant food, the moderation in drink, the better cooking, the warmer wearing apparel, the area of sleeping rooms, the greater cleanliness, the more complete change in holidays and the healthier lives led by the women in their girlhood who become mothers afterwards have a great influence for good on the favourite portion of our race. The proportion of weekly misshapen individuals is not to be estimated by those whom we meet in the streets. The worst cases are out of sight. We should parade before our minds of the inmates of the lunatic, idiot and pauper asylums, the prisoners, the patients in hospitals, the sufferers at home, the crippled and the congenitally blind, and a large class of more or less wealthy persons who flee to the sunny coasts of England or expatriate themselves for the chance of life. There can hardly be a sadder sight than the crowd of delicate Englishmen and women with narrow chests and weak gins, scruffulous and otherwise gravely affected who are to be found in some of these places. Even this does not tell the whole of the story. If there were a conscription in England, we should find, as in other countries, that a large fraction of the men who earn their living by sedentary occupations are unfit for military service. Our human civilised stock is far more weakly through congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals whether wild or domestic. It is, however, by no means the most shapely or our biggest personages who endure hardship the best. Some very shabby looking men have extraordinary stamina. Sickly looking impunity residents and towns may have a more suitable constitution for the special conditions of their lives, and may, in some sense, be better knit to do more work and live longer than much hollow men imported to the same locality from elsewhere. A wheel and barrel system to have the flimsiest possible constitutions consist of numerous separate pieces all oddly shaped which, when lying in a heap look hopelessly unfitted for union but put them properly together, compress them with a tyre in one case and with hoops in the other and a remarkably enduring organisation will result. A wheel with a tonne on the top of it in the wagons of South Africa will jolt for thousands of miles over stony, roadless country without suffering harm. A keg of water may be strapped on the back of a pack ox or a mule and be kicked off and travelled on and be otherwise misused for years without giving way. I do not propose to interfere into the anthropometric differences of race, because the subject is a very large one and this book does not profess to go into detail. Its intention is to touch on various topics more or less connected with that of the cultivation of race, or as we might call it, with eugenic questions, and to present the results of several of my own separate investigations. Energy Energy is a capacity for labour. It is consistent with all the robust virtues and makes a large practice of them possible. It is a measure of fullness of life. The more energy the more abundance of it. No energy at all is death. Idiots are feeble and listless. In the inquiries I made on the antecedents of men of science, no points came out more strongly than that the leaders of scientific thought were generally gifted with remarkable energy that they had inherited the gift of it from their parents and grandparents. I have since found the same to be the case in other careers. Energy is an attribute of the higher races, being favoured beyond all other qualities by natural selection. We are goaded into activity by the conditions and struggles of life. They afford stimuli that oppress and worry the weekly, who complain and bewail, and it may be succumbed to them, but which the energetic man welcomes the good human shrug and is the better for it in the end. The stimuli may be of any description. The only important matter is that all the faculties should be kept working to prevent their perishing by disuse. If the faculties are few, very simple stimuli will suffice. Even that of fleas will go a long way. A dog is continually scratching himself and a bird pluming himself, whenever they are not occupied with food, hunting, fighting or love. In those blank times there is very little for them to attend to besides their varied irritations. It is a matter of observation. They are well washed and combed domestic pets grow dull. They miss the stimulus of fleas. If animals did not prosper through the agency of their insect plagues, it seems probable that their races would long since have been so modified that their bodies should have ceased to afford a pasture ground full parasites. It does not seem to follow that because men are capable of doing hard work, they like it. Some indeed fidget and fret if they cannot otherwise work off their superfluous steam, but on the other hand there are many big lazy fellows who will not get up to their steam to full pressure except under compulsion. Again, the character of the stimulus that induces hard work differs greatly in different persons, and may be wealth, ambition or other objects of passion. The solitary hard workers under no encouragement or compulsion accept their sense of duty to their generation are unfortunately still rare among us. It may be objected that if the race were too healthy and energetic there would be insufficient call for the exercise of the pitting and self-denying virtues, and their character of men would grow harder in consequence. But it is not same as Walt who preserves sickly breeds for the sole purpose of telling them, as the breed of foxes is preserved solely for sport and its attendant advantages. There is little fear that misery will ever cease from the land, or that the compassion will fail to find objects without compassion, but at present the supply vastly exceeds demand. The land is overstocked and overburdened with the listless and the incapable. In any scheme of eugenics, energy is the most important quality to favour. It is, as we have seen, the basis of living action, and it is eminently transmissible by descent. The only information that reaches us concerning outward events appears to pass through the avenue of our senses, and the more perceptive the senses are of difference the larger is the field upon which our judgement and intelligence can act. Sensation mounts through a series of grades of just perceptible differences. It starts from the zero of consciousness, and it becomes more intense as the stimulus increases, though at a slower rate, up to the point when the stimulus is so strong as to begin to damage the nerve apparatus. Then yields place to pain, which is another form of sensation, and which continues until the nerve apparatus is destroyed. Two persons may be equally able just to hear the same faint sound and they may equally begin to be pained by the same loud sound and yet they may differ as to the number of intermediate grades of sensation. The grades will be less numerous as the organisation is of a lower order, and the keenest sensation possible to it will in consequence be less intense. An artist who incapable of discriminating more differences of tint than another man is not necessarily more capable of seeing clearly in twilight, or more or less intolerant of sunshine. A musician is not necessarily able to hear very faint sounds, nor to be more startled by loud sounds than others are. A mechanic who works hard with heavy tools and has rough and grimy thumbs insensible to various slight pressures may yet have a singularly discriminating power of touch in respect to the pressures that he can feel. The discriminative faculty of idiots is curiously low. They hardly distinguish between heat and cold and their sense of pain is so obtuse that some of the more idiotic seem highly to know what it is. In their dull lives such pain as can be excited in them may literally be acceptable with a welcome surprise. During a visit to Earl's Wood Asylum I saw two boys whose toenails had grown into the flesh and had been excised by the surgeon. This is a horrible torture to ordinary persons, but the idiot lads were said to have shown no distress during the operation. It was not necessary to hold them and they looked rather interested at what was been done. I also saw a boy with the scar of a severe wound on his wrist, the story being that he had first burned himself slightly by accident, and like in the kindness of the new sensation he took the next