Hereditary Genius by Sir Francis Galton ~ Full Audiobook
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hereditary genius and acquiring to its laws and consequence prefatory chapter to the edition of eighteen ninety two this volume is a reprint of a work published twenty-three years ago which has long been unpurchasable except at second-hand and at fancy prices

it was a question whether to revise the whole and to bring the information up to date or simply to reprint it after remedying a few starting errata the latter course has been adopted because even a few additional data would have made it necessary to recast all the tabulations while a thorough reconstruction would be a work of greater labor than i can now undertake

at the time when the book was written the human mind was popularly thought to act independently of natural laws and to be capable of almost any achievement if compelled to exert itself by a will that had a power of initiation even those who had more philosophical habits of thought were far from looking upon the mental faculties of each individual as being limited with as much strictness as those of his body still less was the idea of the hereditary transmission of ability clearly apprehended

the earlier part of the book should be read in the light of the imperfect knowledge of the time when it was written since what was true in the above respects for the year eighteen ninety six does not continue to be true for eighteen ninety two many of the lines of inquiry that are suggested or hinted at in this book have since been pursued by myself and the results have been published in various memoirs

they are for the most part epitomized in three volumes namely english men of science eighteen seventy four human faculty eighteen eighty three natural inheritance eighteen eighty nine also to some small extent in a fourth volume now about to be published on finger marks the fault in the volume that i chiefly regret is the choice of its title of hereditary genius but it cannot be remedied now

there was not the slightest intention on my part to use the word genius in any technical sense but merely as expressing an ability that was exceptionally high and at the same time inborn it was intended to be used in the senses ascribed to the word in johnson's dictionary viz mental power or faculties

disposition of nature by which any one is qualified to some peculiar employment nature disposition a person who is a genius is dandas a man endowed with superior faculties this exhausts all that johnson has to say on the matter except as regards the imaginary creature of classical authors called a genius which does not concern us and which he describes as a protecting or ruling power of men places or things

there is nothing in the quotations from standard authors with which johnson illustrates his definitions that justifies a strained and tentacle sense being given to the word nor is there anything of the kind in the latin word ingenium hereditary genius therefore seemed to be a more expressive and just title than hereditary ability for ability does not exclude the effects of education which genius does

the reader will find a studious abstinence throughout the work from speaking of genius as a special quality it is freely used as an equivalent for natural ability in the opening of the chapter on comparison of the two classifications in the only place so far as i have noticed on reading the book again where any distinction is made between them the uncertainty that still clings to the meaning of the word genius in its technical sense is emphatically dwelt upon page three hundred twenty

there is no confusion of ideas in this respect in the book but its title seems apt to mislead and if it could be altered now it should appear as hereditary ability

the relation between genius in its technical sense whatever its precise definition may be and insanity has been much insisted upon by lombroso and others whose views of the closeness of the connection between the two are so pronounced that it would hardly be surprising if one of their more enthusiastic followers were to remark that so-and-so cannot be a genius because he has never been mad nor is there a single lunatic in his family

I cannot go nearly so far as they, nor accept a moiety of their data, on which the connection between ability of a very high order and insanity is supposed to be established. Still, there is a large residuum of evidence which points to a painfully close relation between the two, and I must add that my own later observations have tended in the same direction, for I have been surprised at finding how often insanity or idiocy has appeared among the near relatives of exceptionally able men.

those who are over-eager and extremely active in mind must often possess brains that are more excitable and peculiar than is consistent soundness they are likely to become crazy at times and perhaps to break down altogether their inborn excitability and peculiarity may be expected to appear in some of their relatives also but unaccompanied with an equal dose of preservative qualities whatever they may be those relatives would be crank if not insane

there is much that is indefinite in the application of the word genius it is applied to many a youth by his contemporaries but more rarely by biographers who do not always agree among themselves if genius means a sense of inspiration or of rushes of ideas from apparently supernatural sources or of an inordinate and burning desire to accomplish any particular end

it is personally near to the voices heard by the insane to their delirious tendencies or to their monomanias it cannot in such cases be a healthy faculty nor can it be desirable to perpetuate it by inheritance the natural ability of which this book mainly treats is such as the modern european possesses in a much greater average share than men of the lower races

there is nothing either in the history of domestic animals or in that of evolution to make us doubt that a race of sane men may be formed who shall be as much superior mentally and morally to the modern european as the modern european is to the lowest of the negro races individual departures from this highly average level in an upward direction would afford an adequate supply of degree of ability that is exceedingly rare now and is much wanted

it may prove helpful to the reader of the volume to insert in this introductory chapter a brief summary of its data and course of arguments the primary objective was to investigate whether and in what degree natural ability was hereditarily transmitted

This could not be easily accomplished without a preliminary classification of ability according to standard scale, so the first part of the book is taken up with an attempt to provide one. The method employed is based on the law commonly known to mathematicians as that of frequency of error, because it was devised by them to discover the frequency with which various proportionate amounts of error might be expected to occur in astronomical and geodetic operations, and thereby to estimate the value that was probably nearest

the truth from a mass of slightly discordant measures of the same fact.

its application has been extended by quetelet to the proportion of the human body on the grounds that the differences say in stature between men of the same race might theoretically be treated as if they were errors made by nature in her attempt to mould individual men of the same race according to the same ideal pattern fantastic as such a notion may appear to be when it is expressed in these bare terms without an accompaniment of a full explanation it can be shown to rest on a perfectly just basis

moreover the theoretical predictions were found by him to be correct and their correctness in analogues cases under reasonable reservations has been confirmed by multitudes of subsequent observations of which perhaps the most noteworthy are those of professor weldon on that human creature the common shrimp proc royal society page two volume fifty one eighteen ninety two

one effect of the law may be expressed under this form though it is not that which was used by quetelet suppose one hundred adult englishmen to be selected at random and ranged in the order of their statutes in a row the statutes of the fiftieth and fifty first men were almost identical and would represent the average of all the statutes then the difference according to the law of frequency between them and the sixty third man would be the same as that between the sixty third

and seventy fifth the seventy fifth and the eighty fourth the eighty fourth and the ninetieth the intervening men between these divisions whose numbers are thirteen twelve nine and six form a succession of classes diminishing as we see in numbers but each separated from its neighbour by equal grades of stature the diminution of the successive classes is thus far small but it would be found to proceed at an enormously accelerated rate if a much longer row than that of one hundred men were taken

and if their classification were pushed much farther, as is fully shown in this book. After some provisional verification, I applied this law to mental faculties, working it backwards in order to obtain a scale of ability, and to be enabled thereby to give precision to the epithets employed. Thus the rank of 4000 or thereabouts is expressed by the word eminent. The application of the law of frequency of error to mental faculties has now become accepted by many persons, for it is found to accord well with observation.

I know of examiners who habitually use it to verify the general accuracy of the marks given to many candidates in the same examination. Also, I am informed by one mathematician that before dividing his examinees into classes some regard is paid to this law. There is nothing said in this book about the law of frequency that subsequent experience has not confirmed and

and even extended, except that more emphatic warning is needed against its unchecked application. The next step was to gain a general idea as to the transmission of ability, founded upon a large basis of homogeneous facts by which to test the results that might be afterwards obtained from more striking but less homogeneous data. It was necessary in seeking for these to sedulously guard against any bias of my own.

it was also essential that the group to be dealt with should be sufficiently numerous for statistical treatment and again that the family histories of the persons it contained should be accessible and if possible already published

the list at length adopted for this prefatory purpose was that of the english judges since the reformation their kinships were analysed and the percentage of their eminent relations in their various near degrees were tabulated and the results discussed these were very striking and seemed amply sufficient of themselves to prove the main question various objections to the validity of the inferences drawn from them may however arise they are considered and it is believed disposed of in the book

after doing this a series of lists were taken in succession of the most illustrious statesmen commanders literary men men of science poets musicians and painters of whom history makes mention to each of these lists were added many english eminent men of recent times whose biographies are familiar or if not are easily accessible

the lists were drawn up without any bias of my own for i always relied mainly upon the judgment of others exercised without any knowledge of the object of the present inquiry such as the selections made by historians or critics after the lists of the illustrious men had been disposed of a large group of eminent protestant divines were taken in hand namely those who were included in middleton's once well-known and highly esteemed biographical dictionary of such persons

afterwards the senior classics of cambridge were discussed then the north country oarsmen and wrestlers in the principal lists all the selected names were inserted in which those who were known to have eminent kinsmen were printed in italics so the proportion of failures can easily be compared with that of the successors each list was followed as the list of the judges have been with a brief dictionary of kinships all being afterwards tabulated and discussed in the same way

finally the various results were brought together and compared showing a remarkable general agreement with a few interesting exceptions one of these exceptions lay in the preponderating influence of the maternal side in the case of the device this was discussed and apparently accounted for

the remainder of the volume is taken up with topics that are suggested by the results of the former portion such as the comparative worth of different races the influences that affect the natural ability of nations and finally a chapter of general considerations

if the work were rewritten the part of the last chapter which refers to darwin's provisional theory of pangenesis would require revision and ought to be largely extended in order to deal with the evidence for and against the heredity of habits that were not inborn but had been acquired through practice

marvellous as is the power of the theory of pangenesis in bringing large classes of apparently different phenomena under a single law serious objections have since arisen to its validity and prevented its general acceptance it would for example almost compel us to believe that the hereditary transmission of accidental mutilations and of acquired aptitudes would be the rule and not the exception but leaving out of the question all theoretical reasons against this belief

such as those which i put for myself many years ago as well as the more cogent ones adducted by weismann in later years putting these wholly aside and appealing to experimental evidence it is now certain that the tendency of acquired habits to be hereditarily transmitted is at the most extremely small

there may be some few cases like those of brown sick wild greening pigs in which injury to the nervous substance of the parents affects their offspring but as a general rule with scarcely any exception that cannot be ascribed to other influences such as bad nutrition or transmitted microbes the injuries or habits of the parents are found to have no effect on the natural form or faculties of the child

whether very small hereditary influences of the supposed kind accumulating in the same direction for many generations may not ultimately affect the qualities of the species seems to be the only point now seriously in question

many illustrations have been offered by those few persons of high authority who still maintain their acquired habits such as the use or disuse of particular organs in the parents have been hereditarily transmitted in a sufficient degree to notably affect the whole breed after many generations among these illustrations much stress has been laid on the diminishing size of the human jaw in highly civilized peoples

It is urged that their food is better cooked and more toothsome than that of their ancestors. Consequently, the masticating apparatus of the race has dwindled through disuse. The truth of the evidence on which this argument rests is questionable, because it is not at all certain that non-European races who have more powerful jaws than ourselves use them more than we do. A Chinaman lives, and has lived for centuries on rice and spoon meat, or such overboiled diet as his chopsticks can deal with.

equatorial africans live to a great extent on bananas or else on cassava which being usually of the poisonous kind must be well boiled before it is eaten in order to destroy the poison many of the eastern acalbago islanders live on sago pastoral tribes eat meat occasionally but their usual diet is milk or curds

it is only the hunting tribes who habitually live upon tough meat it follows that the diminishing size of human joys in highly civilized people must be ascribed to other causes such as those whatever they may be that reduce the weight of the whole skeleton in delicately nurtured animals

it seems feasible to subject the question to experiment whether certain acquired habits acting during at least ten twenty or more generations have any sensible effects on the race i will remarks on this subject which i made two years ago first in a paper read at a congress in paris and afterwards at the british association at newcastle the position taken was that the experiments ought to be made on a large scale and upon creatures that were artificially hatched

and therefore wholly isolated from maternal teachings fowls moths and fish were the particular creatures suggested fowls are reared in incubators at very many places on a large scale especially in france it seems not difficult to devise practices associated with peculiar calls to food with colours connected with food or with food that was found to be really good through deterrent in appearance and in certain of the breeding places to regularly subject the chicks to these practices

then after many generations had passed by to examine whether or no the chicks of the then generation had acquired any instinct for performing them by comparing their behaviour with that of chicks reared in other places as regards moths the silk-worm industry is so extensive and well understood that there would be abundant opportunity for analogous experiments with moths both in france and italy the establishments for pusciaculture afford another field

it would not be worth while to initiate courses of such experiments unless the crucial value of what they could teach us when completed had first been fully assented to to my own mind they would rank as crucial experiments so far as they went and be worth undertaking but they did not appear to strike others so strongly in the same light of course before any such experiments were set on foot they would have to be considered in detail by many competent minds and be closely criticised

another topic would have been treated at a more length if this book were rewritten namely the distinction between variations and sports it would even require remodelling of much of the existing matter the views i have been brought to entertain since it was written are amplifications of those which are already put forward in page three hundred and fifty four to five but insufficiently pushed there to their logical conclusion

They are that the word variation is used indiscriminately to express two fundamentally distinct conceptions, sports and variations properly so called. It has been shown in natural inheritance that the distribution of faculties in a population cannot possibly remain constant. If, on the average, the children resemble their parents. If they did so, the giants, in any mental or physical particular, would become more gigantic.

and the dwarfs or dwarfish in each successive generation the counteracting tendency is what i called regression the filial centre is not the same as the parental centre but it is nearer to mediocrity it regresses towards the racial centre in other words the filial centre or the fraternal centre if we change the point of view is always nearer on the average to the racial centre than the parental centre was there must be an average regression in passing from the parental to the filial centre

it is impossible briefly to give a full idea in this place either of the necessity or of the proof of regression they have been thoroughly discussed in the work in question suffice it to say that the result gives presidia of a typical centre from which individual variations occur in accordance with the law of frequency often to a small amount more rarely to a larger one very rarely indeed to one that is much larger and practically never to one that is larger still

the filial centre falls back further towards mediocrity in a constant proportion to the distance to which the parental centre has deviated from it whether the direction of the deviation be in excess or in deficiency all true variations are as i maintain of this kind and it is in consequence impossible that the natural qualities of a race may be permanently changed through the action of a selection upon mere variations

the selection of the most serviceable variations cannot even produce any great degree of artificial and temporary improvement because an equilibrium between deviation and regression will soon be reached whereby the best of the offspring will cease to be better than their own sires and dams the case is quite different in respect to what are technically known as sports in these a new character suddenly makes its appearance in a particular individual causing him to differ distinctly from his parents and from others of his race

such new characters are also found to be transmitted to descendants here there has been a change of typical centre a new point of departure has somehow come into existence towards which regression has henceforth to be measured

and consequently a real step forward has been made in the course of evolution when natural selection favours a particular sport it works effectively towards the formation of a new species but the favour that it simultaneously shows to mere variations seems to be thrown away so far as that end it concerned

there may be entanglement between a sport and a variation which leads to a hybrid and unstable result well exemplified in the imperfect character of the fusion of different human races here numerous pure specimens of their ancestral types are apt to crop out notwithstanding the intermixture by marriage that had been going on for many previous generations

it has occurred to others as well as myself as to mr wallace and to professor romaines that the time may have arrived when an institute for experiments on heredity might be established with advantage

a farm and garden of a very few acres with varied exposure and well supplied with water placed under the charge of intelligent caretakers supervised by a biologist would afford the necessary basis for a great variety of research upon inexpensive animals and plants the difficulty lies in the smallness of their number of competent persons who are actively engaged in hereditary inquiry who could be depended upon to use it properly

the direct result of this inquiry is to make manifest the great and measurable differences between the mental and bodily faculties of individuals and to prove that the laws of heredity are as applicable to the former as to the latter

its indirect result is to show that a vast but unused power is vested in each generation over the very natures of their successors that is over their inborn faculties and dispositions the brute power of doing this by means of appropriate marriages or abstentions for marriage undoubtedly exists however much the circumstances of life may hamper its employment

The great problem of the future betterment of the human race is confessedly, at the present time, hardly advanced beyond the stage of academic interest.

but thought and action move swiftly nowadays and it is by no means impossible that a generation which has witnessed the exclusion of the chinese race from the customary privileges of settlers in two continents and the deportation of a hebrew population from a large portion of a third may live to see other anachronistic acts performed under sudden socialistic pressure the striking results of an evil inheritance

have already forced themselves so far on the popular mind that indignation is freely expressed without any marks of disapproval from others.

