Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development
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INQUIRIES INTO HUMAN FACULTY AND ITS DEVELOPMENT FRANCIS GALTON Originally published in 1883 by Macmillan. Second Edition, 1907 by J. M. Dent & Co. (Everyman) First electronic edition, 2001. Based on the text in the Everyman Second Edition (with all cuts from the first edition restored). Edited by Gavan Tredoux This edition forms part of the online Galton archives at http://galton.org/ This is the first corrected proof, 2004. Please report any errors to the editor. … a straightforward step-by-step inquiry did not seem to be the most suitable course. I thought it safer to proceed like the surveyor of a new country, and endeavour to fix in the first instance as truly as I could the position of several cardinal points. — from the Preface. The steady and pitiless march of the hidden weaknesses in our constitutions, through illness to death, is painfully revealed by these histories of twins. We are too apt to look upon illness and death as capricious events, and there are some who ascribe them to the direct effect of supernatural interference, whereas the fact of the maladies of two twins being continually alike shows that illness and death are necessary incidents in a regular sequence of constitutional changes beginning at birth, and upon which external circumstances have, on the whole, very small effect. from The History of Twins. Electronic Contents PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. VIII LIST OF WORKS. IX LIST OF MEMOIRS. IX MEMOIRS IN EUGENICS. X CONTENTS. VII PLATES XV INTRODUCTION. 1 VARIETY OF HUMAN NATURE. 2 FEATURES. 3 COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE. 6 DESCRIPTION OF THE COMPOSITES. 8 BODILY QUALITIES. 13 ENERGY. 17 SENSITIVITY. 19 SEQUENCE OF TEST WEIGHTS. 23 WHISTLES FOR AUDIBILITY OF SHRILL NOTES. 26 ANTHROPOMETRIC REGISTERS. 28 UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF PECULIARITIES. 31 STATISTICAL METHODS. 33 CHARACTER. 39 CRIMINALS AND THE INSANE. 42 GREGARIOUS AND SLAVISH INSTINCTS. 47 INTELLECTUAL DIFFERENCES. 57 MENTAL IMAGERY. 57 VIVIDNESS OF MENTAL IMAGERY. 61 COLOUR REPRESENTATION. 65 NUMBER-FORMS. 79 COLOUR ASSOCIATIONS. 105 VISIONARIES. 112 NURTURE AND NATURE. 128 ASSOCIATIONS. 131 PSYCHOMETRIC EXPERIMENTS. 133 ANTECHAMBER OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 146 EARLY SENTIMENTS. 149 HISTORY OF TWINS. 155 DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS. V THE OBSERVED ORDER OF EVENTS. 194 SELECTION AND RACE. 198 INFLUENCE OF MAN UPON RACE. 200 POPULATION. 207 EARLY AND LATE MARRIAGES. 208 MARKS FOR FAMILY MERIT. 211 ENDOWMENTS. 214 CONCLUSION. 216 APPENDIX 221 A.—COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE. 221 I. COMPOSITE PORTRAITS, MADE BY COMBINING THOSE OF MANY DIFFERENT PERSONS INTO A SINGLE RESULTANT FIGURE. 221 II. GENERIC IMAGES. 229 III. COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE. 233 B.—THE RELATIVE SUPPLIES FROM TOWN AND COUNTRY FAMILIES TO THE POPULATION OF FUTURE GENERATIONS. 241 C.—AN APPARATUS FOR TESTING THE DELICACY WITH WHICH WEIGHTS CAN BE DISCRIMINATED BY HANDLING THEM. 248 D.—WHISTLES FOR TESTING THE UPPER LIMITS OF AUDIBLE SOUND IN DIFFERENT INDIVIDUALS. 252 E.—QUESTIONS ON VISUALISING AND OTHER ALLIED FACULTIES. 255 INDEX 257 ADDENDA: RESTORED SECTIONS 263 ENTHUSIASM 263 POSSIBILITIES OF THEOCRATIC INTERVENTION 265 STATISTICAL INQUIRIES INTO THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER 268 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. AFTER some years had passed subsequent to the publication of this book in 1883, its publishers, Messrs. Macmillan, 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 out 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 is obtainable only with difficulty, and at 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 National Eugenics (see note p. 24 in 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 inexpensive form, I gladly accepted it, having first sought and received an obliging assurance from Messrs. Macmillan that they would waive all their claims to the contrary 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 smaller 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 omitted, on “Theocratic Intervention” and on the “Objective Efficacy of Prayer.” The earlier part of the latter was too much abbreviated from the original memoir in the