opportunity of repeating the exercise, but idiot like he overdid it. The trials I have as yet made on the sensitivity of different persons confirms the reasonable expectation that it would on the whole be highest among the intellectually ableist. At first I went into my confusion, the quality of which I am speaking, with that of nervous irritability I fancied that women of delicate nerves who were distressed by noise, sunshine etc. would have acute powers of discrimination, but this I found not to be the case. In morbidly sensitive persons both pain and sensation are induced by lower stimuli than in the healthy, but the number of just perceptible grades of sensation between them is not necessarily different. I found as a rule that men have more delicate powers of discrimination than women, and the business experience of life seems to confirm this view. The tuners of Piano Forte, Zomen, and so we understand are the tasters of tea and wine, the sorters of wool and the like. These latter occupations are well salaried because this is of the first moment to the merchant that he should be brightly advised on the real value that he is about to purchase or to sell. If the sensitivity of women were superior to that of men, the self-interest of merchants would lead to their being always employed, but as the reverse is the case, the opposite supposition is likely to be the true one. Ladies really distinguish the merits of wine at the dinner table, and though custom allows them to preside at the breakfast table, men think them on the hold be far from successful makers of tea and coffee. Blind persons are reputed to have acquired in compensation for the loss of their eyesight and increased acuteness in their other senses. I was therefore curious to make some trials with my test apparatus, which I will describe in the next chapter. I was permitted to do so on a number of boys at a large educational blind asylum, but found that although they were anxious to do their best, their performances were by no means superior to those of other boys. It so happened that the blind lads who showed the most delicacy of touch and won the little prizes they offered to excite the population barely reached the mediocrity of the various sighted lads of the same age whom I had previously tested. I have made not a few observations and inquiries, and find that the guidance of the blind depends mainly on the multitude of collateral indications to which they give much heed, and not to their superior sensitivity to any one of them. Those who see do not care for so many of these collateral indications and habitually overlook and neglect several of them. I am convinced also that a little of the popular belief concerning the sensitivity of the blind is due to exaggerated claims on their part that have not been verified. Two instances of this have fallen within my own experience in both of which the blind persons claim to have the power of judging by the echo, their voice, and by certain other feelings. The one when they were approaching objects, even though the feelings were so small as a handrail, and the other to tell how far the door of the room in which he was standing was open. I used all the persuasion I could to induce each of these persons to allow me to put their assertions to the test, but it was of no use. The one made excuses, the other positively refused. They had probably the same tendency that others would have who happened to be defective in any faculty that their comrades possessed to fight bravely against their disadvantage at the same time to be betrayed into some over vaulting of their capacities in other directions. They would be a little conscious of this and would therefore shirk from being tested. The power of reading by touch is not so very wonderful. A former Lord Chancellor of England, the late Lord Hathor Lee when he was advanced in the years lost his eyesight for some time owing to a cataract which was not ripe to be operated on. He assured me that he had then learned and practiced reading by touch very rapidly. This fact may perhaps also serve as additional evidence of the sensitivity of able men. Notwithstanding many travellers' tales, I have thus far been unsuccessful in obtaining satisfactory evidence of any general large superiority of their senses of savages over those of civilised men. My own experience so far as it goes of hot-and-tots, damaras, as mother wild races, went to show that their sense discrimination was not superior to those of white men, even as regards keenness of eyesight. An offhand observer is apt to err by assigning to a single cause what is partly due to others as well. Thus, as regards our sight, a savagery who is accustomed to watch oxen grazing on a distance becomes so familiar with their appearance and habits that he can identify particular animals and draw conclusions as to what they are doing with an accuracy that may seem to be wholly dependent on exceptional acuteness of vision. The sailor has the reputation of Caneside because he sees a distant coast when a landsman cannot make it out. The fact being that a landsman usually expects a different appearance to what he is really to look for, such as a very minute and sharp outline instead of a large faint blur. In a short time, a landsman becomes quite as quick as a sailor and in some test experiments he was found on the average to be distinctly the superior. It is not surprising that this should be so as sailors and vessels of moderate size have hardly ever the practice of focusing their eyes sharply upon objects farther off than the length of the vessel or the top of the mast, say at a distance of 50 paces. The horizon itself is seen from the deck and under the most favorable circumstances is barely four miles off and there is no sharpness of outline in the intervening waves. Besides this, the life of a sailor is very unhealthy as shown by his growing old prematurely and his eyes must be much tried by foul weather and salt spray. We inherit our language from barbarous ancestors and it shows traces of its origin in the imperfect ways by which grades of difference admit have been expressed. Suppose a pedestrian is asked whether the knapsack on his back feels heavy. He cannot find a reply in two words that cover more varieties than one very heavy, two rather heavy, three moderate, four rather light, five very light. I once took considerable pains in the attempt to draw up the verbal scales of more than five orders of magnitude using those expressions only that every cultivated person would understand in the same sense but I did not succeed. A series that satisfied one person was not interpreted in the same sense by another. The general intention of this chapter has been to show that delicate power of sense discrimination is an attribute of a high race and that has not the drawback of being necessarily associated with nerves irritability. End of chapter 8 and end of section 1. Two of Anquiry into Human Faculty. This is a LibriVox recording, or LibriVox recordings from the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit the LibriVox.org, recorded by Leon Harvey. I will now describe in our para as I have constructed a test on the delicacy with which weights may be discriminated coordinated by handling them. I do so because the principle on which it is based may be adopted in a paradist for testing other senses, and its description and the conditions of its use will illustrate the desiderata and difficulties of such investigations. A series of test weights is a simple enough idea. The difficulty lies in determining the particular sequence of weights that should be employed. 