at the yearly output by unfit parents of weakly children who are constitutively incapable of growing up into serviceable citizens and who are a serious encumbrance to the nation the question about to be considered may unexpectedly acquire importance as falling within the sphere of practical politics and if so many demographic data that require forethought and time to collect and a dispassionate and leisurely judgment to discuss will be hurriedly and sorely needed

the topics to which i refer are the relative fertility of different classes and races and their tendency to supplant one another under various circumstances the whole question of fertility under the various conditions of civilized life requires more detailed research than it has yet received we require further investigations into the truth of the hypothesis of malthus that there is really no limit to overpopulation besides that which is affordable by misery or prudential restraint

is it true that misery in any justifiable sense of that word provides the only check which acts automatically or are other causes in existence active though as yet obscure that assist in restraining the overgrowth of population it is certain that the productiveness of different marriages differs greatly in consequence of unexplained conditions the variation and fertility of different kinds of animals that have been captured

then wild and afterwards kept in menageries is as darwin long since pointed out most notable and apparently capricious the majority of those which thrive in confinement and apparently enjoy excellent health are nevertheless absolutely infertile others often of closely allied species had their productivity increased

one of the many evidences of burr great ignorance of the laws that govern infertility is seen in the behaviour of bees who have somehow discovered that by merely modifying the diet and the size of the nursery of any female grub they can at will cause it to develop either into a naturally sterile worker or into a potential mother of a huge hive

demographers have undoubtedly collected and collated a vast amount of information bearing on the fertility of different nations but they have mainly attacked the problem in the gross and not in the detail so that we possess little more than mean values that are to general populations and are very valuable in their way but we remain ignorant of much else that a moderate amount of judiciously directed research might perhaps be able to tell

as an example of what could be sought with advantage let us suppose that we take a number sufficient for statistical purposes of persons occupying different social classes

those who are the least efficient in physical intellectual and moral grounds forming our lowest class and those who are the most efficient forming our highest class the question to be solved relates to the hereditary permanence of the several classes what proportion of each class is described from parents who belong to the same class and what proportion is described from parents who belong to each of the other classes

do these persons who have honorably succeeded in life and who are presumably on the whole the most valuable portion of our human stock contribute on the aggregate their fair share of prosperity to the next generation if not do they contribute more or less than their fair share and in what degree in other words is the evolution of man in each particular country favourably or injuriously affected by its special form of civilisation

enough is already known to make it certain that the productiveness of both the extreme classes the best and the worst falls short of the average of the nation as a whole therefore the most prolific class necessarily lies between the two extremes but at what intermediate point does it lie taken altogether on any reasonable principle are the natural gifts of the most prolific class bodily intellectual and moral above or below the line of national mediocrity if above that line then the existing conditions are favourable to the improvement of the race

if they are below that line they must work towards its degradation these very brief remarks serve to shadow out the problem it would require much more space than is now available before it could be phrased in a way free from ambiguity so that its solution would clearly instruct us whether the conditions of life at any period in any given race were tending to raise or to depress its natural qualities

whatever other countries may or may not have lost ours are certainly gained on more than one occasion by the infusion of the breed of selected sub races especially of that of the protestant refugees from religious persecution on the continent it seems reasonable to look upon the huguenots as men who on the whole had inborn qualities of a distinctive kind from the majority of their countrymen

and who may therefore be spoken of as a subtype that is to say capable when isolated of continuing their race without its showing any strong tendency to revert to the form of the earlier type from which it was a well-defined departure

it proved also that the cross-breed between them and our ancestors was a singularly successful mixture consequently england has been largely indebted to the natural refinement and to the solid worth of the huguenot breed as well as to the culture and technical knowledge that the huguenots brought with them

the frequency in history with which one race has supplanted another over wide geographical areas is one of the most striking facts in the evolution of mankind the denizens of the world at the present day form a very different human stock to that which inhabited it a dozen generations ago and to all appearance a no less difference will be found in our successors a dozen generations hence partially it may be that new human varieties

have come into permanent or only into temporary existence like that most remarkable mixed race of the normans many centuries ago in whom to use well-known words of the late professor freeman the indomitable figure of the scandinavians joined to the buoyant vivacity of the gaul produced the conquering and ruling race of europe but principally the challenge of which i spoke is due to great alterations in the proportion of those who belong to the old and veil established types

the negro now born in the united states has much the same natural faculties as his distant cousin who is born in africa the effect of his transplantation being ineffective in changing his nature but very effective in increasing his numbers in enlarging the range of his distribution and in destroying native american races

There are now some 8 million of Negroes in lands where not one of them existed 12 generations ago, and probably not one representative of the race which they displace remains there. On the other hand, there has been no corresponding diminution of numbers in the parent home of the Negro. Precisely the same may be said of the European races who have during the same period swarmed over the temperate regions of the globe, forming the nuclear of many future nations.

it is impossible even in the vaguest way in a brief space to give a just idea of the magnitude and variety of changes produced to the human stock by the political events of the last few generations and it would be difficult to do so in such a way as not to seriously wound the patriotic susceptibilities of many readers

the natural temperaments and moral ideals of different races are various and praise or blame cannot be applied at the discretion of one person without exciting remonstrance from others who take different views with perhaps equal justice the birds and beasts assembled in conclave may try to pass a unanimous resolution in favour of the natural duty of the mother to nurture and protect her offspring but the kapu would musically protest

The Irish Celt may desire the extension of his race and the increase of its influence in the representative governments of England and America, but the wishes of his Anglo-Saxon or Teuton fellow subjects may lie in the opposite direction, and so on indefinitely. My object now is merely to urge inquiries into the historical fact whether legislation, which has led to the substitution on a large scale of one race for another, has not often been the outcome of conflicting views into which the question of race highly entered at all.

and which were so nearly balanced that if the question of race had been properly introduced into the discussion the result might have been different the possibility of such being the case cannot be doubted and affords strong reason for justly appraising the influence of race and of hereafter including it at neither more nor less than its real value among the considerations by which political action will be determined the importance to be attached to race is a question that deserves a far larger measure of exact investigation than it receives

we are exceedingly ignorant of the respective ranges of the natural and acquired faculties in different races and there is too great a tendency among writers to dogmatize wildly about them some grossly magnifying others as greatly minimizing their several provinces it seems however possible to answer this question unambiguously difficult as it is

the recent attempts of many european nations to utilize africa for their own purposes gives immediate and practical interest to inquiries that bear on the transplantation of races they compel us to face the question as to what races should be politically aided to become hereafter the chief occupiers of that continent

the varieties of negroes bantus arab half-breeds and others who now inhabit africa are very numerous and they differ much from one another in their natural qualities some of them must be more suitable than others to thrive under the form of moderate civilization which is likely to be introduced into africa by europeans who will enforce justice and order excite a desire among the natives for comforts and luxuries and make steady industry almost a condition of living at all

such races would spread and displace the others by degrees what may prove that the negroes one and all will fail as completely under the new conditions as they have failed under the old ones to submit to the needs of a superior civilization to their own in this case their races numerous and prolific as they are will in course of time be supplanted and replaced by their betters

it seems scarcely possible as yet to assure ourselves as to the possibility of any variety of white men to work to thrive and to continue their race in the broad regions of the tropics we could not do so without better knowledge than we now possess of the different capacities of individuals to withstand their malarious and climatic influences much more care is taken to select appropriate varieties of plants and animals for plantation in foreign settlements than to select appropriate types of men

discrimination and foresight are shown in the one case an indifference born of ignorance is shown in the other the importance is not yet sufficiently recognized of a mere exact examination and careful record than is now made of the physical qualities and hereditary antecedents of candidates for employment in tropical countries

we require these records to enable us to learn hereafter what are the conditions in youth that are prevalent among those whose health subsequently endured the change of climatic influence satisfactorily and conversely as regards those who failed it is scarcely possible to properly conduct such an investigation retrospectively

in conclusion i wish again to emphasize the fact that the improvement of the natural gifts of future generations of the human race is largely through indirectly under our control we may not be able to originate but we can guide the processes of evolution are in constant and spontaneous activity some pushing towards the bad some towards the good our part is to watch for opportunities to intervene by checking the former and giving free play to the latter

we must distinguish clearly between our power in this fundamental respect and that which we also possess of ameliorating education and hygiene it is earnestly to be hoped that inquiries will be increasingly directed into historical facts with a view of estimating the possible effects of reasonable political action in the future in gradually raising the present miserably low standard of the human race to one in which the utopias in the dreamland of philanthropists may become practical possibilities

I propose to show in this book that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world.

consequently as it is easy notwithstanding those limitations to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running or of doing anything else so would it be quite practical to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations

i shall show that social agencies of an ordinary character whose influences are little suspected are at this moment working towards the degradation of human nature and that others are working towards its improvement

i conclude that each generation has enormous power over the natural gifts of those that follow and that maintain that it is a duty we owe to humanity to investigate the range of that power and to exercise it in a way that without being unwise towards ourselves shall be most advantageous to future inhabitants of the earth

i am aware that my views which were first published four years ago in macmillan's magazine in june and august eighteen sixty five are in contradiction to general opinion but the arguments i then used have been since accepted to my great gratification by many of the highest authorities on heredity in reproducing them as i now do in a much more elaborate form and on a greatly enlarged basis of induction

i feel assured that inasmuch as what i then wrote was sufficient to earn the acceptance of mr darwin domestication of plants and animals i seven the increased amount of evidence submitted in the present volume is not likely to be gainsaid the general plan of my argument is to show that high reputation is a pretty accurate test of high ability

next to discuss the relationships of a large body of fairly eminent men namely the judges of england from sixteen sixty to eighteen sixty eight the statesmen of the time of george third and the premiers during the last one hundred years

and to obtain from these a general survey of the laws of heredity in respect to genius then i shall examine in order the kindred of the most illustrious commanders men of literature and of science poets painters and musicians of whom history speaks i shall also discuss the kindred of a certain selection of divines and of modern scholars then will follow a short chapter by way of comparison on the hereditary transmission of physical gifts as deduced from the relationships of certain classes of oarsmen and wrestlers

Lastly, I shall collate my results and draw conclusions.

it will be observed that i deal with more than one grade of ability those upon whom the greater part of my volume is occupied and on whose kinships my argument is most securely based have been generally reputed as endowed by nature with extraordinary genius there are so few of these men that although they are scattered throughout the whole historical period of human existence their number does not amount to more than four hundred and yet a considerable proportion of them will be found to be interrelated

another grade of ability with which i deal is that which includes numerous highly eminent and all the illustrious names of modern english history whose emidian descendants are living among us whose histories are popularly known and whose relationships may readily be traced by the help of biographical dictionaries peerages and similar books of reference a third and lower grade is that of the english judges massed together as a whole for the purpose of the prefatory statistical inquiry of which i have already spoken

no one doubts that many of the ablest intellects of our race are to be found among the judges nevertheless the average ability of a judge cannot be read as equal to that of the lower of the two grades i have described

i trust the reader will make allowances for a large and somewhat abhorrent class of omissions i have felt myself compelled to make when treating of the eminent men of modern days i am prevented by a sense of decorum from quoting names of their relations in contemporary life who are not recognized as public characters although their abilities may be highly appreciated in private life still less consistent with decorum would it have been to introduce the names of female relatives that stand in the same category

My case so is overpoweringly strong that I am perfectly able to prove my point without having recourse to this class of evidence. Nevertheless, the reader should bear in mind that it exists, and I beg he will do me the justice of allowing that I have not overlooked the whole of the evidence that does not appear in my pages. I am deeply conscious of the imperfections of my work, but my sins are those of omissions, not of commission.

such errors as i may and must have made which give a fictitious support to my arguments are i am confident out of all proportion fewer than such omissions of facts as would have helped to establish them i have taken little notice in this book of modern men of eminence who are not english or at least well known to englishmen i feared if i included large classes of foreigners they should make glaring errors

it requires a very great deal of labour to hunt out relationships even with the facilities afforded to a countryman having access to persons acquainted with the various families

much more would it have been difficult to hunt out the kindred of foreigners i should have especially liked to investigate the biographies of italians and jews both of whom appear to be rich in families of high intellectual breeds germany and america are also full of interest it is a little less so with respect to france where the revolution and the guillotine made such havoc among the progeny of her abler races

there is one advantage to a candid critic in my having left so large a field untouched it enables me to propose a test that any well-informed reader may easily adopt who doubts the fairness of my examples he may most reasonably suspect that i have been unconsciously influenced by my theories to select men whose kindred were most favourable to their support if so i beg he will test my impartiality as follows

let him take a dozen names of his own selection as the most eminent in whatever profession and in whatever country he knows most about and let him trace out for himself their relations it is necessary as i find by experience to take some pains to be sure that none even of the immediate relatives on either the male or female side have been overlooked if he does what i propose i am confident he will be astonished at the completeness with which the results will confirm my theory

i venture to speak with assurance because it has often occurred to me to propose this very test to incredulous friends and invariably so far as my memory serves me as large a proportion of the men who were named were discovered to have eminent relations as the nature of my views on heredity would have led me to expect the

CHAPTER II. CLASSIFICATION OF MEN ACCORDING TO THEIR REPUTATION The arguments by which I endeavour to prove that genius is hereditary consist in showing how large is the number of instances in which men who are more or less illustrious have eminent kinsfolk.

it is necessary to have clear ideas on the two following matters before my arguments can be rightly appreciated the first is the degree of selection implied by the words eminent and illustrious does eminent mean the foremost in a hundred in a thousand or in what other number of men the second is the degree to which reputation may be accepted as a test of ability it is essential that i who write should have a minimum qualification distinctly before my eyes whenever i employ the phrase eminent and the like

and that the reader should understand as clearly as myself the value i attach to those qualifications an explanation of these words will be the subject of the present chapter a subsequent chapter will be given to the discussion of how far eminence may be accepted as criterion of natural gifts it is almost needless for me to insist that the subjects of these two chapters are entirely distinct

i look upon social and professional life as a continuous examination all are candidates for the good opinions of others and for success in their several professions and they achieve success in proportion as the general estimate is large of their aggregate merits in ordinary scholastic examinations marks are allotted in stated proportions to various specific subjects as many for latin so many for greek so many for english history and the rest

the world in the same way but almost unconsciously allots marks to men it gives them for originality of conception for enterprise for activity and energy for administrative skill for various requirements for power of literary expression for oratory and much besides of general value as well as for more specifically professional merits

it is not a lot these marks according to a proportion that can easily be stated in words but there is a rough common sense that governs this practice with a fair approximation to constancy those who have gained most of these tacit marks are ranked by the common judgment of the leaders of opinion as the foremost men of their day

the metaphor of an examination may be stretched much further as there are alternative groups in any one of which a candidate may obtain honours so it is with reputations they may be made in law literature science art and in a host of other pursuits again as the mere attainment of a general fair level will obtain no honours in an examination no more will it do so in the struggle for eminence

a man must show conspicuous power in at least one subject in order to achieve a high reputation let us see how the world classifies people after examining each of them in her patient persistent manner during the years of their manhood how many men of eminence are there and what proportion do they bear to the whole community

i will begin by analysing a very painstaking biographical handbook lately published by rote legend co called men of the time its intention which is fairly honestly carried out is to include none but those whom the world honours for their ability

The catalogue of names is 2,500, and a full half of it consists of American and Continental celebrities. It is well I should give, in a footnote, an analysis of its contents in order to show the exhaustive character of its range. The numbers I prefixed to each class are not strictly accurate, for I measured them off rather than counted them, but they are quite close enough.

the same name often appears under more than one head on looking over the book i am surprised to find how large a proportion of the men of the time are past middle age it appears that in the cases of high but by no means in that of the highest merit a man must outlive the age of fifty to be sure of being widely appreciated it takes time for an able man born in the humbler ranks of life to emerge from them and to take his natural position

it would not therefore be just to compare the number of english men in the book with that of the whole adult male population of the british isles but it is necessary to confine our examination to those of the celebrities who are past fifty years of age and to compare their number with that of the whole male population who are also above fifty years i estimate from examining a large part of the book

that there are about eight hundred fifty of these men and that five hundred of them are decidedly well known to persons familiar with literary and scientific society now there are about two millions of adult males in the british isles above fifty years of age consequently the total number of the men of the time are about four hundred and twenty five to a million and the more select part of them as two hundred fifty to a million

the qualifications for belonging to what i call the more select part are in my mind that a man should have distinguished himself pretty frequently either by purely original work or as a leader of opinion i wholly exclude notoriety obtained by a single act this is a fairly well-defined line because there is not room for many men to be eminent

each interest or idea has its mouthpiece and a man who has attained and can maintain his position as the representative of a party or an idea naturally becomes much more conspicuous than his coadjutors who are nearly equal but inferior in ability

this is eminently the case in positions where eminence may be won by official acts the balance may be turned by a grain that decides whether a b or c shall be promoted to a vacant post the man who obtains it has opportunities of distinction denied to the others i do not however take much note of official rank

people who have left very great names behind them have mostly done so through non-professional labours i certainly should not include mere officials except at the highest ranks and in open professions among my select list of eminent men

another estimate of the proportion of eminent men to the whole population was made on a different basis and gave much the same result i took the obituary of the year eighteen sixty eight published in the times on january first eighteen sixty nine and found in it about fifty names of men of the more select class this was in one sense broader and in another a more rigorous selection than that which i have just described

It was broader because I included the names of many whose abilities were high, but who died too young to have earned the wide reputation they deserved.

and it was more rigorous because i excluded old men who have earned distinction in years gone by but have not shown themselves capable in later times to come again to the front on the first ground it was necessary to lower the limit of the age of the population with whom they should be compared forty-five years of age seemed to be a fair limit including as it was supposed to do a year or two of broken health preceding disease

now two hundred and ten thousand males die annually in the british isles above the age of forty-five therefore the ratio of the more select proportion of the men of the time on these data is as fifty to two hundred ten thousand or as two hundred thirty eight to a million thirdly i consulted obituaries of many years back when the population of these islands was much smaller and they appeared to me to lead to similar conclusions viz that two hundred fifty to a million is an ample estimate

there would be no difficulty in making a further selection out of these to any degree of rigour we could select the two hundred the one hundred or the fifty best out of the two hundred and fifty without much uncertainty but i did not see my way to work downwards if i were asked to choose the thousand per million best men i should feel we have descended to a level where there existed no sure data for guidance

where accident and opportunity had undue influence and where it was impossible to distinguish general eminence from local reputation or from mere notoriety the considerations in the sense in which i propose to employ the word eminent

when i speak of an eminent man i mean one who has achieved a position that is attained by only two hundred and fifty persons in each million of men or by one person in each four thousand four thousand is a very large number difficult for persons to realize who are not accustomed to deal with great assemblages

on the most brilliant of starlit nights there are never so many as four thousand stars visible to the naked eye at the same time yet we feel it to be an extraordinary distinction to a star to be accounted as the brightest in the sky this be it remembered is my narrowest area of selection i propose to introduce to name whatever into my list of kinsmen unless it be marked off from the rest by brackets that is less distinguished

the mass of those with whom i deal are far more rigidly selected many are as one in a million and not as few as one of many millions i use the term illustrious when speaking of these they are men whom the whole intelligent part of the nation mourns when they die who have or deserve to have a public funeral and who rank in future ages as historical characters permit me to add a word upon the meaning of a million being a number so enormous as to be difficult to conceive