Fortnightly Review, 1872, and 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 omissions vii viii Bibliography 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 omission of these two chapters, in which I find nothing to recant, improves, as I am told, the general balance of the book. FRANCIS GALTON. LIST OF WORKS. The Telotype: a printing Electric Telegraph, 1850; The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, 1853, in “Minerva Library of Famous Books,” 1889; “Notes on Modern Geography” (Cambridge Essays, 1855, etc.); Arts of Campaigning: an Inaugural Lecture delivered at Aldershot, 1855; The Art of Travel, or Shifts and Contrivances available in Wild Countries, 1855, 1856, 1860 (1859); fourth edition, recast and enlarged, 1867, 1872; Vacation Tourists and Notes on Travel, 1861, 1862, 1864; Meteorographica, or Methods of Mapping the Weather, 1863; Hereditary Genius: an Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences, 1869; English Men of Science: their Nature and Nurture, 1874: Address to the Anthropological Departments of the British Association (Plymouth, 1877); “Generic Images: with Autotype Illustrations” (from the Proceedings of the Royal Institution), 1879; Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, 1883; Record of Family Faculties, 1884; Natural Inheritance, 1889; Finger-Prints, 1892; Decipherment of Blurred Finger- Prints (supplementary chapters to former work), 1893; Finger-Print Directories, 1895; Introduction to Life of W. Cotton Oswell, 1900; Index to Achievements of Near Kinsfolk of some of the Fellows of the Royal Society, 1904; Eugenics: its Definition, Scope, and Aims (Sociological Society Papers, vols. I. and IL), 1905; “Noteworthy Families” (Modern Science); And many papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Journals of the Geographical Society and the Anthropological Institute, the Reports of the British Association, the Philosophical Magazine, and Nature. Galton also edited Hints to Travellers, 1878; Life-History Album (British Medical Association), 1884, second edition, 1902; Biometrika (edited in consultation with F. G. and W. F. R. Weldon), 1901, etc.; and under his direction was designed a Descriptive List of Anthropometric Apparatus, etc., 1887. LIST OF MEMOIRS. The following Memoirs by the author have been freely made use of in the following pages 1863: The First Steps towards the Domestication of Animals (Journal of Ethnological Society); 1871 : Gregariousness in Cattle and in Men (Macmillan’s Magazine); 1872: Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer (Fortnightly Review); 1873: Relative Supplies from Town and Country Families to the Population of List of Memoirs ix Future Generations (Journal of Statistical Society); Hereditary Improvement (Fraser’s Magazine); Africa for the Chinese (Times, June 5); 1875: Statistics by Intercomparison (Philosophical Magazine); Twins, as a Criterion of the Relative Power of Nature and Nurture (Fraser’s Magazine, and Journal of Anthropological Institute); 1876: Whistles for Determining the Upper Limits of Audible Sound (S. Kensington Conferences, in connection with the Loan Exhibition of Scientific Instruments, p. 61); 1877: Presidential Address to the Anthropological Department of the British Association at Plymouth (Report of British Association); 1878: Composite Portraits (Nature, May 23, and Journal of Anthropological Institute); 1879: Psychometric Experiments (Nineteenth Century, and Brain, part vi.); Generic Images (Nineteenth Century; Proceedings of Royal Institution, with plates); Geometric Mean in Vital and Social Statistics (Proceedings of Royal Society); 1880: Visualised Numerals (Nature, Jan. 15 and March 25, and Journal of Anthropological Institute); Mental Imagery (Fortnightly Review; Mind); 1881: Visions of Sane Persons (Fortnightly Review, and Proceedings of Royal Institution); Composite Portraiture (Journal of Photographical Society of Great Britain, June 24); 1882: Physiognomy of Phthisis (Guy’s Hospital Reports, vol. xxv.); Photographic Chronicles from Childhood to Age (Fortnightly Review); The Anthropometric Laboratory (Fortnightly Review); 1883: Some Apparatus for Testing the Delicacy of the Muscular and other Senses (Journal of Anthropological Institute, 1883, etc.). MEMOIRS IN EUGENICS. 1901: Huxley Lecture, Anthropological Institute (Nature, Nov. 1901); Smithsonian Report for 1901 (Washington, p. 523); 1904: Eugenics, its Definition, Scope