9. Former Geometric Series For the reason that when stimuli of all kinds increased by geometric grades, the sensations they give to will increase by arithmetic grades so long as their stimulus is neither so weak as to be barely felt nor as so strong as to excite fatigue. My apparatus, which is explained more fully in the appendix, consists of a number of common gun cartridge cases filled with alternate layers of shot, wool and rotting, and then closed in the usual way. They are all identical in appearance and may be said to differ only in their specific gravities. They are martineral segments, which the register numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. But the weights that are proportioned to the numbers of which 1, 2, 3, etc. are the logarithms, and consequently run in a geometric series. Hence the numbers of the weights form a scale of equal degrees of sensitivity. If a person can just distinguish between the weights numbered 1 and 3, he can also just distinguish between 2, 4, 3 and 5, and any other part of weights of which the register number of the one exceeds that of the other by 2. Again, his coarseness of discrimination is exactly double of that of another person who can just distinguish pairs of weights differently only by 1, such as 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 3 and 4, and so on. The testing is performed by handling pairs of weights to the operati until his power of discrimination is approximately made out and then to proceed more carefully. It is best now, for reasons stated in the appendix, to hand to the operati sequences of three weights at a time after shuffling them. These he has to arrange in their proper order with his eyes shut and by the sense of their weight alone. The operator finally records the scale interval that the operati can just appreciate as being the true measure of the coarseness or the inverse measure of the delicacy of the sensitivity of the operati. It is somewhat tedious to test many persons in succession, but anyone can test his own powers at odd and end times with ease and nicety if he happens to have ready access to suitable apparatus. The use of tests, which objectively speaking run in a geometric series and subjectively in a arithmetic one, may be applied to touch, but the use of wire work of various degrees of fineness to taste by stock bottles of solutions of salt etc. of various strengths, to smell by bottles of attire of rose etc. in various degrees of dilution. The tests show the sensitivity at the time they are made and give an approximate measure of the discrimination with which the operati habitual employs his senses. It does not measure his capacity for discrimination because the discriminative faculty admits of much education and the test results always show increased delicacy after a little practice. However, the requirements of everyday life educate all our faculties in some degree. I have not found the performance with test weights to improve much after a little familiarity with their use. The weights have, as were, to be played with at first, then they must be tried carefully on three or four separate occasions. I did not at first find it at all an easy matter to make test weights so alike as to differ in no other appreciable respect than in their pacific gravity. And if they differ and become known apart, the knowledge so acquired will fight to further judgements in various indirect ways. Similarly, in outward shape and touch was ensured by the use of mechanically made cartridge cases. Dissimilarly, though an external strain was rendered of no hindrance to the experiment by making the operati handle them in a bag or with his eyes shut. Two bodies may, however, be alike and wait in outward appearance and behave differently when otherwise mechanically tested and consequently when they are handled. For example, take two eggs, one raw and the other hard boiled, and spin them on the table. Press the fingers for a moment upon each of them whilst it is still spinning. If it to be the hard boiled egg, it will stop as dead as it was stone. If it be the raw egg, after a little apparent hesitation, it will begin again to rotate. The motion of its shell has alone been stopped. The internal part was still rotating and this compelled the shell to follow it. Owing to this cause, when we handle the two eggs, the one feels quick and the other does not. Similarly, when the cartridges, when one is rather more loosely packed than the others, the difference is perceiving on handling them, or it may have one end heavier than the other or else its weight may not be equally distributed around its access, causing it to rest on the table with the same part always low and most. Differences due to these causes are also easily perceived when handling the cartridges. Again, one of two similar cartridges may balance perfectly in all directions, but the weight of one of them may be disposed too much towards the ends as in a dumbbell will gather too much towards the centre. The period of oscillation will differ widely in the two cases, as may be shown by suspending the cartridges by strands around the middle so as their shell hang horizontally and then by a slight tap making them spin to and fro around the string as an axis. The touch is very keen at distinguishing all these particularities. I've mentioned them, might have added more to show that experiments on sensitivity have to be made in the midst of pitfalls where really to be avoided. Our apparently simplest perceptions are very complex. We hardly ever act on the information given by only one element of one sense. In our sensitivity, any desired direction cannot be rightly determined except by carefully devised apparatus judicially used. End of Chapter 9. Chapter 10. Whistles for Audibility of Shrill Notes. I contrived a small whistle for conveniently asserting the upper limits of audible sound in different persons, which Dr. Walliston had shown to vary considerably. He used small pipes and found it much difficult in making them. I made a very small whistle from a brass tube whose internal diameter was less than one tenth of an inch in diameter. A plug was fitted into the lower end of the tube, which could be pulled out or pushed in as much as desired, thereby causing the length of the bore of the whistle to be varied at will. When the bore is long, the note is low. When short it is high. The plug was graduated, so that the precise note produced by the whistle could be determined by reading off the graduations and referring to a table. See appendix. On testing different persons, I found there was a remarkable falling off in the power of hearing high notes as age advanced. The persons themselves were quite unconscious of their deficiency, so long as their sense of hearing low notes remained unimpaired. It isn't only a too amusing experiment to test a party of persons of various ages, including some other elderly and self-satisfied personages. They're indignant at being thought deficient in the power of hearing, yet the experiment quickly shows that they are absolutely deaf to shrill notes, which the younger persons hear acutely, and they commonly betray much dislike to their discovery. Everyone has a limit, and the limit at which sounds become too shrill to be audible to any particular person can be rapidly determined by this little instrument. Lord Rayleigh and others have found that sensitive flames are powerfully affected by the vibrations of whistles that are too rapid to be audible to ordinary ears. I have tried experiments with all kinds of animals on the powers of hearing shrill notes. I have gone through the hole in the zoological gardens, using an apparatus arranged for the purpose. It consists of one of my little whistles at the end of a walking stick. That is, in reality, a long tube. It has a bit of India rubber pipe under the handle, a sudden squeeze upon which forces a little air into the whistle and causes it to sound. I hold it as near as is safe to the ears of the animals, and when they are quite accustomed to its presence and heils of it, I make it sound. Then if they prick their ears, it shows that they hear the whistle. If they do not, it is probably inaudible to them. Still, it is possible that in some cases, they hear but do not hear the sound. Of all creatures, I have found none superior to cats in the power of hearing shrill sounds. It is perfectly remarkable what a faculty they have in this way. Cats, of course, have to deal in the dark with mice, and to find them out by their squealing. Many people cannot hear the shrill squeal of a mouse. Some time ago, singing mice were exhibited in London, and of the people who went to hear them, some could hear nothing, whilst others could hear a little and others again could hear much. Cats are differentiated by natural selection until they have the power of hearing all the high notes made by mice and other little creatures that they have to catch. A cat that is at a very considerable distance can be made to turn its ear round by sounding a note that is too shrill to be audible by almost any human ear. Small dogs also hear very shrill notes, but larger ones do not. I have walked through the streets of a town with instruments