It is well to have a standard by which to realize it. Mine will be understood by many Londoners. It is as follows: One summer day I passed the afternoon in Bushy Park to see the magnificent spectacle of its avenue of horse-chestnut trees, a mile long in full flower. As the hour passed it, it occurred to me to try to count the number of sparks of flowers facing the drive one side of the long avenue. I mean all the spikes that were visible in full sunshine on one side of the road.

accordingly i fixed upon a tree of average bulk and flower and drew imaginary lines first halving the tree then quartering and so on until i arrived at a subdivision that was not too large to allow of my counting the spikes of flowers it included i did this with three different trees and arrived at pretty much the same result

as well as i recollect the three estimates were as nine ten and eleven then i counted the trees in the avenue and multiplying all together i found the spikes to be just about one hundred thousand in number ever since then whenever a million is mentioned i recall the long perspective of the avenue of bushey park with its stately chestnuts clothed from top to bottom with spikes of flowers bright in the sunshine and i imagine a similarly continuous floral band of ten miles in length

in illustration of the value of the extreme rigour implied by a selection of one in a million i will take the following instance the oxford and cambridge boat race exists almost a national enthusiasm and the men who represent their universities as competing crews have good reason to be proud of being the selected champions of such large bodies

the crew of each boat consists of eight men selected out of about eight hundred students namely the available undergraduates of about two successive years in other words the selection that is popularly felt to be so strict is only as one in a hundred now i suppose there had been so vast a number of universities that it would have been possible to bring together eight hundred men each of whom had pulled in a university crew and from this body the eight best were selected to form a special crew of comparatively rare merit

the selection of each of these would be as one in ten thousand ordinary men let this process be repeated and then and not till then do you arrive at a superlative crew representing selections of one in a million this is a perfectly fair deduction because the youths of the universities are a haphazard collection of men so far as regards their thews and sinews

no one is sent to a university on account of his powerful muscle or to put the same facts into another form it would require a period of about no less than two hundred years before either university could furnish eight men each of whom would have sufficient boating eminence to rank as one of the medium crew twenty thousand years must elapse before eight men could be furnished each of whom would have the rank of the superlative crew

it is however quite another matter with respect to brain power for as i shall have occasion to show the universities attract to themselves a large proportion of the eminent scholastic talent of all england there are nearly a quarter of a million males in great britain who arrive each year at the proper age for going to the university therefore if cambridge for example conceived

only one in every five of the ablest scholastic intellects she would be able in every period of ten years to boast of the fresh arrival of an undergraduate the rank of whose scholastic eminence was that of one in a million

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chapter three classification of men according to their natural gifts i have no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed as often implied especially in tales written to teach children to be good that babies are born pretty much alike arid that the sole agencies in creating differences between boy and boy and man and man are steady application and moral effort

it is in the most unqualified manner that i object to pretensions of natural equality the experiences of the nursery the school the university and of professional careers are a chain of proofs or to the contrary

i acknowledge freely the great power of education and social influences in developing the active powers of the mind just as i acknowledge the effect of use in developing the muscles of a blacksmith's arm and no further though the blacksmith labor as he will he will find there are certain things beyond his power that are well within the strength of a man of herculean make even though the latter may have led a sedentary life some years ago the highlanders held a grand gathering in holland park where they challenged all england to compete with them in their games of strength

the challenge was accepted and the well-trained men of the hills were beaten in the foot race by the youth who was stated to be a pure cockney the clerk of a london banker everybody who has trained himself to physical exercises discovers the extent of his muscular powers to a nicety when he begins to walk to row to use the dumbbells or to run he finds to his great delight that his throughs strengthen and his endurance and fatigue increases day after day

so long as he is a novice he perhaps flatters himself there is hardly an assignable limit to the education of his muscles but the daily gain is soon discovered to diminish and at last it vanishes altogether his maximum performance becomes a rigidly determined quantity he learns to an inch how high or how far he can jump when he has attained the highest state of training he learns to half a pound the force he can exert on the dynamometer by compressing it he can strike a blow against the machine used to measure impact and drive its index to a certain graduation but no further

so it is in running in rowing in walking and in every other form of physical exertion there is a definite limit to the muscular powers of every man which he cannot by any education or exertion overpass this is precisely analogous to the experience that every student has had of the working of his mental powers the eager boy when he first goes to school and confronts intellectual difficulties is astonished at his progress

He glories in his newly developed mental grip and growing capacity for application, and, it may be, fondly believes it to be within his reach to become one of the heroes who have left their mark upon the history of the world. The years go by. He competes in the examinations of school and college, over and over again with his fellows, and soon finds his place among them. He knows he can beat such and such of his competitors, that there are some with whom he runs on equal terms and others whose intellectual feats he cannot even approach.

probably his vanity still continues to tempt him by whispering in a new strain it tells him that classics mathematics and other subjects taught in universities are more scholastic specialities and no test of the more valuable intellectual powers it reminds him of numerous instances of persons who had been unsuccessful in the competitions of youth but who had shown powers in after life that made them the foremost men of their age

accordingly with newly-furbished hopes and with all the ambition of twenty-two years of age he leaves his university and enters a larger field of competition the same kind of experience awaits him here that he has already gone through opportunities occur they occur to every man and he finds himself incapable of grasping them he tries and is tried in many things

in a few years more unless he is incurably blinded by self-conceit he learns precisely of what performances he is capable and what other enterprises lie beyond his compass when he reaches mature life he is confident only within certain limits and knows a lot to know himself just as he is probably judged of by the world with all his unmistakable weaknesses and all his undeniable strength

he is no longer tormented into hopeless efforts by the fallacious promptings of overweening vanity but he limits his undertakings to matters below the level of his reach and finds true moral repose in an honest conviction that he is engaged in as much good work as his nature has rendered him capable of performing there can hardly be a surer evidence of the enormous difference between the intellectual capacity of men than the prodigious differences in the number of marks obtained by those who gained mathematical honours at cambridge

i therefore crave permission to speak at some length upon this subject although the details are dry and of little general interest there are between four hundred and four hundred and fifty students who take their degrees in each year and of these about one hundred succeed in gaining honours in mathematics and are ranged by the examiners in strict order of merit

about the first forty of those who take mathematical honours are distinguished by the title of wranglers and it is a decidedly credible thing to be even a low wrangler it will secure a fellowship in a small college it must be carefully borne in mind that the distinction of being the first in this list of honours or what is called the senior wrangler of the year means a vast deal more than being the foremost mathematician of four hundred or four hundred fifty men taken at haphazard no doubt the larger bulk of cambridge men are taken almost at haphazard

a boy is intended by his parents for some profession if that profession be either of the church or the bar it used to be almost requisite and it is still important that he should be sent to cambridge or oxford these youths may justly be considered as having been taken at haphazard but there are many others who have fairly won their way to the universities and are therefore selected from an enormous area

fully one-half of the wranglers have been boys of note at their respective schools and conversely almost all boys of note at schools find their way to the universities here it is that among their comparatively small number of students the universities include the highest youthful scholastic ability of all england the senior wrangler in each successive year is the chief of these as regards mathematics and this the highest distinction is or was continually won by youths who had no mathematical training of importance before they went to cambridge

all their instruction had been received during the three years of their residence at the university now i do not say anything here about the merits or demerits of cambridge mathematical studies having been directed along a too narrow groove or about the presumed disadvantages of ranging candidates in strict order of merit instead of grouping them as at oxford in classes where their names appear alphabetically arranged

all i am concerned with here are the results and these are most appropriate to my argument the youths start on their three years race as fairly as possible they are then stimulated to run by the most powerful inducements namely those of competition of honour and of future wealth for a good fellowship is wealth and at the end of the three years they are examined most rigorously according to a system that they all understand

and are equally well prepared for it the examination lasts five and a half hours a day for eight days all the answers are carefully marked by the examiners who add up the marks at the end and range the candidates in strict order of merit the fairness and thoroughness of cambridge examinations have never had a breath of suspicion cast upon them unfortunately for my purposes the marks are not published

they are not even assigned on a uniform system since each examiner is permitted to employ his own scale of marks but whatever the scale he uses the results as to proportional merit are the same i am indebted to a cambridge examiner for a copy of his marks in respect to two examinations in which the scales of marks were so alike

as to make it easy by a slight proportional adjustment to compare the two together this was to a certain degree a confidential communication so that it would be improper for me to publish anything that would identify the use to which these marks refer

i simply give them as groups of figures sufficient to show the enormous differences of merit the lowest man in the list of honours gains less than three hundred marks the lowest wrangler gains about one thousand five hundred marks and the senior wrangler in one of the lists now before me gained more than seven thousand five hundred marks consequently the lowest wrangler has more than five times the merit of the lowest junior

and less than one-fifth the merit of the senior wrangler the results of two years are thrown into a single table the total number of marks obtainable in each year was seventeen thousand table is displayed on the page with two columns number of marks obtained by candidates and the number of candidates in two years taken together who obtained those marks under five hundred twenty four candidates five hundred to one thousand seventy four candidates

1,000 to 1,500: 38 candidates 1,500 to 2,000: 21 candidates 2,000 to 2,500: 11 candidates 2,500 to 3,000: 8 candidates 3,000 to 3,500: 11 candidates 3,500 to 4,000: 5 candidates 4,000 to 4,500: 2 candidates 4,500 to 5,000: 1 candidate

5,000 to 5,500, three candidates. 5,500 to 6,000, one candidate. 5,000 to 7,500, zero candidates. 7,500 to 8,000, one candidate. Total 200 candidates.

the precise number of marks obtained by the senior wrangler in the more remarkable of these two years was seven thousand six hundred and thirty four by the second wrangler in the same year four thousand one hundred twenty three and by the lowest man in the list two hundred and thirty seven

consequently the senior wrangler obtained nearly twice as many marks as the second wrangler and more than thirty-two times as many as the lowest man i have received from another examiner the marks of a year in which the senior wrangler was conspicuously eminent he obtained

nine thousand four hundred twenty two marks whilst second in the same year whose merits were by no means inferior to those of second wranglers in general obtained only five thousand six hundred forty two the man at the bottom of the same honour list had only three hundred nine marks or one-thirtieth the number of the senior wrangler

i have some particulars of a fourth very remarkable year in which the senior wrangler obtained no less than ten times as many marks as the second wrangler in the problem paper now i have discussed with practice examiners the question of how far the numbers of marks may be considered as proportionate to the mathematical power of the candidate and am assured they are strictly proportionate as regards the lower places but do not afford full justice to the highest

in other words the senior wranglers above mentioned had more than thirty or thirty two times the ability of the lowest men on the list of honours they would be able to grapple with problems more than thirty two times as difficult or when dealing with subjects of the same difficulty but intelligible to all would comprehend them more rapidly in perhaps the square root of that proportion

it is reasonable to expect that marx would do some injustice to the very best men because a very large part of the time of the examination is taken up by the mechanical labour of writing whenever the thought of the candidate runs his pen he gains no advantage from his excess of promptitude in conception i should however mention that some of the ablest men have shown their superiority by comparatively little writing they find their way at once to the root of the difficulty in the problem

that are set and with a few clean and prostate powerful strokes succeed in proving they can overthrow it and then they can go on to another question every word they write tells thus the late mr h leslie ellis who was a brilliant senior wrangler in eighteen forty whose name is familiar to many generations of cambridge men as a prodigy of universal genius did not even remain during the full period in the examination room his health was weak and he had to husband his strength

the mathematical powers of the last man on the list of honours which are so low when compared with those of a senior rankler are mediocre or even above mediocrity when compared with the gifts of englishmen generally though the examination places one hundred honour men above him it puts no less than three hundred pole men below him even if we go so far as to allow that two hundred out of the three hundred have used to work hard enough to get honours there will remain one hundred who even if they worked hard could not get them

every tutor knows how difficult it is to drive abstract conceptions even of the simplest kind into the brains of most people how feeble and hesitating is their mental grasp how easily their brains are mazed how incapable they are of precision and soundness of knowledge

it often occurs to persons familiar with some scientific subject to hear men and women of mediocre gifts relate to one another what they have picked up about it from some lecture say at the royal institution where they have sat for an hour listening with delighted attention to an admirably lucid account illustrated by experiments of the most perfect and beautiful character in all of which they express themselves intensely gratified and highly instructed

it is positively painful to hear what they say the recollections seem to be a mere chaos of a mist of misapprehension to some sort of shape an organization has been given by the action of their own pure fancy although alien to what the lecturer intended to convey the average mental grasp even of what is called a well-educated audience will be found to be ludicrously small when rigorously tested

in stating the differences between man and man let it not be supposed for a moment that mathematicians are necessarily one-sided in their natural gifts there are numerous instances of the reverse of which the following will be found as instances of hereditary genius in an appendix to my chapter on science i would especially name leibnitz as being universally gifted but amper aragog condorcet d'alembert

were all of them very far more than mere mathematicians nay say the range of examination at cambridge is so extended as to include other subjects besides mathematics the differences of ability between the highest and lowest of the successful candidates is yet more glaring than what i have already described we still find on the one hand mediocre men whose whole energies are absorbed in getting their two hundred thirty seven marks for mathematics

and on the other hand some few senior wranglers who are at the same time high classical scholars and much more besides cambridge has afforded such instances its lists of classical honours are comparatively of recent date but other evidence is obtainable from earlier times of their occurrence thus dr george butler the headmaster of harrow for many years including the period when byron was a schoolboy father of the present headmaster and of other sons two of whom are also headmasters of great public schools

must have attained that classical office on account of his eminent classical ability but dr butler was also senior wrangler in seventeen ninety four the year when lord chancellor lyndhurst was second both dr kane the late bishop of lincoln and sir e alderson the late judge were the senior wranglers and the first classical prize men of their respective years

since eighteen twenty four when the classical tripos was first established the late mr goulburn brother of dr goulburn dean of norwich and son of the well-known sergeant goulburn was second wrangler in eighteen thirty five and senior classic at the same year

but in more recent times the necessary labour of preparation in order to acquire the highest mathematical places has become so enormous that there has been a wider differentiation of studies there is no longer time for a man to acquire the necessary knowledge to succeed in the first place in more than one subject

there are therefore no instances of a man being absolutely first in both examinations but a few can be found of high eminence in both classics and mathematics as a reference to the list published in the cambridge calendar will show the best of the more recent degrees appears to be that of dr barry late principal of cheltenham and now principal of king's college london the son of the eminent architect sir charles barry and brother of mr edward barry who succeeded his father as architect he was fourth wrangler and seventh classic of his year

In whatever we-made-test ability, we arrive at equally enormous intellectual differences.

lord macauley see under literature for his remarkable kinships had one of the most tenacious of memories he was able to recall many pages of hundreds of volumes by various authors which he had acquired by simply reading them over an average man could not certainly carry in his memory one thirty-second a or one hundredth part as much as lord macauley the father of seneca had one of the greatest memories on record in ancient times see under literature for his kinships

Parson, the Greek scholar, was remarkable for his gift. And I may add, the Parson memory was hereditary in that family.

In statemanship, generalship, literature, science, poetry, art, just the same enormous differences are found between man and man, and numerous instances recorded in this book will show in how small degree eminence, either in these or any other class of intellectual powers, can be considered as due to purely special powers. They are rather to be considered in those instances as a result of concentrated efforts made by men who are widely gifted.

people lay too much stress on a parent's specialities thinking over rashly that because a man is devoted to some particular pursuit he could not possibly have succeeded in anything else they might just as well say that because a youth had fallen desperately in love with a brunette he could not possibly have fallen in love with a blonde

he may or may not have more natural liking for the former type of beauty than the latter but it is as probable as not that the affair was mainly or wholly due to a general amorousness of disposition

it is just the same with special pursuits a gifted man is often capricious and fickle before he selects his occupation but when it has been chosen he devotes himself to it with a truly passionate ardour after a man of genius has selected his hobby and so adapted himself to it as to seem unfitted for any other occupation in life and to be possessed of but one special aptitude i often notice with admiration how well he bears himself with the circumstances suddenly thrust him into a strange position

he will display an insight into new conditions and a power of dealing with them with which even his most intimate friends were unprepared to accredit him many a presumptuous fool has mistaken indifference and neglect for incapacity and in trying to throw a man of genius on ground where he was unprepared for attack has himself received a most severe and unexpected fall

i am sure that no one who has had the privilege of mixing in the society of the abler man of any great capital or who is acquainted with the biographies of the heroes of history can doubt the existence of grand human animals of natures pre-eminently noble of individuals born to be kings of men

i have been conscious of no side misgiving that i was committing a kind of sacrilege whenever in the preparation of materials for this book i had occasion to take the measurement of modern intellects vastly superior to my own or to criticise the genius of the most magnificent historical specimens of our race

it was a process that constantly recalled to me a once familiar sentiment in bygone days of african travel when i used to take altitudes of the huge cliffs that domineered above me as i travelled along their bases or to map the mountains and landmarks of unvisited tribes that loomed in faint grandeur beyond my actual horizon

i have not cared to occupy myself much with people whose gifts are below the average but they would be an interesting study the number of idiots and imbeciles among the twenty million inhabitants of england and wales is approximately estimated at fifty thousand or as one in four hundred

dr seguin a great french authority on these matters states that more than thirty per cent of idiots and imbeciles put under suitable instruction have been taught to conform to social and moral law and rendered capable of order of good feeling and of working like the third of an average man

he says that for more than forty per cent have become capable of the ordinary transactions of life under friendly control of understanding moral and social abstractions and of working like two-thirds of a man and lastly that from twenty-five to thirty per cent come nearer and nearer to the standard of manhood till some of them will defy the scrutiny of good judges when compared with ordinary young men and women

in the order next above idiots and imbeciles are a large number of milder cases scattered among private families and kept out of sight the existence of whom is however well known to relatives and friends they are too silly to take a part in general society but are easily amused with some trivial harmless occupation then comes a class of whom the lord dundreary of the famous play may be considered a representative

and so proceeding through successive grades we gradually ascend to mediocrity i know two good instances of hereditary silliness short of imbecility and have reason to believe i could easily obtain a large number of similar facts to conclude the range of mental power between i will not say the highest caucasian and the lowest savage but between the greatest and least of english intellects is enormous

there is a continuity of natural ability reaching from one knows not what height and descending to one can hardly say what depth i propose in this chapter to range men according to their natural abilities putting them into classes separated by equal degrees in merit and to show the relative number of individuals included in the several classes perhaps some persons might be inclined to make an off-hand guess that the number of men included in the several classes would be pretty equal