like that, which are used in the zoological gardens, and I nearly all the little dogs turn round, but not the larger ones. I burn, where there appear to be more large dogs lying idly about in the streets than in any other town in Europe. I have tried to whistle for hours together. On a great many large dogs, I could not find one that heard it. Ponies are sometimes able to hear very high notes. I once frightened a pony with one of these whistles in the middle of a large field. By attempts on insect hearing have been failures. End of chapter 10, chapter 11, anthropometric registers. When shall we have anthropometric laboratories where a man may, when he pleases, get himself and his children weighed, measured, and rather photographed, and have their bodily faculties tested by the best methods known to modern science? The records of growth of numerous persons from childhood to age are required before it can be possible to rightly appraise the effect of external conditions upon development, and records of this kind are at present non-existent. The various measurements should be accompanied by photographic studies of the features in full face and in profile on the same scale for convenience of comparison. We're all lazy in recording facts bearing on ourselves, but parents are glad enough to do so in respect of their children, and they would probably be inclined to avail themselves of a laboratory where all that is required could be done easily and at small cost. These domestic records would hereafter become of considerable biographical interest. Every one of us in his mature age would be glad of a series of pictures of himself from childhood onwards accompanied by physical records and arranged consecutively with notes of current events by their sides. Much more would he be glad of similar collections referring to his father, mother, grandparents, and other near relatives. It would be peculiarly grateful to the young to possess likenesses of their parents as those whom they look upon as heroes, taken when they were of the same age as themselves. Boys are too apt to think of their parents as having always been elderly men, because they have insufficient data to construct imaginary pictures of them as they were in their youth. The cost of taking photographs in batches is so small, and the time occupied is so brief, where the necessary preparations have been made and the sitters are ready at hand that are practice of methodically photographing schoolboys and members of other large institutions might easily be established. I, for one, should dearly prize the opportunity of visiting the places where I have been educated and of turning over pages showing myself and my companions as we were in those days. But no such records exist. The institutions last and flourish. The individuals who pass through them are dispersed and leave few or no memorials behind. It seems a cruel waste of opportunity not to make and keep these brief personal records in a methodical manner. The fading of ordinary photographic prints is no real objection to keeping a register because they can now be reproduced at small charge in permanent printers ink by the prototype and other processes. I have seen with admiration and have had an opportunity of availing myself of the newly established library of well ordered folios at the Admiralty. Each containing a thousand pages and each page containing a brief summary of references to the life of a particular seaman. There are already 80,000 pages and owing to the excellent organisation of the office it is a matter of perfect ease to follow out any one of these references and to learn every detail of the service of any seaman. A brief register of measurements and events in histories of a large number of persons previous to their entering any institution and doing the residence in it need not therefore be a difficult matter to those who may take it in hand seriously and methodically. The recommendation I would venture to make to my readers is to obtain photographs and ordinary measurements periodically themselves and their children making it a family custom to do so because unless driven by some custom the act will be postponed until the opportunity is lost. Let those periodical photographs be full and side views of the face on an adequate scale adding any others that may be wished for not admitting these. As the portraits accumulate have collections of them auto typed keep the prints methodically in a firmly register writing by their side careful chronicles of illness and all such events has used to find a place on a fly leaf the bible former generations and inserting other interesting personal facts and whatever anthropometric data can be collected. Those who care to initiate and carry on a family chronicle illustrated by abundant photographic portraiture will produce a work that they and their children and their descendants in more remote generations will assuredly be grateful for. The family tie has a real as well as a traditional significance. The world is beginning to waken to the fact that the life of the individual is in some real sense of prolongation of those of his ancestry. His vigor, his character and his diseases are principally derived from theirs. Sometimes his faculties are blends of ancestral qualities but more frequently they are mosaics patches of resemblance of one or other of them showing now here and now there. The life histories of our relatives are prophetic of our own futures. They are far more instructed to us than those of strangers, far more fitted to encouraged and to forewarn us. If there be such a thing as a natural birthright I can conceive a non superior to the right of the child to be informed at first by proxy through his guardians and afterwards personally of the life history medical and other of his ancestry. The child is thrust into existence without his having any voice at all in the matter and the small cement and those who brought him here can make is to furnish him with all the guidance they can including the complete life histories of his near progenitors. The investigation of human eugenics that is of the conditions under which men of a high type are produced is at present extremely hampered by the want full family histories both medical and general extending over three or four generations. There is no such difficulty in investigating animal eugenics because the generations of horses cattle dogs etc are brief and the breeder of any such stock lives long enough to acquire a large amount of experience from his own personal observation. A man however can rarely be familiar with more than two or three generations of his contemporaries before age has begun to check his powers. His working experience must therefore be chiefly based upon records believing as I do that human eugenics will become recognized before long as a study of the highest practical importance. It seems to me that no time ought to be lost in encouraging and directing a habit of compiling personal and family histories. If the necessary materials be brought into existence it will require no more than zeal and persuasiveness on the part of the future investigator to collect as large a store of them as he may require. End of chapter 11 chapter 12 Unconsciousness of peculiarities The importance of submitting our faculties to measurement lies in the curious unconsciousness in which we are apt to live of our personal peculiarities and which our intimate friends often fail to remark. I have spoken of the ignorance of elderly persons by their deafness to high notes but even the existence of such a peculiarity as colorblindness was not suspected until the memoir of Dalton in 1794 that one person out of 29 or thereabouts should be unable to distinguish a red from a green without knowing that he had any deficiency of color sense and without betraying his deficiency to his friends seems perfectly incredible to the other 28 yet as a matter of fact he really does either the one or the other. It is hard to convince the color blind of their own infirmity. I have seen curious instances of this. One was that of a person by no means unpracticed in physical research who had been himself tested in matching colors. It gave me his own version of the result to the effect that though he might perhaps have fallen a little short of perfection as judged by over refined tests his color sense was for all practical purposes quite good. On the other hand the operator assured me that when he had toned the intensities of a pure red and a pure green in a certain proportion the person ceased to be able to distinguish between them. Color blind thus is often very difficult to detect because the test hues and tints may be discriminated by other means than by the normal color sense. Ordinary pigments are never pure and the test colors may be distinguished by those of their adventurous hues to which the partially colorblind man may be sensitive. We do not suspect ourselves to be yellow blind by candlelight because we enjoy pictures in the evening nearly or perhaps quite as much as in the daytime yet we may observe that a yellow primrose laid on a white tablecloth wholly loses its color by candlelight and becomes as white as a snow drop. The inquiries I made on the hereditary transmission of capacity I was often amused by the naive remark of men who would easily distance their competitors that they ascribe their success to their own exertions. They little recognized how much they owed to their natural gifts of exceptional capacity and energy on the one hand and of exceptional love for their special work on the other. In future chapters I shall give accounts of persons who have unusual mental characteristics as regards imagery, visual abnormals, colors connected with sounds and special associations of ideas, being unconscious of their peculiarities. But I cannot anticipate these subjects here as they all require explanation. It will be sane in the end how greatly metaphysicians and psychologists may err who assume their own mental operations instincts and axioms to be identical with those of the rest of mankind instead of being special to themselves. The differences between men are profound and we can only be saved from living in blind consciousness of our own mental peculiarities by the habit of informing ourselves as well as we can of those of others. Examples of the success with which this can be done will be found further in the book. I may take this opportunity of remarking on the well-known hereditary character of color-blindness in connection with the fact that it is nearly twice as prevalent among the Quakers, as among the rest of the community in proportions being as 5.9 to 3.5 percent. We might have expected an even larger ratio. Nearly every Quaker is descended on both sides solely from members of a group of men and women who segregated themselves from the rest of the world five or six generations ago. One of their strongest opinions being that the fine arts were worldly snares and their most conspicuous practice being to dress in drabs. A born artist could never have consented to separate himself from his fellows on such grounds. He would have felt the profession of those opinions and their copying practices to be a treason to his aesthetic nature. Consequently, few of the original stock of Quakers are likely to have had the temperament that is associated with a love of color, and it is in consequence most reasonable to believe that a larger proportion of color-blind men would have been found among them than among the rest of the population. Again, Quakerism is a decreasing sect weakened by yearly desertions and losses, especially in the act of marriage with a person who is not a member of the society is necessarily followed by exclusion from it. It is most probable that a large proportion of the deserters would be those who, through reversion by some micron ancestor, had served efficient artistic taste to make a continuance of Quaker practices too irksome to be endured. Hence, the existing members of the society of friends are a race who probably contained in the first instance an unduly large proportion of color-blind men, and from whose descendants many of those who were not born color-blind have year by year been drafted that way. Both causes must have combined with the already well-known Tennessee of color-blindness to hereditary transmission to cause it to become a characteristic of their race. Dalton, who first discovered his existence as a personal peculiarity of his own, was a Quaker to his death. Young, the discoverer of the undulatory theory of light, a race specially on colors, was a Quaker by birth, but he married outside the body and so ceased to belong to it. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Statistical Methods The object of statistical science is to discover methods of condensing information concerning large groups of allied facts and debrief and compendious expressions suitable for discussion. The possibility of doing this is based on the constancy and continuity with which objects of the same species are found to vary. That is to say, we always find after sorting any large number of such objects in the order of four, let us suppose, of their lengths, beginning with the shortest and ending with the tallest and setting them side by side like a long row of park palings between the same limits, their upper outline will be identical. Moreover, it will run smoothly and not in irregular steps. The theoretical interpretation of the smoothness of outlines is that the individual differences in the objects are caused by different combinations of a large number of minute influences and as the difference between any two adjacent objects in a long row must depend on the absence in one of them or some single influence or of only a few such that were present in the other, the amount of difference will be insensible. Whenever we find on trial that the outline of a row is not a flowing curve, the presumption is that the objects are not all of the same species but that part are affected by some large influence from which the others are free. Consequently, there is a confusion of curves. This presumption is never found to be belayed. It is unfortunate for the peace of mind of the statistician that the influence by which the magnitude, etc. of the objects are determined can seldom, if ever be roundly classed into large and small, without intermediates. He is tantalized by the hope of getting hold of subgroups of sufficient size that shall contain no individuals except those belonging strictly to the same species, and he is almost constantly baffled. In the end, he is obliged to exercise his judgment as to the limit at which he should cease to subdivide. If he subdivides very frequently, the groups become too small to have statistical value. If less frequently, the groups will be less truly specific. A species may be defined as a group of objects whose individual differences are wholly due to different combinations of the same set of minute causes, no one of which is so powerful as to be able by itself to make any sensible difference in the result. A well-known mathematical consequence flows from this, which is also universally observed as a fact, namely that in all species the number of individuals who differ from the average value to any given amount is much greater than the number who differ more than that amount and up to the double of it. In short, if an assorted series be represented by the upright lines arranged side by side along a horizontal base at equal distances apart and of length's proportionate to the magnitude or the quality in the corresponding objects, then the shape will always resemble that shown in figure one. The form of the bounding curve resembles that which is called in architectural language an orguev, from orguev in old French word for a cup. The figure being not unlike the upper half of a cup lying sideways with its axis horizontal. In consequence of the multitude of mediocre values, we always find that on either side of the middlemost ordinate, cc, which is a median value and may be accepted as the average, there is much less rapid change of height than elsewhere. If the figure were pulled out sideways to make it accord with such physical conceptions as that of a row of men standing side by side, the middle part of the curve would be apparently horizontal. Figure one and figure two are displayed on the page. The mathematical conception of the curve is best expressed in figure two, where pq represents any given deviation from the average value and the ratio of p0 to ab represents the relative probability of its occurrence. The equation to the curve and a discussion of its properties will be found in the proceedings of the Royal Society, number 198, 1879 by Dr. Amalister. The title of the paper is The Law of the Geometric Mean and it