If he thinks so, I can assure him he is most egregiously mistaken. The method I shall employ for discovering all this is an application of the very curious theoretical law of deviation from the average. First I will explain the law, and then I will show that the production of natural intellectual gifts comes justly within its scope. The law is an exceedingly general one.

m quidlet the astronomer royal of belgium and the greatest authority on vital and social statistics has largely used it in his inquiries he has also conducted numerical tables by which the necessary calculations can be easily made whenever it is desired to have recourse to the law those who wish to learn more than i have space to relate should consult his work which is a very readable octavo volume and deserves to be far better known to statisticians than it appears to be

Its title is Letters on Probabilities, translated by Downes, Leighton & Co., London, 1849. So much has been published in recent years about statistical deductions that I am sure the reader will be prepared to assert freely to the following hypothetical case.

suppose a large island inhabited by a single race who intermarried freely and who had lived for many generations under constant conditions then the average height of the male adults of that population would undoubtedly be the same year after year

Also, still arguing from the experience of modern statistics, which are found to give constant results in far less carefully guided examples, we should undoubtedly find, year after year, the same proportion maintained between the number of men of different heights. I mean, if the average stature was found to be 66 inches, and if it was also found in any one year that 100 per

per million exceeded seventy eight inches the same proportion of one hundred per million would be closely maintained in all other years an equal constancy of proportion would be maintained between any other limits of height we please to specify as between seventy one and seventy two inches between seventy two and seventy three inches and so on

statistical experiences are so invariably conformatory of what i have stated would probably be the case as to make it unnecessary to describe a necklace instances now at this point the law of deviation from an average steps in

it shows that the number per million whose heights range between seventy one and seventy two inches or between any other limits we please to name can be predicted from the previous datum of the average and of any one other fact such as that of one hundred per million exceeding seventy eight inches

the diagram on page twenty eight will make this more intelligible suppose a million of the men who stand in turns with their backs against a vertical board of sufficient height and their heights to be dotted off upon it the board would then present the appearance shown in the diagram

the line of average height is that which divides the dots into two equal parts and stands in the case we have assumed at the height of sixty six inches the dots will be found to be ranged so symmetrically on either side of the line of average that the lower half of the diagram will be almost a precise reflection of the upper

Next, let a hundred dots be counted from above downwards, and let a line be drawn below them. According to the conditions, this line will stand at the height of 78 inches. Using the data afforded by these two lines, it is possible, by the help of the law of deviation from the average, to reproduce with an extraordinary closeness the entire system of dots on the board.

M. Quedlet gives tables in which the uppermost line, instead of cutting off 100 in a million, cuts off only 1 in a million. He divides the intervals between the line and the line of the average into 80 equal divisions and gives the number of dots that fall within each of those deviations. It is easy, by the help of his tables, to calculate what would occur under any other system of classification we please to adopt.

This law of deviation from an average is perfectly general in its application. Thus, if the marks had been made by bullets fired at a horizontal line stretched in front of the target, they would have been distributed according to the same law. Where a large number of similar events, each due to the resultant influences of the same variable conditions, two effects will follow. First, the average value of those events will be constant, and secondly, the deviations of the several events from the average will be governed by this law.

which is in principle the same as that which governs runs of luck at a gaming table.

the nature of the conditions affecting the several events must i say be the same it clearly would not be proper to combine the heights of men belonging to two dissimilar races in the expectation that the compound results would be governed by the same constants a union of two dissimilar systems of dots would produce the same kind of confusion as if half the bullets fired at a target had been directed to one mark and the other half at another mark nay an examination of the dots would show

to a person ignorant of what had occurred that such had been the case and it would be possible by aid of the law to disentangle two or any moderate number of superimposed series of marks the law may therefore be used as a most trustworthy criterion whether or no the events of which an average has been taken are due to the same or to dissimilar classes of conditions

i selected the hypothetical case of a race of men living on an island and freely intermarrying to ensure the conditions under which they were all supposed to live being uniform in character it will now be my aim to show there is sufficiently uniformity in the inhabitants of the british isles to bring them fairly within the grasp of this law

For this purpose, I first call attention to an example given in Quedlet's book. It is of the measurements of the circumferences of the chests of a large number of Scotch soldiers. The Scotch are by no means a strictly uniform race, nor are they exposed to identical conditions. They are a mixture of Celts, Danes, Anglo-Saxons and others in various proportions, the Highlanders being almost purely Celts. On the other hand, these races, though diverse in origin, are not very dissimilar in character.

consequently it will be found that their deviations from the average follow theoretical computations with remarkable accuracy the instance is as follows m quidlat obtained his facts from the thirteenth volume of the edgar medical journal where the measurements are given in respect to five thousand seven hundred thirty eight soldiers the results being grouped in order of magnitude proceeding by differences of one inch

Professor Quedler compares these results with those that his tables give, and here is the result. The marvelous accordance between fact and theory must strike the most unpracticed eye. I should say that, for the sake of convenience, both the measurements and calculations have been reduced to per thousandth. A table is displayed on the page, with six columns going down. Measurement of the chest in inches. Number of men per one thousand by experience. Number of men per one thousand by calculation.

Measures of the chest in inches, number of men per 1000 by experience, number of men per 1000 by calculation.

I will now take a case where there is a greater dissimilarity in the elements of which the average has been taken. It is the height of 100,000 French conscripts. There is fully as much variety in the French as in the English, for it is not very many generations since France was divided into completely independent kingdoms. Among its peculiar races are those of Normandy, Brittany, Alsatia, Provence, Bern, Auvergne,

each with their special characteristics. Yet the following table shows a most striking agreement between the results of experience compared with those derived by calculations from a purely theoretical hypothesis. A table is displayed on the page, height of men in inches and the number of men divided between measured and calculated. The greatest differences are in the lowest ranks. They include the men who were rejected for being too short for the army.

m quetelet boldly ascribes these differences to the effect of fraudulent returns it certainly seems that men have been improperly taken out of the second rank and put into the first in order to exempt them from service be this as it may the coincidence of fact with theory is in this instance also quite close enough to serve my purpose

i argue from the results obtained from frenchmen and from scotchmen that if we had measurements of the adult males in the british isles we should find those measurements to range in close accordance with the law of deviation from the average although our population is as much mingled as i described that of scotland to have been and although ireland is mainly peopled of celts

now if this be the case with stature then it will be true as regards every other physical feature as circumference of head size of brain weight of grain matter number of brain fibres c and thence by a step on which no physiologist will hesitate as regards mental capacity this is what i am driving at

that analogy clearly shows there must be a fairly constant average mental capacity in the inhabitants of the british isles and that the deviations from the average upwards towards genius and downwards towards stupidity must follow the law that governs deviations from all true averages

i have however done somewhat more than rely on analogy i have tried the results of those examinations in which the candidates have been derived from the same classes most persons have noticed the lists of successful competitors for various public appointments that are published from time to time in the newspapers with the marks gained by each candidate attached to his name these lists contain far too few names to fall into such beautiful accordance with theory as was the case with the scotch soldiers

there are rarely more than one hundred names in any one of these examinations while the chests of no less than five thousand seven hundred scotsmen were measured i cannot justly combine the marks of several independent examinations into one fagot for i understand that different examiners are apt to have different figures of merit so i have analysed each examination separately

i give a calculation i made on the examination last before me it will do as well as any other it was for admission into the royal military college at sandhurst december eighteen sixty eight the marks obtained were clustered most strictly about three thousand so i take that number as representing the average ability of the candidates from this datum and from the fact that no candidate obtained more than six thousand five hundred marks i computed the column b in the following table by the help of quetelet's numbers

It will be seen that Column B accords of Column A quite as closely as the small number of persons examined could have led us to expect. A table is displayed on the page of five columns. The number of marks obtained by candidates and the number of candidates who obtained those marks subdivided according to fact with a total and according to theory with a total. An additional section with either did not venture to compete or were plucked.

the symmetry of the descending branch has been rudely spoilt by the conditions stated at the foot of column a there is therefore little room for doubt if everybody in england had to work our object then to pass before examiners who employed similar figures of merit that their marks would be found to range according to the law of deviation from an average just as previously as the heights of french conscripts or the circumferences of the chests of scotch soldiers

the number of grades into which we may divide ability is purely a matter of option we may consult our convenience by sorting englishmen into a few large classes or into many small ones i will select a system of classification that shall be easily comparable with the numbers of eminent men as described in the previous chapter

We have seen that two hundred and fifty men per million became eminent accordingly. I have so contrived the classes in the following table that the two highest, F and G, together with X, which includes all cases beyond G, and which are unclassed, shall amount to about that number, namely to two hundred and forty-eight per million. The table is displayed on the page Classification of Men According to Their Natural Gifts.

tables divide up in several columns grades of natural ability separated by equal intervals sub-divided between below average and above average another set of columns numbers of men comprised into the several grades of natural ability whether in respect to their general powers or to special aptitudes

It is subdivided again into proportionate viz. 1 in, in each million of the same age. And finally, in total male population of the United Kingdom viz. 15 millions of the undetermined ages, which is subdivided again into 6 separate columns of 20-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60, 60-70, and 70-80.

the proportions of men of different ages are calculated from the proportions that are true for england and wales census eighteen sixty one appendix page one hundred seven example

the class f contains one in every four thousand three hundred men in other words there are two hundred thirty three of that class in each million of men the same is true of class f in the whole united kingdom there are five hundred ninety men of class f and the same number of f between the ages of twenty and thirty four hundred fifty between the ages of thirty and forty and so on

it will i trust be clearly understood that the numbers of men in the several classes in my table depend on no uncertain hypothesis they are determined by the assured law of deviations from an average

it is an absolute fact that if we pick out of each million the one man who is naturally the ablest and also the one man who is the most stupid and divide the remaining nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety eight men into fourteen classes the average ability in each being separated from that of its neighbours by equal grades

then the numbers in each of those classes will on the average of many millions be as is stated in the table the table may be applied as special just as truly as to general ability

it would be true for every examination that brought out natural gifts whether held in painting in music or in statesmanship that proportions between the different classes would be identical in all these cases although the classes would be made up of different individuals according as the examination differed in its purport it will be seen that more than half of each million is contained in the two mediocre classes lower case a and capital a

the four mediocre classes a b a b contain more than four-fifths and the six mediocre classes more than nineteen twentieths of the entire population thus the rarity of commanding ability and the vast abundance of mediocrity is no accident but follows of necessity from the very nature of these things

the meaning of the word mediocrity admits of little doubt it defines the standard of intellectual power found in most provincial gatherings because the attractions of a more stirring life in the metropolis and elsewhere are apt to draw away the avid classes of men and the silly and the abyssal do not take a part in the gatherings hence the residuum that forms the bulk of the general society of small provincial places is commonly very pure in its mediocrity

the class c possesses abilities a trifle higher than those commonly possessed by the foreman of the ordinary jury d includes the mass of men who obtain the ordinary prizes of life e is a stage higher then we reach f the lowest of those yet superior classes of intellect with which this volume is chiefly concerned

On descending the scale, we find by the time we have reached lowercase f that we are already among idiots and imbeciles. We have seen in page 25 there are 400 idiots and imbeciles to every million of persons living in this country, but that 30% of their number appears to be like cases to whom the name of idiot is inappropriate.

there will remain two hundred eighty true idiots and imbeciles to every million of our population this ratio coincides very closely with the requirements of class f no doubt a certain proportion of them are idiotic owing to some fortuitous cause which may interfere with the working of a naturally good brain much as a bit of dirt may cause a first-grade chronometer to keep worse time than an ordinary watch but i presume from the usual smallness of head

an absence of disease among these persons that the proportion of accidental idiots cannot be very large.

hence we arrive at the undeniable but unexpected conclusion that eminently gifted men are raised as much above mediocrity as idiots are depressed below it a fact that is calculated to considerably enlarge our ideas of the enormous differences of intellectual gifts between man and man i presume the class of dogs and other of more intelligent sort of animals is nearly commensurate with the lower class of the human race

in respect to memory and powers of reason certainly the class g of such animals is far superior to the lower case g of humankind chapter three of hereditary genius chapter four of hereditary genius by francis galton this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or volunteer please visit librivox.org recorded by leon harvey chapter four comparison of the two classifications

is reputation a fair test of natural ability it is the only one i can employ am i justified in using it how much of a man's success is due to his opportunities how much to his natural power of intellect this is a very old question on which a great many commonplaces have been uttered and need not be repeated here i will confine myself to a few considerations such as seem to me aptly adequate to prove what is wanted for my argument

let it clearly be borne in mind what i mean by reputation and ability by reputation i mean the opinion of contemporaries revised by posterity the favourable result of a critical analysis of each man's character by many biographers i do not mean high social or official position nor such as is implied by being the mere line of a london season but i speak of the reputation of a leader of opinion of an originator of a man to whom the world deliberately acknowledges itself largely indebted

By natural ability I mean those qualities of intellect and disposition which urge and qualify men to perform acts that lead to reputation. I do not mean capacity without zeal, nor zeal without capacity, nor even a combination of both of them, without an adequate power of doing a great deal of very laborious work. But I mean a nature which, when left to itself, will, urged by an inherent stimulus, climb the path that leads to eminence, and has strength to reach the summit, one which,

if hindered or thwarted will fret and strive until the hindrance is overcome and it is again free to follow its labour-loving instinct it is almost a contradiction in terms to doubt that such men will generally become eminent on the other hand there is plenty of evidence in this volume to show that few have won high reputations without possessing these particular gifts it follows that the men who achieve eminence and those who are naturally capable are to a large extent identical

the particular meaning in which i employ the word ability does not restrict my argument from a wider application for if i succeed in showing as i undoubtedly shall do that the concrete triple event of ability combined with zeal and with capacity for hard labour is inherited much more will there be justified for believing that any one of its three elements whether it be ability or zeal or capacity for labour is similarly a gift of inheritance

i believe and shall do my best to show that if the eminent men of any period had been changelings when babies a very fair proportion of those who survived and retained their health up to fifty years of age would notwithstanding their altered circumstances have equally risen to eminence thus to take a strong case is incredible that any combination of circumstances could have repressed lord brougham to the level of undistinguished mediocrity

the arguments on which i rely are as follow i will limit their application for the present to men of the pen and to artists first it is a fact that numbers of men rise before their middle age from the humbler ranks of life to that worldly position to which it is of no importance to their future career how their youth has been passed

they have overcome their hindrances and thus start fair with others more fortunately reared in the subsequent race for life a boy who is to be carefully educated is sent to a good school where he acquires little useful information but where he is taught the art of learning the man of whom i have been speaking has contrived to acquire the same art in a school of adversity both stand on equal terms when they have reached mature life

they compete for the same prizes measure their strength by efforts in the same direction and their relative successes are then swore due to their relative natural gifts there are many such men in the eminent class as biographies abundantly show now if the hindrances to success were very great we should expect all who surmount them to be prodigious of genius the hindrances would form a system of natural selection by repressing all whose gifts were below a certain very high level but what is the case

we find very many who have risen from the ranks who are by no means prodigious of genius many who have no claim to eminence who have risen easily in spite of all obstacles the hindrances undoubtedly form a system of natural selection that represses mediocre men and even men of pretty fair powers in short the class is below upper d but many of upper d succeed a great many of upper e and i believe a very large majority of those above

if a man is gifted with vast intellectual ability eagerness to work and power of working i cannot comprehend how such a man should be repressed the world is always tormented with difficulties waiting to be solved struggling with ideas and feelings to which it can give no adequate expression

if then there exists a man capable of solving those difficulties or of giving a voice to those pent-up feelings he is sure to be welcomed with universal acclamation we may almost say that he has only to put his pen to paper and the thing is done i am here speaking of the very first-class men prodigies one in a million or one in ten millions of whom numbers will be found described in this volume as specimens of hereditary genius

another argument to prove that the hindrances of english social life are not effectual in repressing high ability is that the number of eminent men in england is as great as in other countries where fewer hindrances exist

culture is far more widely spread in america than with us and the education of their middle and lower classes far more advanced but for all that america most certainly does not beat us in first-class works of literature philosophy or art the higher kind of books even of the most moderate date read in america are principally the work of englishmen the americans have an immense amount of the newspaper article writer or of the member of congress stamp of ability but the number of their really eminent authors is more limited even than with us

i argue that if the hindrances of the rise of genius were removed from english society as completely as they have been removed from that of america we should not become materially richer in highly eminent men

people seem to have the idea that the way to eminence is one of great self-denial for which there are hourly temptations to diverge in which a man can be kept in his boyhood only by a schoolmaster's severity or appearance incessant watchfulness and in after life by the attractions of fortunate friendships and other favourable circumstances

this is true enough of the great majority of men but it is simply not true of the generality of those who have gained great mutations such men biography showed to be haunted and driven by an incessant instinctive craving for intellectual work if forcibly withdrawn from the path that leads towards eminence they will find their way back to it as surely as a lover to his mistress

they do not work for the sake of eminence but to satisfy a natural craving for brain work just as athletes cannot endure repose on account of their muscular irritability which insists upon exercise it is very unlikely that any conjunction of circumstances should supply a stimulus to brain work commensurate with what these men carry in their own constitutions the action of external stimuli must be uncertain and intermittent owing to their very nature the disposition abides

it keeps a man ever employed now wrestling with his difficulties now brooding over his immature ideas and renders him a quick and eager listener to innumerable almost inaudible teachings that others are keenly on the watch and are sure to miss these considerations lead to my third argument i have shown that social hindrances cannot impede men of high ability from becoming eminent

i shall now maintain that social advantages are incompetent to give that status to a man of moderate ability it would be easy to point out several men of fair capacity who have been pushed forward by all kinds of help who are ambitious and exert themselves to the utmost but who completely fail in attaining eminence

their great peers they may be lord lieutenants of countries if they belong to great county families they may become influential members of parliament and local notabilities when they die they leave a blank for a while in a large circle but there is no westminster abbey and no public mourning for them perhaps barely a biographical notice in the columns of the daily papers

it is difficult to specify two large classes of men with equal social advantages in one of which they have high hereditary gifts while in the other they have not i must not compare the sons of eminent men with those of non-eminent because much which i ascribe to breed others might ascribe to parental encouragement and example therefore i will compare the sons of eminent men with the adopted sons of popes and other dignitaries of the roman catholic church

the practice of nepotism among ecclesiastics is universal it consists in their giving those social helps to a nephew or other more distant relative that ordinary people give to their children now i shall show abundantly in the course of this book that the nephew of an eminent man has far less chance of becoming eminent than a son and that a more remote kinsman has far less chance than a nephew

we may therefore make a very fair comparison for the purposes of my argument between the success of the sons of eminent men and that of the nephews or more distant relatives who stand in the place of sons to the high unmarried in ecclesiastics of the romish church if social help is really of the highest importance the nephews of the popes will attain eminence as frequently or nearly so as the sons of other eminent men otherwise they will not

are then the nephews etc of the popes on the whole as highly distinguished as are the sons of other equally eminent men i answer decidedly not there have been a few popes who would solve illustrious races such as that of the medici but in the enormous majority of cases the pope is the ablest member of his family

i do not profess to have worked up the kinships of the italians with any especial care but i have seen amply enough of them to justify me in saying that the individuals whose advancement has been due to nepotism are curiously undistinguished

the very common combination of the able son and an eminent parent is not matched in the case of high romish ecclesiastics by an eminent nephew and an eminent uncle the social helps are the same but hereditary gifts are wanting in the latter case to recapitulate i have endeavoured to show respect to literary and artistic eminence one that men who are gifted with high abilities even men of class upper e easily rise through all the obstacles caused by inferiority of social rank

two countries where there are fewer hindrances than in england to a poor man rising in life produce a much larger proportion of persons of culture but not of what i call eminent men three men who are largely aided by social advantages are unable to achieve eminence unless they are endowed with high national gifts

it may be well to add a few supplementary remarks on the small effects of a good education on a mind of the highest order a youth of abilities g and x is almost independent of ordinary school education he learns from passing hints with a quickness and thoroughness that others cannot comprehend

he is omnivorous of intellectual work devouring in a vast deal more than he can utilize but extracting a small percentage of nutriment that makes in the aggregate an enormous supply the best care that a master can take of such a boy is to leave him alone just directing a little here and there and checking desultory tendencies

it is a mere accident if a man is placed in his youth in the profession for which he has the most special vocation it will consequently be remarked in my short biographical notices that the most illustrious men have frequently broken loose from the life prescribed by their parents and followed careless of cost the paramount dictation of their own natures in short they educate themselves d'alembert is a striking instance of this kind of self-reliance

he was a foundling afterwards shown to be well bred as respects ability and pulled out to nurse as a pauper baby to the wife of a poor glazier the child's indomitable tendency to the highest studies could not be repressed by his foster-mother's ridicule and dissuasion nor by the taunts of his schoolfellows nor by the discouragements of his schoolmaster who was incapable of appreciating him nor even by the reiterated deep disappointment of finding that his ideas which he knew to be original were not novel but long previously discovered by others

of course we should expect a boy of this kind to undergo ten or more years of apparently hopeless strife but we should equally expect him to succeed at last and alan birch did succeed in attaining the first rank of celebrity by the time he was twenty-four the reader has only to turn over the pages of my book to find abundant instances of this emergence from obscurity in spite of the utmost discouragement in early youth

a prodigal nature commonly so prolongs the period when a man's preceptive faculties are at his keenest that a faulty education in youth is readily repaired in after life the education of watt the great mathematician was of a merely elementary character during his youth and manhood he was engrossed with mechanical specialities it was not till he became advanced in years that he had leisure to educate himself and yet by the time he was an old man he had become singularly well-read and widely and accurately informed

the scholar who in the eyes of his contemporaries and immediate successors made one of the greatest reputations as such that any man has ever made was julius caesar

his youth was i believe entirely unlettered he was in the army until he was twenty-nine and then he led a vagrant professional life trying everything and sticking to nothing at length he fixed himself upon greek his first publications were at the age of forty-seven and between that time and the period of a somewhat early death he earned his remarkable reputation only exceeded by that of his son

boyhooding youth the period between fifteen and twenty-two years of age which are forward to the vast majority of men the only period for the acquirement of intellectual facts and habits at just seven years no the more nor less important than other years in the lives of men of the highest order people are too apt to complain of their imperfect education insinuating that they would have done great things if they had been more fortunately circumstanced in youth

but if their power of learning is materially diminished by the time they have discovered their want of knowledge it is very profitable that their abilities are not of a very high description and that however well they might have been educated they would have succeeded but little better even if a man be long unconscious of his powers an opportunity is sure to occur they occur over and over again to every man that will discover them

even if a man be long unconscious of his powers an opportunity is sure to occur they occur over and over again to every man that will discover them he will then soon make up for past arrears and outstep competitors with very many years start in the race of life

there is an obvious analogy between the man of brains and the man of muscle in the unmistakable way in which they may discover and assert their claims to superiority over less gifted but far better educated competitors an average sailor climbs rigging and the average alpine guide scrambles along cliffs with a facility that seems like magic to a man who has been reared away from ships and mountains

but if he have extraordinary gifts a very little trial will reveal them and he will rapidly make up for his arrears of education a born gymnast will soon in his turn astonish the sailors by his feats before the voyage was half over he would outrun them like an escaped monkey i have witnessed an instance of this myself every summer it happens that some young english tourist who has never previously planted his foot on a crag or ice succeeds in alpine work to a marvellous degree

thus far i have spoken only of literary men and artists who however form the bulk of the two hundred fifty per million that attain to eminence the reasoning that is true for them requires large qualifications when applied to statesmen and commanders unquestionably the most illustrious statesmen and commanders belong to say the least to the classes f and g of ability

but it does not at all follow that an english cabinet minister if he be a great territorial lord should belong to those classes or even to the two or three below them social advantages have enormous power in bringing a man into so prominent a position as a statesman that it is impossible to refuse him the title of eminent though it may be more than probable that if he had been changed in his cradle and reared in obscurity he would have lived and died without emerging from humble life

again we have seen that a union of three separate qualities intellect zeal and power of work are necessary to raise men from the ranks only two of these qualities in a remarkable degree namely intellect and power of work are required by man who is pushed into public life because when he is once there the interest is so absorbing and the competition so keen as to supply the necessary stimulus to an ordinary mind therefore many men who have succeeded as statesmen would have been nobodies had they been born in a lower rank of life

they would have needed zeal to rise talleyrand would have passed his way as other grand seigneurs if he had not been ejected from his birthright by a family council on account of his deformity and thrown into the vortex of the french revolution the furious excitement of the game overcame his inveterate indolence and he developed into the foremost man of the period after napoleon and mirabel

as for sovereigns they belong to a peculiar category the qualities most suitable to the ruler of a great nation are not such as lead to eminence in private life devotion to particular studies obstinate perseverance geniality and frankness in social relations are important qualities to make a man rise in the world but they aren't suitable to a sovereign he has to view many interests and opinions with an equal eye

to know how to yield his favourite ideas to popular pressure to be reserved in his friendships and be able to stand alone on the other hand a sovereign does not greatly need the intellectual powers that are essential to the rise of a common man because the best brains of the country are at his service consequently i do not busy myself in this volume with the families of merely able sovereigns only with those few whose military and administrative capacity is acknowledged to have been of the very highest order

as regards commanders the qualities that rise a man to a peerage may be of a peculiar kind that would not have raised him to eminence in ordinary times

strategy is as much a speciality as chess-playing and large practice is required to develop it it is difficult to see how strategic gifts combined with a hardy constitution dashing courage and a restless disposition can achieve eminence in times of peace these qualities are more likely to attract a man to the hunting field if he have enough money or if not to make him an unsuccessful speculator

it consequently happens that generals of high but not very high orders such as napoleon's marshals and cromwell's generals are rarely found to have eminent kinsfolk very different is the case with the most illustrious commanders they are far more than strategists and men of ruthless dispositions they would have distinguished themselves under any circumstances their kinships are most remarkable as will be seen in my chapter on commanders which includes the names of alexander scipio hannibal caesar

marlborough cromwell the princes of nassau wellington and napoleon precisely the same remarks are applicable to demagogues those who rise to the surface and play a prominent part in the transactions of a troubled period must have courage and force of character but they need not have high intellectual powers nay it is more appropriate that the intellects of such men should be narrow and one-sided and their dispositions moody and embittered

these are not qualities that lead to eminence in ordinary times consequently the families of such men are mostly unknown to fame but kinships of popular leaders of the highest order as of the two gracchi of the two arteveldes and of mirabeau are illustrious

i may mention a class of cases that strikes me forcibly as proof that a sufficient power of command to lead to eminence in troubled times is much less unusual than is commonly supposed and that it lies neglected in the literary life in beleaguered towns as for example during the great indian mutiny a certain type of character very frequently made its appearance people rose into notice who had never previously distinguished themselves and subsided into their former way of life

after the occasion for exertion was over while during the continuance of danger and misery they were the heroes of the situation they were cool in danger sensible in comfort cheerful under prolonged suffering humane to the wounded and sick encouragers of the faint-hearted such people were formed to shine only under exceptional circumstances

they had the advantage of possessing too tough a fibre to be crushed by anxiety and physical misery and perhaps in consequence of that very toughness they required a stimulus of the sharpest kind to goad them toward the exertions of which they were capable

the result of what i have said is to show that in statesmen and commanders mere eminence is by no means a satisfactory criterion of such natural gifts as would make a man distinguished under whatever circumstances he had been reared on the other hand statesmen of a higher order and commanders of the very highest who overthrow all opponents must be prodigiously gifted the reader must judge the cases i quote in proof of hereditary gifts by their several merits

i have endeavoured to speak of none but the most illustrious names it would have led to false conclusions had i taken a larger number and thus descended to a lower level of merit in conclusion i see no reason to be dissatisfied with the conditions under which i am bound of accepting high reputation as a very fair test of high ability the nature of the test would not have been altered if i had attempted to readjust each man's reputation according to his merits because this is what every biographer does

if i had possessed the critical power of a saint-beuve i should have merely thrown into literature another of those numerous expressions of opinion by the aggregate of which all reputations are built to conclude i feel convinced that no man can achieve a very high reputation without being gifted with very high abilities and i trust i have shown reason to believe that few who possess these very high abilities can fail in achieving eminence chapter four

CHAPTER FIVE NOTATION I entreat my readers not to be frightened at the first sight of the notation I employ, for it is really very simple to understand and easy to recollect.

it was impossible for me to get on without the help of something of the sort as i found our ordinary nomeniculture far too ambiguous as well as cumbrous for employment in this book for example the terms uncle nephew grandfather and grandson have each of them two distinct meanings an uncle may be the brother of the father or the brother of the mother the nephew may be the son of a brother or the son of a sister and so on

there are four kinds of first cousins namely the sons of the two descriptions of uncles and those of the two corresponding aunts there are sixteen kinds of first cousins once removed for either upper a may be the son of any one of the four descriptions of male or of the four female cousins of upper b or upper b may bear any one of those relationships to upper a

I need not quote more instances in allusion of which I have said that unbound confusion would have been introduced had I confined myself to this book, to our ordinary nomenclature. The notation I employ gets rid of all this confused and cumbrous language, it distangles relationships in a marvelously complete and satisfactory manner, and enables us to methodise, compare, and analyse them in any way we like.

speaking generally and without regarding the type in which the letters are printed f stands for father g for grandfather u for uncle n for nephew b for brother s for son and p for grandson petit fils in french

These letters are printed in capitals when the relationship is to be expressed as passed through the male line and in small type when through the female line. Therefore, U is a parental uncle, G the parental grandfather, N is a nephew that is son of a brother, P a grandson that is the child of a son. So again, U is the maternal uncle, G the maternal grandfather,

lowercase n, a nephew that is son of a sister, lowercase p, a grandson that is a child of a daughter. Precisely the same letters in the form of italics are employed for the female relations. For example, in correspondence with uppercase U, there is uppercase U in italics to express an aunt that is a sister of a father, and to lowercase u, there is lowercase u in italics to express an aunt that is a sister of a mother.

it is a consequence of this system of notation that and and are always printed in capitals and that their correlatives of mother sister and daughter are always expressed in small italicised type as f b and s

the reader must mentally put the word his before the letter denoting kinship and was after it thus adams john second president of the united states s john quincy adams sixth president p c f adams american minister england author would be read his john adams son was j q adams his grandson was c f adams the following table comprises the whole of this notation

A table is displayed on the page showing a family tree in hypothetical form, with the described person set in the middle. Branches of son, daughter, brother, sister, mother and father all lead in opposite directions. Two or more letters are employed to express relationships beyond the compass of this table. Thus the expression for a first cousin speaking in general is uppercase "us", which admits of being specialised in four different forms namely uppercase "us", uppercase italic "us",

lowercase u, uppercase s and lowercase u in italic and uppercase s in italic. As a matter of fact, distant relationships will seldom be found to fall under our consideration. The last explanation I have to make is the meaning of brackets when they enclose a letter. It implies that the person to whose name the letter in brackets is annexed has not achieved sufficient public reputation to be ranked in statistical deductions on equal terms with the rest.

For facility of reference I give lists in alphabetical order of all the letters within the limits of two letters that I employ. Thus I always use uppercase GF for great-grandfather, not uppercase FG, which means the same thing. Alphabetical list of the letters and the male relationships to which they correspond. Uppercase B, brother. F, father. G, grandfather. G, B, great-uncle. GF,

End of chapter 5

CHAPTER VI. THE JUDGES OF ENGLAND BETWEEN 1660 AND 1865

the judges of england since the restoration of the monarchy in sixteen sixty form a group peculiarly well adapted to afford a general outline of the extent and limitations of hereditary and respected genius a judgeship is a guarantee of its professor being gifted with exceptional ability

the judges are sufficiently numerous and prolific to form an adequate basis for statistical inductions and they are the subjects of several excellent biographical treatises it is therefore well to begin our inquiries with a discussion of their relationships we shall quickly arrive at definite results which subsequent chapters treating of more illustrious men and in other careers will check and amplify

it is necessary that i should first say something in support of my assertion that the office of a judge is really a sufficient guarantee that its professor is exceptionally gifted in other countries it may be different to what it is with us but we all know that in england the bench is never spoken of without reverence to the intellectual power of its occupiers a seat on the bench is a great prize to be won by the best men no doubt there are hindrances external to those of nature against a man getting on at the bar and rising to a judgeship

the attorneys may not give him briefs when he is a young barrister and even if he becomes a successful barrister his political party may be out of office for a long period at a time when he was otherwise ripe for advancement i cannot however believe that either of these are serious obstacles in the long run sterling ability is sure to make itself felt and to lead to practice while as to politics the changes of party are sufficiently frequent to give a fair chance to almost every generation

for every man who is a judge there may possibly be two other lawyers of the same standing equally fitted for the post but it is hard to believe there can be a larger number

if not always the foremost the judges are therefore among the foremost of a vast body of legal men the census speaks upwards of three thousand barristers advocates and special pleaders and it must be recollected that those who do not consist of three thousand men taken at haphazard but a large part of them are already selected and it is from these by a second process of selection that the judges are mainly derived

when i say that a large part of the barristers are selected men i speak of those among them who are of humble parentage but have brilliant natural gifts who attract and notice as boys or it may be even as children and were therefore sent to a good school there they won exhibitions and fitted themselves for college where they supported themselves by obtaining scholarships then came fellowships and so they ultimately found their way to the bar many of these have risen to the bench the parentage of the lord chancellors justifies my statement

there have been thirty of them within the period included in my inquiries of these lord hardwick was the son of a small attorney at dover in narrow circumstances lord eldon whose brother was the great almighty judge lord stowell the son of a coal fitter

lord truro was the son of a sheriff's officer and lord st leonard's like lord tennerton and chief justice of common pleas was son of a barber others were sons of clergymen of scanty means others have begun life in alien professions yet notwithstanding their false start have easily recovered lost ground in after life

lord erskine was first in the navy and then in the army before he became a barrister lord chemsford was originally a midshipman now a large number of men with anticitis is unfavourable to success at these and yet successful men are always to be found at the bar

and therefore i say the barristers are themselves a selected body and the fact of every judge having been taken from the foremost rank of three thousand of them is proof that his exceptional ability is of an enormously higher order than if the three thousand barristers had been conscripts drawn by lot from the general mass of their countrymen i therefore need not trouble myself with quoting passages from biographies to prove that each of the judges whose name i have occasion to mention is a highly gifted man it is precisely in order to avoid the necessity of this tedious work

that i have selected the judges for my first chapter in speaking of the english judges i have adopted the well-known lives of the judges by foss as my guide it was published in eighteen sixty five

so i have adopted that date as the limit of my inquiries i have considered those only as falling under the definition of judges whom he includes as such they are the judges of the courts of chancery and common law and the masters of the rolls but not the judges of the admiralty nor of the court of canterbury by the latter limitation i lose the advantage of counting lord stowell brother of lord chancellor eldon the remarkable family of the lushingtons that of sir r phillimore and some others

though the limitations as regards time i lose by ending with the year eighteen sixty three the recently created judges such as judge selwyn brother of the bishop of lichfield and also professor of divinity at cambridge but i believe from cursory inquiries that the relations of these latter judges speaking generally have not so large a share of eminence as we shall find among those of the judges in my list this might have been expected for it is notorious that the standard of ability in a modern judge is not so high as it used to be

the number of exceptionally gifted men being the same it is impossible to supply the new demand for heads of great schools and for numerous other careers now thrown open to able use without seriously limiting the field whence alone good judges may be selected

by beginning at the restoration which i took for my commencement because there was frequent jobbery in earlier days i lose a lord keeper of the same rank as lord chancellor and his still greater son also a lord chancellor namely the two bacons i state these facts to show that i have not picked out the period in question because it seemed most favourable to my argument but simply because it appeared the most suitable to bring out the truth as to hereditary genius and was at the same time

most convenient for me to discuss there are two hundred eighty six judges within the limits of my inquiry one hundred nine of them have one or more eminent relations and three others have relations whom i have noticed but they are marked off with brackets and are therefore not to be included in the following statistical deductions as a ready method of showing at a glance the way in which these relations are distributed i give a table below in which they are all compactly registered