follows one by myself on the geometric mean in vital and social statistics. We can lay down the old give of any quality, physical or mental. Whenever we are capable of judging which of any two members of the group we are engaged upon as a larger amount of that quality. I have called this the method of statistics by intercomparison. There is no bodily or mental attribute in any race of individuals that can be so dealt with whether our judgment in comparing them be guided by common sense observation or by actual measurement which cannot be gripped and consolidated into an old give with a smooth outline and thence forward be treated in discussion as a single object. It is easy to describe any given or give which has been based upon measurements so that it may be drawn from the description with approximate truth. Divide a b in a convenient number of fractional parts and record the height of the ordinates at those parts. In reproducing the old give from these data draw a baseline of any convenient length. Divide it in the same number of fractional parts. Erect ordinates of the stated lengths at those parts connect their tops with a flowing line and the thing is done. The most convenient fractional parts are the middle giving the median the outside quarters giving the upper and lower quartiles and similarly the upper and lower octiles or desiles. This is sufficient for most purposes. It leaves only the outer eights or tenths of the cases undescribed and undetermined except so far as may be guessed by the run of the intermediate portion of the curve and defines all of the intermediate portion with as close an approximation as is needed for the ordinary or statistical purposes. Thus the heights of all but the outer tenths of the whole body of adult males of the English profession classes may be derived from the five following ordinates measured in inches of which the outer pair of desiles 67.2 67.5 68.8 70.3 71.4 Many other instances will be found in the report of the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association in 1881 page 245 to 257. When we desire to compare any two large statistical groups we may compare median and median quartiles and quartiles and octiles with octiles or we may proceed on the method to be described in the next paragraph but one. We are often called upon to define the position of an individual in his own series in which case it is most comfortable to usage to give his centesimal grade that is his place on the baseline a b supposing it to be graduated from zero degrees to 100 degrees and reckoning this a confusion ought to be avoided between graduation and rank that would lead to no sensible error in practice. The first of the park pay lengths does not standard a which is zero degrees nor does a hundred standard b which is 100 degrees for that would make 101 of them but they stand at zero degrees 0.5 and 99 degrees 0.5 respectively. Similarly all intermediate ranks stand half a degree short of the graduation bearing the same number. When the class is large the value of half a place become extremely small and the rank and graduation may be treated as identical. Examples of method of calculating a centesimal position. 1. A child a is classed out of examination as number five in a class of 27 children. What is his centesimal graduation? Answer. If a b be divided into 27 graduations his rank of number will correspond to the graduation 40.5. Therefore if a b be graduated fresh into 100 graduations his centesimal grade t will be found by the rule of 3 thus x to 4 degrees 0.5 to 100 to 27 x equals 459 divided by 27 degrees equals 16 degrees 0.6. 2. Another child b is class number 13 in a class of 25. Answer. If a b be divided into 25 graduations the rank of number 13 will correspond to graduation 12 degree 0.5. When it says before x to 12.5 degrees 125 x equals 1250 divided by 25 degrees equals 50 degrees i.e b is median. The second method of comparing two statistical groups to which I alluded in the last paragraph but one consists in stating the centesimal grade in one group that corresponds with a median or any other fractional grade in the other. This it will be remarked is a very simple method of comparison. Absolutely independent of any theory and applicable to any statistical groups whatever weather or physical or of mental qualities. Wherever we can sort an order there we can apply this method. Thus in the above examples suppose a and b had been ceded because they were equal where compared together that we can consciously express the relative merits of the two classes to which they respectively belong by saying that 160.6 in the one is equal to 500 the median in the other. I frequently make statistical records a form of feature in the streets or a company without exciting attention by means of a fine preco and a piece of paper. The preco is a converted silver pencil case with the usual sliding piece. It is a very small one and is attached to my watch chain. The pencil part has been taken out and replaced by a fine short needle. The open mouth of the case is covered with a hemispherical cap having hole in the center and the adjustments are such that when the slide is pushed forward as far as it can go the needle projects no more than one-tenth of an inch. If I then press it upon a piece of paper held against the ball of my thumb the paper is indefinitely perforated with a fine hole and the thumb is not wounded. The perforations will not be found to run into one another unless they are very numerous and if they happen to do so now then it is a little consequence in a statistical inquiry. Those are easily counted at leisure beholding the paper against the light and any scrap of paper will serve the purpose. It will be found that the majority of enquiries into the form of more equal to or less. So I arranged the paper in a way to present three distinct compartments to the preco and admit of it being held in the correct position and used by the sense of touch alone. I do so by tearing the paper into the form of a cross that is manned in one of its arms and hold it by the maimed part between the thumb and finger the head of the cross pointing upward. The head of the cross receives the pricks referring to more the solitary arm that is not maimed those meaning the same and along for the cross those meaning less. It is well to write the subject of the measurement on the paper before beginning to use it then more then one set of records can be kept in the pocket at the same time and be separately added to as occasion serves without fear of mistaking one for the other. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Character The fundamental and interesting differences of character that exist in individuals are well illustrated by those that distinguish the two sexes and which begin to assert themselves even in the nursery where all the children are treated alike. One notable peculiarity in the character of the woman is that she is capricious and coy and is less straightforwardness than the man. It is the same in the female of every sex about the time of pairing and there can be little doubt as to the origin of the peculiarity. If any race of animals existed in whom the sexual patterns of the female were as quickly and as directly stirred as those of the male each would mate with the first who approached her and one essential condition of sexual selection would be absent. There would be no more call for competition among the males for the favour of each female no more fighting for love in which the strongest male conquers no more rival display or personal charms in which the best looking or best mannered prevails. The drama of courtship with its prolonged strivings and doubtful success will be cut quite short and the race would degenerate through the absence of that sexual selection for which the protracted preliminaries of love-making give opportunity. The willy nilly disposition of the female in matters of love is as apparent in the butterfly as is the man and must have been continuously favoured from the earliest stages of animal evolution down to the present time. It is the factor and the great theory of sexual selection that corresponds to the insistence and directness of the male. Coinos and caprice have in consequence become a heritage of the sex together with the cohort of allied witnesses and petty deceits that men have come to think of the male and even amiable in women but which they would