The table is a condensed summary of the appendix to the present chapter, which should be consulted by the reader whenever he desires fuller information. The table is displayed on the page: Table 1: Summary of Relationships of 109 Judges Grouped into 85 Families There are three sections with one relation or two in family, two and three relations or three and four in family, and four or more relations or five and more in family. Several remarkable features in the contents of this table will catch the eye at once.

i will begin by shortly alluding to them and will enter more into details a little further on first it will be observed that the judges are so largely interrelated that one hundred nine of them are grouped into only eighty five families there are seventeen doublets among the judges two triplets and one quadruplet in addition to these might be counted six other sets consisting of those whose ancestors sat on the bench previously to the accession of charles the

beddingfield forster hyde finch windham and leighton another fact to be observed is the nearness of the relationships in my list the single letters are far the most common also though a man has twice as many grandfathers as fathers and probably more than twice as many grandsons as sons yet the judges have found more frequently to have eminent fathers than grandfathers and eminent sons than grandsons

in the third degree of relationship the eminent kinsmen are yet more rare although the number of individuals in those degrees is increased in a duplicate proportion when a judge has no more than one eminent relation that relation is nearly always to be found in the first or second degree thus in the first section of the table which is devoted to single relationships though it includes as many as thirty-nine entries there are only two among them viz brown and lord brougham whose kinships extend beyond the second degree

it is in the last section of the table which treats of whole families largely gifted with the ability that the distinct kinships are chiefly to be found i annex a table table two extracted from the preceding one which exhibits these facts with great clearness column a contains the facts just as they were observed and column d shows the percentage of individuals in each degree of kinship to every one hundred judges who have become eminent table two is displayed on the page

shows several sections with degrees of kinship subdivided to the name of the degree and the corresponding letter an additional five columns with abcdne a number of eminent men in each degree of kinship in the most eminent man of the family eighty five families b the preceding column lays in proportion to one hundred families c number of individuals in each degree of kinship to one hundred men

d percentage of eminent men in each degree of kinship to the most eminent member of distinguished families it was obtained by dividing b by c and multiplying by one hundred e percentages of previous column reduced to the proportion of two hundred eighty six minus twenty four or two hundred forty two to eighty five in order to apply to families generally

Table 2 also gives materials for judging of the comparative influence of the male and female lines, and conveying ability. Thanks to my method of notation, it is perfectly easy to separate the two lines in the way I am about to explain. I do not attempt to compare relations in the first degree of kinship, namely fathers with mothers, sons with daughters, or brothers with sisters, because there exists no criterion for a just comparison of the natural ability of the different sexes.

nay even if there were means for testing it the result would be felicitous a mother transmits masculine peculiarities to a male child which she does not and cannot possess and similarly a woman who is endowed with fewer gifts of a masculine type than her husband may yet contribute in a larger degree to the masculine intellectual superiority of her son i therefore shift my inquiry from the first to the second and third degrees of kinship

as regards the second degree i compare the paternal grandfather with the maternal an uncle by the father's side with the uncle by the mother's the nephew by the brother's side with the nephew by the sister's and the grandson by the son with the grandson by the daughter on the same principle i compare the kinships in the third degree that is to say the father with the father's father with the father of the mother's mother and so on how all the work is distinctly exposed to view in the following compact table in the second degree

7g + 9u + 14n + 11p = 41 kinships through males 6g + 6u + 2n + 5p = 19 kinships through females

In the third degree: 1 uppercase GF + 1 uppercase GB + 5 uppercase US + 7 uppercase NS + 2 uppercase PS = 19 kinships through males 0 lowercase g upper F + 0 lower g upper B + 1 lower u upper case S + 0 lower n upper S + 0 lower p upper S = 1 kinships through females

total sixty through males twenty through females the numbers are too small to warrant any very decided conclusion but they go far to prove that the female influence is inferior to that of the male in conveying ability it must however be observed that the difference between the totals in the second degree is chiefly due to the nephews a relationship difficult to trace on the female side because as a matter of fact biographers do not speak so fully of the descendants of the sisters of their hero as that of his brothers

as regards the third degree the relationships on the female side are much more difficult to ferret out than those on the male and i have no doubt i have omitted many of them in my earlier attempts the balance stood still more heavily against the female side and it has been reduced exactly in proportion to the number of times i have revised my data consequently though i first suspected a large residuum against the female line i think there is reason to believe the influence of females but little inferior to that of males in transmitting judicial ability

it is of course a grief to me in writing this book that circumstances make it impossible to estimate the influence of the individual peculiarities of the mother for good or for bad upon her offspring

they appear to me for the reasons stated to be as important elements in the inquiry as those of the father and yet i am obliged to completely ignore them in a large majority of instances on account of the lack of reliable information nevertheless i have numerous arguments left to prove that genius is hereditary before going further i must entreat my readers to abandon any objection which very likely may present itself to their minds and which i can easily show to be untenable

People who do not realize the nature of my arguments have constantly spoken to me to this effect. It is of no use your quoting successes unless you take failures into equal account. Eminent men may have eminent relations, but they also have very many who are ordinary or even stupid, and there are not a few who are either eccentric or downright mad. I perfectly allow all this, but does not in the least affect the cotency of my arguments.

if a man breeds from strong well-shaped dogs but of mixed pedigree puppies will be sometimes but rarely the equals of their parents they will commonly be of a mongrel nondescript type because ancestral peculiarities are apt to crop out in the offspring yet notwithstanding all this it is easy to develop the desirable characteristics of individual dogs into the assured heirloom of a new breed

the breed who selects the puppies that most nearly approach the wished-for type generation after generation until they have no ancestor within many degrees that has objectionable peculiarities so it is with men and women because one or both of a child's parents are able it does not in the least follow as a matter of necessity but only as one of moderately unfavourable odds that the child will be able also

he inherits an extraordinary mixture of qualities displayed in his grandparents great-grandparents and more remote ancestors as well as from those of his father and mother the most illustrious and so-called well-bred families of the human race are utter mongrels as regards their natural gifts of intellect and disposition

what i profess to prove is this that if two children are taken of whom one is a parent exceptionally gifted in a high degree say as one in four thousand or as one in a million and the other has not the former child has an enormous greater chance of turning out to be gifted in a high degree than the other

also i argue that as a new race can be obtained in animals and plants and can be raised and so great a degree of purity that it will maintain itself with moderate care in preventing the more faulty members of the flock from breeding so a race of gifted men might be obtained under exactly similar conditions

i must apologize for anticipating in this offhand and very imperfect manner the subject of a further chapter by these few remarks but i am really obliged to do so knowing from experience how pertinaciously strangers to the reasoning by which the laws hereditary are established are inclined to prejudge my conclusions by blindly assisting that the objection to which i have referred has overbearing weight

I will now proceed with an examination of what may be learnt from the relationships of the judges. First, I would ask: Are the abler judges more rich in their eminent relations than those who are less able?

There are two ways of answering this question: 1. To examine into the relationships of the law lords as compared with that of the Puscean judges, or of the chancellors compared with that of the judges generally. And the other is to determine whether or no the persons whose names are entered in the third column of table 1 are above the average of judges in respect to ability. Here are a few of the Lord Chancellors:

there are only thirty of those high legal officers within the limits of my inquiry yet twenty-four of these have eminent relations whereas out of the two hundred eighty six minus thirty or two hundred fifty six other judges only one hundred and fourteen minus twenty-four or ninety have eminent relations

there are therefore eighty per cent of the chancellors as compared to thirty six per cent of the rest of the judges that have eminent relations the proportion would have been greater if i had compared the chancellors or the chancellors with the other law lords with the preceding judges the other test i proposed is equally satisfactory

there can be no doubt of the exceptionally eminent ability of the men whose names appear in the third column to those who object to my conclusion because lord chancellors have more opportunities of thrusting relatives by jobbery into eminence than are possessed by the other judges i can do no more than refer them to what i have i already said about the reputation being a test of ability and by giving a short list of the more remarkable cases of relations to the lord chancellors which i think will adequately meet their objection

They are: 1. Earl Bathurst and his daughter's son, the famous judge, Sir F Buller. 2. Earl Camden and his father, Chief Justice Pratt. 3. Earl Clarendon and the remarkable family of Hyde, in which were two uncles and one cousin, all English judges, besides one Welsh judge and many other men of the distinction. 4. Earl Cowper, his brother the judge, and his great nephew the poet.

five earl eldon and his brother lord stowell six lord erskine his eminent legal brother the lord advocate of scotland and his son the judge seven earl nottingham and the most remarkable family of finch eight nine ten earl hardwick and his son also a lord chancellor who died suddenly and that son's great-uncle lord somers also a lord chancellor

eleven lord herbert his son a judge his cousins lord herbert of cherbury and george the poet and divine twelve lord king and his uncle lord locke the philosopher thirteen the infamous but most able lord jeffreys had a cousin just like him namely sir j trevor master of the rolls

fourteen lord guildford is member of a family to which i simply despair of doing justice for it is linked with connexions of such marvellous ability judicial and statesmanlike as to deserve a small volume to describe it it contains thirty first-class men in near kinship including montagues sidneys herberts dudleys and others

fifteen lord truro had two able legal brothers one of whom was chief justice of the cape of good hope and his nephew is an english judge recently created lord penzance

i will here mention lord littleton lord caper charles i although many members of his most remarkable family do not fall within my limits his father the chief justice of north wales married a lady the daughter of sir j walter the chief justice of south wales and also sister of an english judge she bore him lord caper littleton and sir timothy a judge lord littleton's daughter's son she married a cousin was sir t littleton the speaker of the house of commons

there is therefore abundant reason to conclude that the kinsmen of lord chancellors are far richer in natural gifts than those of the other judges i will now take another test of the existence of hereditary ability it is a comparison of the entries in the column of table one supposing that natural gifts were due to mere accident unconnected with parentage then the entries would be distributed in accordance with a law that governs the distribution of accidents

if it be a hundred to one against some member of any family within given limits of kinship drawing a lottery prize it would be a million to one against three members of the same family doing so nearly but not exactly because the size of the family is limited and a million millions to one against six members doing so therefore if natural gifts were due to mere accident the first column of table one would have been enormously longer than the second column and the second column enormously longer than the third but they are not so

there are nearly as many cases of two or three eminent relations as one of eminent relation and as a set-off against the thirty-nine cases that appear in the first column there are no less than fifteen cases in the third it is therefore clear that ability is not distributed at haphazard but that it clings to certain families

we will proceed to a third test if genius be hereditary as i assert it to be the characteristics that make a judge ought to be frequently transmitted to his descendants the majority of judges belong to a strongly marked type they are not men who are carried away by sentiment who love seclusion and dreams but they are prominent members of a very different class one that englishmen are especially prone to honour for at least the six lawful days of the week

i mean that they are vigorous shrewd practical helpful men glorying the rough and tumble of public life tough in constitution and strong in digestion valuing what money brings aiming at position and influence and desiring to found families the vigor of a judge is testified by the fact that the average age of their appointment in the last three reigns has been fifty-seven the labor and responsibility of the office seem enormous to lookers-on yet these elderly men continued working with ease for many more years

their average age of death is seventy-five and they commonly die in harness now are these remarkable gifts and peculiarities inherited by their sons do the judges often have sons who succeed in the same career where success would have been impossible if they had not been gifted with the special qualities of their fathers the best answer is a list of names it will be of much interest to legal readers others can glance over them and go on to the results

the list is provided judges of england and other high legal officers between sixteen sixty and eighteen sixty five who were or are related includes fathers sons brothers and grandfathers out of the two hundred eighty six judges more than one in every nine of them have been either father son or brother to another judge and the other high legal relationships have been even more numerous there cannot then remain a doubt

but that the particular type of ability that is necessary to a judge is often transmitted by dissent the reader must guard himself against the supposition that because the judges have so many legal relations therefore they have few other relations of eminence in other walks of life a long list might be made out of those who had bishops and archbishops for kinsmen no less than ten judges of whom one sir robert hyde appeared in the previous list

have a bishop or an archbishop for a brother of these sir william dolben was brother to one archbishop of york and son of the sister of another namely of john williams who was also lord keeper to james first there are cases of poet relations as cowper coleridge milton sir thomas overbury and waller there are numerous relatives who were novelists physicians admirals and generals my list of kinsmen at the end of this chapter are very briefly treated

but they include the names of many great men whose deeds have filled large volumes it is one of my most serious drawbacks in writing this book to feel that names which never now present themselves to my eye without associations of respect and reverence for the great qualities of those who bore them are likely to be insignificant and meaningless to the eyes

of most of my readers indeed to all those who have never had occasion to busy themselves with their history i know how great was my own ignorance of the character of the great men of previous generations

therefore i occupied myself with the biographies and i therefore reasonably suspect that many of my readers will be no better informed about them than i was myself a collection of men that i have learned to look upon as an august valhalla is likely to be regarded by those who are strangers to the facts of biographical history as an assemblage of mere respectabilities

the names of north and montagu among the judges introduce us to a remarkable breed of eminent men set forth at length in the genealogical tree of the montagues and again in that of the sydney's literary men to whose natural history if the expression be permitted a few pages may be profitably assigned there is hardly a name in those pedigrees which is not more than ordinarily eminent many are illustrious they are closely tied together in their kinship and they extend through ten generations

The main roots of this diffused ability lie in the families of Sidney and Montagu, and, in a less degree, in that of North. The Sidney blood, I mean that of the descendants of Sir William Sidney and his wife, had extraordinary influence in two different combinations, first with the Dudleys, producing in the first generation Sir Philip Sidney and his eminent brother and sister, in the second generation at least one eminent man, and in the third generation Algernon Sidney, with his able brother and much-be-praised sister.

the second combination of the sydney blood was with the harringtons producing in the first generation a literary peer and elizabeth the mother of the large and most remarkable family that forms the chief feature in my genealogical table the montague blood as represented by sir edward who died in the tower sixteen forty four is derived from three distinct sources his great-grandfather

lower case g upper case f was sir john phinnaix chief justice of the king's bench his grandfather lower case g was john roper attorney-general to henry the eighth and his father by far the most eminent of the three was sir edward montagu chief justice of the king's bench

sir edward montagu son of the chief justice married elizabeth harrington of whom i have just spoken and had a large family who in themselves and in their descendants became most remarkable to mention only the titles they won in the first generation they obtained two peerages the earldom of manchester and the barony of montagu in the second they obtained two more the earldom of sandwich and the barony of capel

In the third, five more: the Dukedom of Montagu, Earldoms of Halifax and of Essex, the Barony of Guildford, and the new Barony of Capple, second creation. In the fourth, one more: the Dukedom of Manchester, the Premier in 1701. In the fifth, one more: the Earldom of Guildford. The second Earl of Guildford, the Premier of George III, best known as Lord North, was in the sixth generation. It is wholly impossible for me to describe the characteristics of all the individuals who are jotted down in my journalical tree.

i cannot do it without giving a vast deal more room than i can spare but this much i can do and ought to do namely to take those who are most closely linked with the judges and to show that they possessed sterling ability and did not hold their high positions by mere jobbery nor obtain their reputations through the accident of birth or circumstances

i will gladly undertake to show this although it happens in the present instance to put my cause in a peculiarly disadvantageous light because francis north the lord keeper the first baron guildford is the man of all others in the high position identical or nearly so with that of a lord chancellor whom modern authorities vie in disparaging and condemning

those who oppose my theories might say the case of north bank lord keeper shows that it is impossible to trust official rank as a criterion of ability he was promoted by jobbery and jobbed when he was promoted he inherited family influence not natural intellectual gifts and the same may be said of all the members of this or any other pedigree

As I implied before, there is another truth in this objection to make it impossible to meet it by a flat contradiction based on a plain and simple statement. It is necessary to analyse characters, and to go a little into detail. I will do this, and when it is concluded I believe many of my readers will better appreciate than they did before how largely natural intellectual gifts are the birthright of some families. Francis North, the Lord Keeper, was one of a family of five brothers and one sister.

the lives of three of the brothers are familiarly known to us through the charming biographies written by another brother roger north their position in the montagu family is easily discovered by means of the genealogical tree

they have fallen a third of those generations i have just described the one in which the family gained one dukedom two earldoms and two baronies their father was of a literary stock continued backwards in one line during no less than five generations the first lord north was an eminent lawyer in the time of queen elizabeth and his son an able man and as an ambassador married the daughter of lord chancellor

his son again who did not live to enjoy the peerage married the daughter of a master of the court of requests and his great-great-grandsons the intermediate links being more or less distinguished but of whose marriages i know little were the brothers north of whom i am about to speak the father of these brothers was the fourth baron north he was a literary man and among other matters wrote the life of the founder of his family

he was an economical man and an exquisitely virtuous and sober in his person the style of his writings was not so bright as that of his father the second baron who was described as full of spirit and flame and who was an author both in prose and verse his poems were praised by walpole

the mother of the brothers namely anne montagu is described by her son as a compendium of charity and wisdom i suspect it was from the fourth baron north that the disagreeable qualities in three of the brothers north were derived such as the priggishness of the lord keeper and that curious saving mercantile spirit that appeared under different forms in the lord keeper the financer and the master of trinity college

I cannot avoid alluding to these qualities for they are prominent features in their characters and find a large place in their biographies.

in speaking of the lord keeper i think i had better begin with the evil part of his character when that has been omitted and done with the rest of my task will be pleasant and interesting in short the lord keeper is mercilessly handled in respect to his public character lord campbell calls him the most dubious man that had ever held the great seal and says that throughout his whole life he sought and obtained advancement by the meanest arts bishop burnet calls him crafty and designing lord macquillay accuses him of selfishness cowardice and meanness

i have heard of no writer who commends his public character except his brother who was tenderly attached to him i should say that even lord campbell acknowledges the lord keeper to have been extremely admirable in all his domestic relations and that nothing can be more touching than the account we have of the warm and steady affection between him and his brother who survived to be his biographer

i am however no further concerned with the lord keeper's public character than to show that notwithstanding his most unworthy acts to obtain advancement and notwithstanding he had relatives in high offices to help him his own ability and that of his brothers was truly remarkable bishop burnet says of him that he had not the virtues of his predecessor lord nottingham but he had parts far beyond him however lord campbell descends from this and remarks that a nottingham does not arise above once in a century

I will here beg the reader not to be unmindful of the marvellous hereditary gifts of the Nottingham or Finch family.

Macaulay says his intellect was clear, his industry great, his proficiency in letters and science respectable, and his legal learning more than respectable. His brother Roger writes thus of the Lord Keeper's youth: "It was singular and remarkable in him that, together with the study of the law, which is thought ordinarily to devour the whole studious time of a young gentleman, he continued to pursue his inquiries into all ingenious arts, history, humanity, and languages.

whereby he became not only a good lawyer but a good historian politician mathematician natural philosopher and i must add musician in perfection the honorary sir dudley north his younger brother was a man of exceedingly high abilities and vigour he went as a youth through smyrna where his good works are not yet forgotten and where he made a large fortune then returning to england he became at once a man of the highest note in parliament as a financer

there was an unpleasant side to his character when young but he overmastered and outgrew it namely he first showed a strange bent to traffic when at school afterwards he cheated sadly and got into debts then he cheated his parents to pay the debts at last he made a vigorous effort and wholly reformed himself so that his brother concludes his biography in this way

if i may be so free as to give my thoughts of his morals i must allow that as to all the mercantile arts and stratagems of trade that could be used to get money from those he dealt with i believe he was not niggard but as for falsities he was clear as any man living it seems from the same authority that he was a very forward lively and beautiful child

at school he did not get on so well with his books as he had an excessive desire for action still his ability was such that a little application went a long way with him he came out a moderate scholar he was a great swimmer and could live in the water for a whole afternoon i mention this because i shall hereafter have occasion to speak of physical gifts not unfrequently accompanying intellectual ones

he sometimes left his clothes in charge of a porter below london bridge then ran naked upon the mud shore at thames up along as high as chelsea for the pleasure of swimming down to his clothes with the tide and he loved to end by shooting the cascade beneath old london bridge i often marvelled at his feet when i happened to be on the river in a steamer

i will now quote macaulay's description of his first appearance in his after life on the stage of english politics speaking in his history of england of the period immediately following the ascension of james the second macaulay says the person on whom devolved the task of devising ways and means was sir dudley north younger brother of the lord keeper dudley north was one of the ablest men of his time

he had early in life been sent to the levant where he had long been engaged in mercantile pursuits most men would in such a situation have allowed their faculties to rust for at smyrna and at constantinople there were few books and few intelligent companions but the young factor had one of those vigorous understandings which are independent of external aids

in his solitude he meditated deeply on the philosophy of trade and thought out by degrees a complete and admirable theory substantially the same with that which a hundred years later was expounded by adam smith

north was brought into parliament for banbury and though a new member was the person on whom the lord treasurer chiefly relied for the conduct of financial business in the lower house north's ready wit and perfect knowledge of trade prevailed both in the treasury and the parliament against all opposition the old members were amazed at seeing a man who had not been a fortnight in the house

and whose life had been chiefly passed in foreign countries assumed with confidence and discharged with ability all the functions of a chancellor of the échecuer he was forty-four years old at the time roger north describes the financial theories of his brother thus

one is that trade is not disrupted by its government by nations and kingdoms but is one throughout the whole world as the main sea which cannot be emptied or replenished in one part but the whole more or less would be affected another was concerning money that no nation could want money specie and they would not abound in it for if a people want money they will give a price for it

and then merchants for gain bring it and lay it down before them roger north speaking of sir dudley and of the lord keeper says these brothers lived with extreme satisfaction in each other's society for both had the skill and knowledge of the world as to all affairs relating to their several professions in perfection and each was in indies to the other producing always the richest novelties of which the best understandings are greedy

The honorary Dr John North, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, differed in some respects from his brothers and resembled them in others.

when he was very young and also as he grew up he was of a nice and tender constitution not so vigorous and athletic as most of his brothers were his temper was always reserved and studious if anything so easily seemed to miss in him he was a non-natural gravity which in youth is seldom a good sign for it argues imbecility of body and mind or both but his lay wholly in the former for his mental capacity was vigorous as none more

thus he became devoted to study and the whole of his expenditure went to books in other respects he was penurious and hoarding consequently as his brother says he was overmuch addicted to thinking or else he performed it with more labor and tenseness than other men ordinarily do he was in a word the most intense and passionate thinker that ever lived and it was in his right mind this ruined his health his flesh was strangely flaccid and soft his going weak and shuffling often crossed his legs as if it were tipsy

his sleep seldom or never easy but interrupted with unquiet and painful dreams the reposes he had were short and by snatches his active spirit had rarely any settlement or rest

It is evident that he played foolish tricks with his brain, and the result was that he had a stroke, and utterly broke up, decaying more and more in mind and body until death relieved him at estimate 38. There is no doubt that Dr. John North deserved more reputation than he has obtained, partially owing to his early death, and partially to his exceeding sensitiveness in respect to posthumous criticism. He left peremptory orders that all his MSS should be burnt.

he appears to have been especially skilled in greek and hebrew scholarship the lord keeper and the master of trinity resembled each other in their painfully shy dispositions and studious tastes their curious money-saving propensities were common to all three brothers the indolent habits of the master of trinity were shared by sir dudley after his return from england who would take no exercise whatever but sat all day either at home or else steering a little sailing vessel on the thames the lord keeper was always fanciful about his health

The honorary Mary North, afterwards Lady Spring, was a sister of these brothers, and no less gifted than they.

roder north says besides the advantage of a person she had a superior wit prodigious memory and was the most agreeable in conversation she used to rehearse by heart prolix romances with the substance of speeches and letters as well as passages and this with little or no hesitation but in a continual series of discourse the very memory of which is to me at this day very wonderful

she died not long after the birth of her first child and the child died not long after her roger north the biographer of his brothers from whom i have quoted so much was the author of other works and among them is a memoir on music showing that he had shared the musical faculty that was strongly developed in the lord keeper little is known of his private life he was attorney-general to the consort of james

there can be no doubt as to his abilities the lives of the norths is a work of no ordinary writer it is full of touches of genius and shrewd perception of character roger north seems to have been a most loving and lovable man charles the fifth lord north was the eldest of the family and succeeded to the title but he did not so far as i am aware show signs of genius however he had a daughter whose literary tastes were curiously similar to those of her uncle dr john

she was dudley a north who in the words of roger emaciated herself with study whereby she made familiar to her not only the greek and latin but the oriental languages

she died early having collected a choice library of oriental works i will conclude this description of the family with a characteristically quaint piece of their biographer's preface rarely the case is memorable for the happy circumstance of a flock so numerous and diffuse as this of the last studley lord north's was and no one scabby sheep in it the nearest collectible relation of the north family by the monte u side is charles hatton their first cousin

he is alluded to three times in roger north's lives and each time with the same epithet the incomparable charles hutton while he was so distinguished there is no information but it is reasonable to accept roger north's estimate of his merits so far as to classify him among the gifted members of the montagu family i will mention only four more of the kinsmen of the norths the first is their great-uncle sir henry montagu chief justice of the king's bench and created earl manchester who was grandfather to james montagu

Both of whom are included in my list.

lord clarendon says of sir henry that he was a man of great industry and suggestibility in business which he delighted in exceedingly and preserved so great a vigour of mind even to his death that some who had known him in his younger years did believe him to have much quicker parts in his age than before the second earl of manchester

lower g up n to the north was the baron kimbleton of marston moor and as lord campbell says one of the most distinguished men who appeared in the most interesting period of our history having as lord kimbleton vindicated the liberties of his country in the senate as earl of manchester in the field and having afterwards mainly contributed to the suppression of anarchy by the restoration of the royal line

the first earl of sandwich also lower g up n to the north's was a gallant high admiral of england in the time of charles second he began life as a soldier when only eighteen years of age with a parliamentary regiment that he himself had raised and he entered it in a naval battle against the dutch in southwold bay he also translated a spanish work on metallurgy i do not know that the book is of any value but the fact is worthy of notice as showing that he was more than a mere soldier or sailor

the last of the eminent relations of the norths of whom i shall speak at length was the great grandson of the eldest brother who became the famous premier the lord north of the time of the american war

lord brougham says that all contemporaries agree in representing his talents as having shone with a great and steady lustre during that singularly trying period he speaks of a wit that never failed him and a sorvety of temper that could never be ravelled as peculiar qualities in which he and indeed all his family his immediate family excelled most other men

the admirable description of lord north by his daughter lady charlotte lindsay that is appended to his biography by lord brougham is sufficient proof of that lady's high ability there is yet another great legal family related to the norths whose place in the pedigree i do not know is that of the hides and includes the illustrious first earl of clarendon it appears that lord chief justice hyde used to take kindly notice of the lord keeper francis north when a young rising barrister and alluded to his kinship and called him cousin

It is want of space, not want of material, that compels me to conclude the description of the able relatives of the North's and Montagu's, but I am sure that I have said enough to prove the assertion with which I prefaced it, that natural gifts of an exceedingly high order were inherited by a very large number of the members of the family, and that these owed their reputations to their abilities and not to family support.

another test of the truth of the hereditary character of ability is to see whether the near relations of very eminent men are more frequently eminent in those who are more remote table to page sixty one answers this question with great distinctness in the way i have already explained

It shows that the near relations of the judges are far richer in ability than the more remote, so much so that the fact of being born in the fourth degree of relationship is of no sensible benefit at all. The data from which I obtained Con C of the table are as follows: I find that 23 of the judges are reported to have had large families, say consisting of 4 adult sons in each, 11 are simply described as having issue, say at the rate of 1.5 sons each,

and that the number of the sons of others are specified as amounting between them to one hundred eighty six forming thus far a total of two hundred ninety four in addition to these there are nine reported marriages of judges in which no allusion is made to children and there are thirty-one judges in respect to whom nothing is said about marriage at all

I think we are fairly justified from these data in concluding that each judge's father on an average do not less than one son who lives in an age at which he might have distinguished himself. If he had the ability to do so, I also find the adult families to consist on an average of not less than 2.5 sons and 2.5 daughters each. Consequently, each judge has an average of 1.5 brothers and 2.5 sisters.

From these data, it is perfectly easy to reckon the number of kinsmen in each order. Thus, the nephews consist of the brother's sons and the sister's sons. Now, 100 judges are supposed to have 150 brothers and 250 sisters, and each brother and each sister to have, on the average, only one son. Consequently, the 100 judges will have 150 plus 250, or 400 nephews.

i need not trouble the reader with more figures suffice it to say i have divided the total number of eminent kinsmen to one hundred judges by the number of kinsmen in each degree and from that division i obtain the column d in table two which i now project into a genealogical tree in table three table three is displayed on the page percentage of eminent men in each degree of kinship to the most gifted member of distinguished families

it will be observed that table three refers only to distinguished families if we modified it to correspond with column a of table two in which all the judges whether they have distinguished relations or no are considered the proportion between the eminent kinsmen in each different degree would be unchanged though their absolute numbers will be reduced to about one-third of their value

table three shows in the most unmistakable manner the enormous odds that a new kinsman has over one that is remote in the chance of inheriting ability speaking roughly the percentages are quartered at each successive remove whether by descent or collaterally thus in the first degree of kinship the percentage is about twenty eight in the second about seven in the third one point five

the table also testifies to another fact in which people do not commonly believe it shows that when we regard the averages of many instances the frequent sports of nature in producing prodigies must be regarded as apparent and not as real ability in the long run does not suddenly start into existence and disappear with equal abruptness but rather it rises in a gradual and regular curve out of the ordinary level of family life

the statistics show that there is a regular average increase of ability in the generations that precede its culmination and as regular a decrease in those that succeed it in the first case the marriages have been consentient to its production in the latter they have been incapable of preserving it after three successive dilutions of the blood the descendants of the judges appear incapable of rising to eminence

these results are not surprising even when compared with the far greater length of kinship through which features of diseases may be transmitted ability must be based on a triple footing every leg of which has to be firmly planted in order that a man should inherit ability in the concrete he must inherit three qualities that are separate and independent of one another he must inherit capacity zeal and vigor for unless these three or at the very least two of them are combined he cannot hope to make a figure in the world

the probability against inheriting a combination of three qualities not correlated together is necessarily in a triplicate proportion greater than it is against inheriting any one of them there is a marked difference between the percentage of ability in the grandsons of the judge when his sons the fathers of the grandsons have been eminent than when they have not let us suppose that the son of a judge wishes to marry

What expectation has he that his own sons will become eminent men, supporters of his family, and not a burden to it in their afterlife? In the case where the son of the judge is himself eminent, I found out of the 226 judges previous to the present reign, 22 whose sons have been distinguished men. I do not count instances in the present reign, because the grandsons of these judges are for the most part too young to have achieved distinction.

twenty two of two hundred twenty six gives ten in one hundred as a percentage of the judges that have distinguished sons the reader will remark how near this result is to the nine point five as entered in my table showing the general truth of both estimates of these twenty two i count the following triplets the atkins family as two

it is true that the grandfather was only chief justice of north wales and not an english judge but the vigour of the blood is proved by the line of not only his son and two grandsons being english judges but also by the grandson of one of them through the female line being an english judge also another line is that of the prats viz the chief justice and his son the lord chancellor earl camden and his grandson the son of the earl created the marquis camden

the latter was chancellor of the university of cambridge and a man of note in many ways another case is the york line for the son of the lord chancellor the earl of hardwick was charles york himself a lord chancellor his sons were able men one became first lord of the admiralty another was bishop of illy a third was a military officer of distinction and created baron dover a fourth was an admiral of distinction

i will not count all these but will reckon them as three favourable instances a total thus far is six to which might be added in fairness something from that most remarkable montague family and its connections of which several judges both before and after the accession of charles first were members however wish to be well within bounds and therefore will claim only six successes out of the twenty-two cases i allow one sign to which judge as before or one in four

Even under these limitations, it is only four to one on the average against each child of an eminent son of a judge becoming a distinguished man.