not tolerate amongst themselves. Various forms of natural character and temperament would no doubt be found to occur in constant proportions amongst any large group of persons of the same race but what those proportions may be has never yet been investigated. It is extremely difficult to estimate it by observations of adults owing to their habit of restraining natural ill tendencies and to their long-predest concealment of those they do not restrain but desire to hide. The necessary observations ought, however, to the easily made or young children in schools whose manifestations of character are conspicuous who are simultaneously for months and years under the eye of the same master or mistress and who are daily classed according to their various merits. I have occasionally asked the opinion of persons well qualified to form them and who have had experience of teaching as to the most obvious divisions of character to be found amongst school children. Their applies have differed but those on which most stress was laid, were connected with energy, sociability, desire to attract notice, truthfulness, thoroughness and refinement. The varieties of the emotional constitution and of likings and antipathies are very numerous and wide. I may give two instances which I have not seen elsewhere alluded to merely as examples of variation. One of them was often bought to my notice by the time when the public were admitted to see the snakes fed at the zoological gardens. Rabbits, birds and other small animals were dropped in different cages which the snakes after more or less serpentine action finally struck with their poison fangs or crushed in their vaults. I found it horrible but a fascinating scene. We lead for the most part such an easy and carpeted existence screened from the stern realities of life and death that many of us are impelled to draw aside the curtain now and then and gaze for a while behind it. This exhibition of the snakes at their feeding time which gave to me as a doubtless did to several others a sense of curdling of the blood had no such effect on many of the visitors. I have often seen people nurses for instance and children of all ages looking unconcernedly and amusingly at the scene. Their indifference was perhaps the most painful element of the whole transaction. Their sympathies were absolutely unwakened. I quoted this instance partially because it leads to another very curious fact that I have noticed or as regards to the way with which different persons and races regard snakes. I myself have a horror of them I can only by great self-control under a sense of real agitation force myself to touch one. A considerable proportion of the English race would feel much as I do but the remainder do not. I have questioned numbers of persons of both sexes and have been astonished at the frequency with which I have been assured that they had no shrinking whatever from the sight of the wriggling mysterious reptile. Some persons, as this well known, make pets of them. Moreover, I am told that there is no passage in Greek or Latin authors expressive of that form of horror which I feel myself and which may be compared to what I said to be felt by hydrophobic sufferers at the underlating movements of water. There are numerous illusions in the classics to the venom fang or the crushing power of snakes but not to the aversion inspired by its form and movement. It was the Greek symbol of hypocrites and of healing. There is nothing of the kind in Hebrew literature where the snake is figured as an attractive temper. In Hindu fables the cobra is an ingenious and intelligent animal. Corresponding to the foxen hours serpent worship was very widely spread. I therefore doubt whether the antipathy to the snake is very common among mankind notwithstanding the instinctive terror that their sight inspires in monkeys. The other instance I may add to is that of the horror of blood which is curiously different in animals of the same species and in the same animals at different times. I have had a good deal of experience of the behaviour of oxen at the sight of blood and found it by no means uniform. In my South African travels I relied chiefly on half-wild slaughter oxen to feed my large party and occasionally had to shoot one on every second day. Usually the rest of the drove paid no particular heed to the place of blood but in other rare times they seemed maddened and performed a curious sort of war dance in the spot making buck leaps branching their horns and gawring at the ground. There was a grotesque proceeding utterly unlike the usual behaviour of cattle though only witnessed it once elsewhere and that was in the Pyrenees where I came on a herd that was being driven homewards. Each cow in turn as it passed a particular spot performed the well-remembered antics. I asked and learned that a cow had been killed there by a bear a few days previously. The natural horror at blood and it may be the consequent dislike of red is common among mankind but I have seen a well-dressed child of about four years old poking its finger with a police innocent look into the bleeding carcass of a sheep hung in a butcher's shop. While its nurse was inside the subject of character deserves more statistical investigation than it has yet received and none have a better chance of doing it well than school masters. Their opportunities are indeed most enviable but it would be necessary to approach the subject wholly without prejudice as a pure matter of observation just as if the children were the fauna and flora of hithero-undescribed species in an entirely new land. Criminality, the not very various in its development is extremely complex in its origin. Nevertheless, certain general conclusions arrived at by the best writers on the subject among whom Prospero de Spine is one of the most instructive. The ideal criminal has marked peculiarities of character. His conscience is almost efficient. His instincts are vicious. His power of self-control is very weak and he usually detests continuous labor. The absence of self-control is due to ungovernal temper to passion or to mere imbecility and the conditions that determine the particular description of crime are the character of the instincts and of the temptation. The deficiency of conscience in criminals as shown by the absence of genuine remorse for their guilt as staunch as all who first become familiar with the details of prison life. Scenes of heart-rending despair are hardly ever witnessed among prisoners. Their sleep is broken by no uneasy dreams on the contrary it is easy and sound. They have also excellent appetites but hypocrisy is a very common vice and all my information agrees as to the utter untruthfulness of criminals however plausible their statements may be. We must guard ourselves against looking upon vicious instincts as perversions in as much as they may be strictly in accordance with the healthy nature of the man and being transmissible by inheritance may become the normal characteristics of a healthy race just like the sheepdog the retriever the pointer and the bulldog have their several instincts. There can be no greater popular error than the supposition that natural instinct is a perfectly trustworthy guide for there are striking contradictions to such an opinion in individuals of every description of animal. The most that we are entitled to say in any case is that the prevalent instincts of each race are trustworthy not those of every individual but even this is saying too much because when the conditions under which the race is living have recently been changed some instincts which were adapted to the old state of things are shown to be felicious guides to conduct in the new one. A man who is counted as an atrocious criminal in England and is punished as such by English law and social self-defense may nevertheless have acted in strict accordance with the instincts that are laudable in the civilized societies. The ideal criminal is unhappily for him the visioned inequalities that are capable of restraining his unkindly or any convenient instincts. He has neither a sympathy for others nor the sense of duty both of which lie at the base of conscience nor has he sufficient self-control to accommodate himself to the society in which he has to live and so to promote his own selfish interests in the long run. He cannot be preserved from criminal misadventure either by altruistic sentiments or by intelligently egoistic ones. The perpetuation of the criminal class by hereditary is a question difficult to grapple with on many accounts. The vagrant habits their illegitimate unions their extreme untruthfulness are among the difficulties of the investigation. It is however easy to show that the criminal nature tends to be inherited. Well on the other hand it is impossible that women who spend a large portion of the best years their life in prison can contribute many children to the population. The true state of the cause appears to be that the criminal population receives steady assertions from those who without having strongly marked criminal natures do nevertheless belong to a type of humanity that is exceedingly ill-suited to play a respectable part in our modern civilisation though they're as well suited to flourish under half savage conditions being naturally both healthy and prolific. These persons are apt to go to the bad their daughters consult with criminals and become the parents of criminals. An extraordinary example of this is afforded by the history of the infamous Duke's family of America whose pedigree has been made out with extraordinary care during no less than seven generations and is a subject of an elaborate memoir printed in the 31st Annual Report of the Prison Association of New York 1876. It includes no less than 540 individuals of Duke's blood of whom a fateful number degraded into criminality, pulparism or disease. It is difficult to summarize results in a few plain figures but it was stated to those respecting the fifth generation through the eldest of the five prolific daughters of the man who is the common ancestor of the race. The total number of these was 123 of whom 38 came through an illegitimate granddaughter and 85 through legitimate grandchildren. Out of the 38, 16 have been in jail. Six of them for heinous offenses. One of these having been committed no less than nine times. Eleven others led openly disrespectful lives or were paupers. Four were notoriously intemperate. The history of three had not been traced and only four are known to have done well. The great majority of the women consorted with criminals. As for the 85 legitimate descendants they were less flagrantly bad for only five out of them have been in jail and only 13 others have been paupers. Now the ancestor of all this mischief who was born about the year 1730 15 describes having been a jolly, companionable man, a hunter, and a fisher, adverse to steady labor by working hard and idling by turns and who had numerous illegitimate children whose issue had not been traced. It was in fact a somewhat good specimen of a half savage without any serious criminal instincts. The girls were apparently attractive, marrying early and sometimes not badly but the gypsy like character of the race was unsuited to his success in a civilized country. So the descendants went to the bad and such a redditary moral weakness as they may have had rose to the surface and worked their mischief with that check. Gohabiting with criminals and being extremely prolific the result was a production of a stock exceeding 500 number of a prevalent criminal type. Through disease and intemperance the breed is now rapidly diminishing. The infant mortality has of late been horrible but fortunately the women or the present generation bear usually but few children and many of them are altogether childless. The criminal classes contain a considerable portion of epileptics and other persons of instable emotional temperament subject to nervous explosions that burst out of intervals and relieve the system. The mad outbreaks of women in convict prisons is a most curious phenomenon. Some of them are wrapped from time to time to have gradually increased desire that at last becomes irresistible to break out as it is technically called that is to smash and tear everything they can within reach and to shriek curse and bowel. At length the fit expands itself the devil as a word leason and they begin to behave again in their ordinary way. The highest form of emotional instability exists in confirmed epilepsy where its manifestations often have been studied is found in a high but someone lets extraordinary degree in hysterical and light infections. In the confirmed epileptic constitution the signs of general instability of nervous action are muscular confusions irregularities of bodily temperature mobile intellectual activity and extraordinary escalations between imposed emotional states. I am assured by excellent authority that instable manifestation of extreme purity and extreme vice are almost invariably shown by epileptics and should be regarded as a prominent feature of their peculiar constitution. These unfortunate beings see no incongruity between the various phrases that they pour out at one moment and a violent scene language in the next. Neither do they show repentance for past misconduct when they are convicted of crimes however abominable they may be. They are creatures of the moment possessing no inhibitory check upon their desires and emotions which drive them headlong, hither and thither. Manus is often associated with epilepsy. In all cases it is a frightful and hereditary disfigurement of humanity which appears from the upshot of various conflicting accounts to be on the increase. The neurotic constitution from which it springs is however not without its merits as have been well pointed out. Since a large proportion of the enthusiastic men and women to whose labor the world is largely indebted have had their constitution judged from the fact that insanity existed in their families. The phases of extreme purity and extreme vice which so rapidly succeed one another and the same individual among the epileptics are more widely separated among those who are simply insane. It has been noticed that among the morbid organic conditions which accompany the show of excessive purity and religious rapture in the insane none are so frequent as disorders of the sexual organization. Conversely, the frenzies of religious revivals have not unfrequently ended in gross provocancy. The encouragement of celibacy by the fervent leaders of most creeds utilizes in an unconscious way the morbid connection between an over restraint of the sexual desires and impulses towards extreme devotion. Another remarkable phase among the insane consists in strange views about their individuality. They think that their body is made of glass or that their brains have literally disappeared or that there are different persons inside them or that they are somebody else and so forth. It is said that this phase is most commonly associated with morbid disturbance of the elementary organs. So in many religions fasting has been used as an agent for detaching the thoughts from the body and for inducing ecstasy. There is yet a third peculiarity of the insane which is almost universal that of gloomy segregation. Passengers nearing London by the Great Western Railway must have frequently remarked the unusual appearance of the crowd of lunatics when taking their exercise in a large green enclosure in front of Hanwell Asylum. They are almost with that exception walk apart in moody isolation each in his own way buried in his own thoughts. It is the same like that fabled in Vethics Hall of Eblis. I am assured that whenever two are seen in company is either because their attacks of manners are an intermittent and epileptic character and they are temporarily sane or otherwise that they are near recovery. Conversely the curative influence of social habits is fully recognized and they are promoted by festivities in the asylums. On the other hand the great teachers of all creates at man's inclusion a prominent religious exercise. Ensured by enforcing celibacy, fasting and solitude they have done their best towards making men mad and they have always largely succeeded in inducing morbid mental conditions among their followers. floods of light are thrown upon various incidents of devotee life and also upon the disgusting and not otherwise intelligible character of the sanctum mania scoundrel by the everyday experiences of the manhouse. No professor of metaphysics, psychology or religion can claim to know the elements of what he teaches unless he is acquainted with the ordinary phenomena of vdc, madness and epilepsy. He must study the manifestations of disease and congenital folly as well as those of sanity and high intellect.