Now for the second category, where the son is not eminent, but the grandson is. There are only seven of these cases to the minus 22, or 204 judges that remain, and one or two of them are not of very high order. They are the 3rd Earl Shaftesbury, author of the characteristics, Calper, the poet, Lord Lechmere, the attorney general, Sir W. Mansfield, commander-in-chief in India.

sir erdley wilmont who filled various offices with credit and was created a baronet and lord wyndham lord chancellor of ireland fielding the novelist was grandson of judge gould by the female line hence it is two hundred four to seven or thirty to one against the non-eminent son of a judge having an eminent child

these figures in these two categories are clearly too few to justify us in relying on them except so far as to show that the probability of a judge having an eminent grandson is largely increased if his sons are also eminent

it follows that the sons or daughters of distinguished men who are themselves gifted with decidedly high ability as tested at the university or elsewhere cannot do better than marry early in life if they have a large family the odds are in their favor that one at least to their children will be eminently successful in life and will be a subject of pride to them and a help to the rest

let us for a moment consider the bearing of the facts just obtained on the theory of an aristocracy where able men earn titles and transmit them by descent through the line of their eldest male representatives the practice may be justified on two distinct grounds

on the one hand the future peer is reared in a home full of family traditions that form his disposition on the other hand he is presumed to inherit the ability of the founder of the family the former is a real justification for the law of prime-matter janitor as applied to titles and possessions the latter as we see from the table is not a man who has no able ancestor nearer in blood to him than a great-grandparent

is inappreciably better off in the chance of being himself gifted with ability than if he had been taken out of the general mass of men an old peerage is a valueless title to natural gifts except so far as it may have been furbished up by a succession of wires into marriages when however as is often the case the direct line has become extinct

and the trust to a distant relative who has not been reared in the family traditions the sentiment that is attached to its possession is utterly unreasonable i cannot think of any claim to respect put forward in modern days that is so entirely an imposture as that made by a peer on the ground of descent who has neither been nobly educated nor has any eminent kinsman within three degrees i will conclude this chapter with a few facts i have derived from my various jottings concerning the natural history of judges

it appears that the parentage of the judges in the last six reigns viz since the accession of george i is as follows reckoning in percentages noble honourable or baronet but not judges nine landed gentlemen thirty five judge barrister or attorney fifteen bishop or clergyman eight medical seven merchants and various unclassed ten tradesmen seven

unknown nine there is therefore no very marked class peculiarity in the origin of the judges they seem to be derived from much the same sources as the scholars of our universities with a decided but not excessive preponderance in favour of legal parents i also thought it worth while to note the order in which the judges stood in their several families to see whether ability affected the eldest more than the youngest

or if any important fact of the kind might appear i find in my notes that i have recorded the order of the birth of seventy two judges the result of the percentages is that the judge was an only son in eleven cases eldest in seventeen second and thirty eight third and twenty two fourth in nine fifth in one and of the latter birth in two instances it is clear that the eldest sons do not succeed as judges half as well as their cadets

I suppose that social influences are, on the whole, against their entering or against their succeeding at the law.

i propose in this chapter to discuss the relationships of modern english statesmen it is my earnest desire throughout this book to steer safely between two dangers on the one hand of accepting mere official position or notoriety with a more discriminative reputation and on the other of an unconscious bias towards facts most favourable to my argument in order to guard against the latter danger i employ groups of names selected by others and to guard against the former i adopt selections that command general confidence

it is especially important in dealing with statesmen whose eminence as such is largely affected by the accident of social position to be cautious in both these respects it would not be a judicious plan to take for our select list the names of privy councillors or even of cabinet ministers

for though some of them are illustriously gifted and many are eminently so yet others belong to a decidedly lower natural grade for instance it seemed in late years to have become a mere incident to the position of a great territorial duke to have a seat in the cabinet as minister of the crown no doubt some few of the dukes are highly gifted but it may be affirmed with equal assurance that the abilities of the large majority are very far indeed from justifying such an appointment

again the exceptional position of a cabinet minister cannot possibly be a just criterion of a correspondingly exceptional share of natural gifts because statesmanship is not an open profession it was much more so in the days of pocket boroughs when the young men of really high promise were eagerly looked for by territorial magnates and brought into parliament and kept there to do gladiatorial battle for one or other of the great contending parties of the state

with those exceptions parliamentary life was not even then an open career for only favoured youths were admitted to compete but as is the case in every other profession none except those who are extraordinarily and particularly gifted are likely to succeed in parliamentary life unless engaged in it from their early manhood onwards dudley north of whom i spoke in the chapter on judges was certainly a great success

so in recent times was lord george bentinck so in one way or another was the duke of wellington and other cases could easily be quoted of men beginning their active parliamentary life in advanced manhood and nevertheless achieving success but as a rule to which there are very few exceptions statesmen consist of men who had obtained it little matters how the privilege of entering parliament in early life and of being kept there every cabinet is necessarily selected from a limited field

no doubt it always contains some few persons of very high natural gifts who would have found their way to the front under any reasonably fair political regime but it also invariably contains others who would have fallen far behind in the struggle for place and influence if all england had been omitted on equal terms to the struggle two selections of men occurred to me as being on the whole well worthy of confidence

one that of the premiers began for convenience sake with the reign of george third the number is twenty five and the proportion of them who cannot claim to be much more than eminently gifted such as addington pitt is to addington has london to paddington is very small

the other selection is lord brougham's statesman of the reign of george third it consists of no more than fifty-three men selected as the former statesmen in that long reign now of these eleven are judges and i may add seven of those judges were described at the appendix to the last chapter viz lords camden eldon erskine ellenborough king mansfield and thurlow the remaining four are chief justices burke and gibbs sir william grant and lord

lord brougham's list also contains the name of lord nelson which will be more prominently included among the commanders than that of earl st vincent which may remain in this chapter for he was a very able administrator in peace as well as a naval commander in addition to these are the names of nine premiers of whom one is the duke of wellington whom i count here and again among the commanders leaving a net balance in the selection made by lord brougham of thirty-one new names to discuss

the total of the two selections omitting the judges is fifty seven the average natural ability of these men may very justly be stated as superior to class upper f canning fox the two pitts romilly sir robert walpole whom lord brougham imports into his list the marquess of wellesley and the duke of wellington probably exceed upper g it will be seen how extraordinary are the relationships of these families

the kinship of the two pitts father and son is often spoken of as a rare if not sole instance of hygenius being hereditary but the remarkable kinships of william pitt were yet more widely diffused he was not only son of a premier but nephew of another george grenville and cousin of a third lord grenville besides this he had the temple blood

his pedigree which is given in the appendix to this chapter does scant justice to his breed the fox pedigree is also very remarkable in its connection with the lords holland and the napier family but one of the most conspicuous is that of the marquis of wellesley a most illustrious statesman both in india and at home and his younger brother the great duke of wellington

It is also curious from the fact of the Marquess possessing very remarkable gifts as a scholar and critic. They distinguished him in early life and descended to his son, the late principal of New Inn Hall at Oxford, but they were not shared by his brother. Yet although the great duke had nothing of the scholar or art critic in him, he had qualities akin to both. His writings are terse and nervous and eminently effective.

his furniture equipages and the like were characterized by an ostentatious completeness and efficiency under a pleasing form

i do not intend to go serratim through the many names mentioned in my appendix the reader must do that for himself and he will find it well worth his while to do so but i shall content myself here with sending the same convenient statistical form that i have already employed for the judges and arguing on the same basis that the relationships of the statesmen abundantly prove the hereditary character of their genius

in addition to the english statesmen of whom i have been speaking i thought it well to swell their scanty numbers by adding a small supplementary list taken from various periods in other countries i cannot precisely say how large was the area of selection from which this list was taken i can only assure the reader that it contains a considerable proportion of the names there seemed to me the most conspicuous among these that i found described at length in ordinary small biographical dictionaries

Table 1 is displayed on the page: Summary of relationships of 35 English statesmen grouped into 30 families. Table 2 is displayed on the page with degree of kinship and the corresponding letters.

first have the ablest statesmen the largest number of able relatives table one answers this in the affirmative there can be no doubt that its third section contains more illustrious names than the first and that the more the reader will take the pains of analysing and weighing the relationships the more i am sure he will find this truth to become apparent

again the statesmen as a whole are far more eminently gifted than the judges accordingly it will be seen in table two by a comparison of its column b with the corresponding column in page sixty one that their relations are more rich in ability to proceed to the next list

we see that the third section is actually longer than either the first or the second showing that ability is not distributed at haphazard but that it affects certain families thirdly the statesman type of ability is largely transmitted or inherited it would be tedious to count the instances in favour those to the contrary are disraeli sir p francis who is hardly a statesman but rather a bitter controversialist

and horner in all the other thirty five or thirty six cases in my appendix one or more statesmen will be found among their eminent relations in other words the combination of high intellectual gifts tact in dealing with men power of expression in debate and ability to endure exceedingly hard work is hereditary

table two proves just as distinctly as it did in the case of the judges that the nearer kinsmen of the eminent statesman are far more rich in ability than the more remote it will be seen that the law of distribution as gathered from these instances is very similar to what we had previously found it to be

I shall not stop here to compare that law in respect to the statesmen and the judges, for I propose to treat all the groups of eminent men, from whom the subject of my several chapters, in a precisely similar manner, and to collate the results, once for all, at the end of the book.

chapter eight english peerages their influence upon race it is frequently and justly remarked that the families of great men are apt to die out and it is argued from the fact that men of ability are unprolific if this were the case every attempt to produce a highly gifted race of men would eventually be defeated gifted individuals might be reared but they would be unable to maintain their breed

i propose in a future chapter after i have discussed the several groups of eminent men to examine the degree in which transcendent genius may be correlated with sterility but it will be convenient that i should now say something about the case of failure of issue of judges and statesmen and come to some conclusion whether or no a breed of men gifted with the average ability of those eminent men could or could not maintain itself during an indefinite number of consecutive generations

i will even go a little further afield and treat of the extinct peerages generally first as to the judges there is a peculiarity in their domestic relations that interferes with the large average of legitimate families lord campbell states in a footnote to his life of d or chancellor thurlow in the lives of the chancellors that when he lord campbell was first acquainted with the english bar one half of the judges had married their mistresses

he says it was then their understanding that when a barrister was elevated to the bench he should either marry his mistress or put her away according to this extraordinary statement it would appear that much more than one-half of the judges that sat on the bench in the beginning of the century had no legitimate offspring before the advanced period of their lives at which they were appointed judges

one half of them could not because it was at that stage in their career that they married their mistresses and there were others who having them put away their mistresses were for the first time able to marry nevertheless i have shown that the number of the legitimate children of the judges is considerable and that even under that limitation they are on the whole by no means an unfertile race

bearing in mind what i have just stated it must follow that they are extremely prolific nay they are occasional instances of enormous families in all periods of their history but do not the families die out i will examine into the descendants of those judges whose names are to be found in the appendix to the chapter upon them who gained peerages and who last sat on the bench previous to the close of the reign of george

there are thirty-one of them nineteen of the peerages remain and twelve are extinct under what conditions did these twelve become extinct were any of those conditions peculiar to the twelve and not shared by the remaining nineteen

in order to obtain an answer to these inquiries i examined into the number of children and grandchildren of all the thirty-one peers and into the particulars of their alliances and tabulated them when to my astonishment i found a very simple adequate and novel explanation of the common cause of the extinction of peerages staring me in the face it appeared in the first instance that a considerable proportion of the new peers and of their sons married

the motives for doing so are intelligible enough not to be condemned they have a title and perhaps a sufficient fortune to transmit to their eldest son but they want an increase of possessions for the endowment of their younger sons and their daughters on the other hand an heiress has a fortune but wants a title thus the peer and heiress are urged to the same issue of marriage by different impulses but by statistical lists showed with unmistakable emphasis that these marriages are particularly unprolific

we might indeed have expected that a heiress who is the sole issue of a marriage and would not be so fertile as a woman who has many brothers and sisters comparative infertility must be hereditary in the same way as other physical attributes and i am assured it is so in the case of the domestic animals consequently the issue of a pious marriage with a heiress frequently fails and its title is brought to an end

i will give the following list of every case in the first or second generation of the law lords taken from the english judges within the limits i have already specified where there has been a marriage with a highress or a co-highress and i will describe the result in each instance then i will summarise the facts influence of high-rest marriages on the families of those english judges who obtained peerages and who last sat on the bench between the beginning of the reign of charles second and at the end of the reign of george fourth

The figures within parenthesis give the data of their peerages. Culpeper, First Lord, 1664, married twice, and had issue by both marriages, in all five sons and four daughters. The eldest son married an heiress and died without issue, the second son married a co-heiress and only one daughter, the third married but had no children, and the other two never married at all, so the title became extinct.

Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, 1672. His mother was a sole heiress. He married three times and had only one son. However, the son was prolific, and the direct male line continues. Cowper, 1st Earl, 1718. First wife was a heiress. He had no surviving issue by her. His second wife had two sons and two daughters. His eldest son married a co-heiress for his first wife.

and had only one son and one daughter the direct mail line continues finch first earl of nottingham sixteen eighty one had fourteen children the eldest married a co-highress for his first wife and had only one daughter by her harcourt first lord seventeen twelve had three sons and two daughters two of the sons died young the eldest married an highress whose mother was a highress also he had by her two sons and one daughter

both of the sons married and both died issueless so the title became extinct henley first earl of nottingham seventeen sixty four his mother was a co-heiress he married and had one son and five daughters the son died unmarried and so the title became extinct hyde first earl clarendon sixteen sixty one married a lady who was eventually sole heiress and had four sons and two daughters by her

the third son died unmarried and the fourth was drowned at sea consequently there remained only two available sons to carry on the family of these the eldest who became the second earl married a lady who died leaving an only son he then married for his second wife an heiress who had no issue at all

the only son had but one male child who died in youth and was succeeded in the title by the descendants of the first earl's second son he the son of a heiress had only one son and four daughters and his son who was fourth earl of clarendon had only one son and two daughters the son died young so the title became extinct geoffrey's first lord of w 1685

had one son and two daughters the son married an heiress and had only one daughter so the title became extinct kenyon first lord seventeen eighty eight had three sons although one of them married a co-heiress there were numerous descendants in the next generation north first lord guildford sixteen eighty three married a co-heiress he had only one grandson who however lived and had children parker first earl of macclesfield seventeen twenty one

the family has narrowly escaped extinction threatened continually by its numerous errors of alliance the first earl married a cohires and had only one son and one daughter the son married a cohires and had two sons of these the second married a cohires and had no issue at all the eldest grandson of the first earl was therefore the only male that remained in the race he had two sons and one daughter

now of these two only one male hires in the third generation one married a co-hires and had only one daughter the remaining one fortunately married twice for by the first marriage he had only daughters assigned by the second marriage is the present peer and is the father by two marriages in either case with an hires of eleven sons and four daughters

Pratt, 1st Earl of Camden, 1786. This family affords a similar instance to the last one of impending destruction of the race. The 1st Earl married an heiress and had only one son and four daughters. The 2nd married an heiress and had only one son and three daughters. This son married a co-heiress but fortunately had three sons and eight daughters. Raymond, 1st Lord, 1731. He had one son who married a co-heiress and left no issue at all, so the title became extinct.

scott lord stowell see further on under my list of statesmen talbot first lord seventeen thirty three this family narrowly escaped extinction the first lord married an heiress and had three sons the eldest son married an heiress and had only one daughter the second son married a co-heiress and had no issue by her however she died and he married again and left four sons the third son of the first earl had male issue trevor first lord seventeen eleven

married a co-heiress and had two sons and three daughters both of the sons married but they had only one daughter each lord trevor married again and had three sons of whom one died young and the other two though they married left no issue at all wedderburn first lord laubrow an earl of rossland eighteen o one married an heiress for his first wife and had no issue at all he married again somewhat late in life and had no issue so the direct male line is extinct

first earl of hardwick seventeen fifty four is numerously represented though two of these lines of descent have failed in one of which there was a marriage with a co-heiress the result of all these facts is exceedingly striking it is first that out of the thirty-one peerages there were no less than seventeen influenced of a heiress or a co-heiress affected the first or second generation

that this influence was sensibly an agent in producing stability in sixteen out of these seventeen peerages and the influence was sometimes shown in two three or more cases in one peerage second that the direct line of no less than eight peerages viz colpeper harcourt

Northington, Clarendon, Jeffreys, Raymond, Trevor and Rosland were actually extinguished through the influence of the high-rests, and that six others had very narrow escapes from extinction, owing to the same cause. I literally have only one case, that of Lord Kenyon, where the race-destroying influence of high-rest blood was not felt.

third out of the twelve peerages that have failed in the direct male line no less than eight failures are accounted for by high-risk marriages now what are the four that remain lord somers and thurlow both died unmarried lord alvany had only two sons of whom one died unmarried

there is only his case and that of the earl of mansfield out of the ten who married and whose titles have since become extinct where the extinction may not be accounted for by high-risk marriages no one can therefore maintain with any show of reason that there are grounds for imputing exceptional stability to the race of judges the facts when carefully analysed point very strongly in the opposite direction

i will now treat the statesmen of george third and the premier since the ascension of george third down to recent times in the same way as i have treated the judges including however only those whose pedigrees i can easily find namely such as were peers or nearly related peers there are twenty-two of these names i find that fourteen have left no male descendants and that seven of those fourteen peers or their sons have married

namely canning castlereagh lord grenville george grenville lord holland lord stowell and walpole the first earl of oxford on the other hand i find only three cases of peers marrying heiresses without failure of issue namely addington lord sidmouth the marquis of boot and the duke of grafton the seven whose male line became extinct from other causes are bolingbok earl chatham lord liverpool

earl st vincent earl nelson william pitt unmarried and the marquis of wellesley who left illegitimate issue the remaining five required to complete the twenty-two cases are the duke of bedford dundas viscount melville percival romilly and wibblevoss none of these were allied or descended from hira's blood and they have all left descendants

i append to this summary the history of the highrest marriages to correspond with what has already been given in respect to the judges but marquis of marie de cohires but had a large family canning george married in highrest and had three sons and one daughter the eldest died young and the second was drowned in youth and the third who was the late earl canning married a co high and had no issue so the line is extinct

Castlereagh, Viscount, married a co-hieress and had neither son nor daughter, so the line became extinct. Grafton, Dukov, married an heiress and had two sons and one daughter. By a second wife he had a large family. Grenville, Lord, had three sons and four daughters. The eldest son married a heiress and had no male grandchildren. The second was apparently unmarried. The third was George Grenville, Premier. He married but was issue-less, so the line is extinct.

holland lord had one son and one daughter the son married an heiress and had only one son and one daughter the son died issueless so the male line is extinct rockingham second marquis married an heiress and had no issue so the title became extinct sidmouth viscount addington was son of a heiress and had only one son and four daughters the son had numerous descendants

starwell lord married a co-heiress he had only one son who died unmarried and one daughter so the male line is extinct walpole first lord of oxford had three sons and two daughters the eldest son married an heiress and had only one son who died unmarried the second and third sons died unmarried so the male line is extinct

the important result disclosed by these facts that intermarriage with high-rests is a notable agent in the extinction of families is confirmed by more extended inquiries i devoted some days to ransacking burke's volumes on the extent and on the extinct peerages i first tried the marriages made by the second peers of each extent title

it seemed reasonable to expect that the eldest son of the first peer the founder of the toil would marry heiresses pretty frequently and so they do and with terrible destruction to their race i examined one seventh part of the peerage leaving out co heiresses for i shall weary the reader if i refine overmuch the following were the results a table is presented on the page with number of cases one edmonton second earl wife and mother both heiresses no issue

aldebaro second earl married two hirases no issue one annesley second earl wife and mother of both hirases three sons and two daughters one a second earl wife and mother of both hirases four sons and three daughters one his son the third earl married an hiris and had no issue one ash second baron wife and mother of both hirases no issue

1. His brother succeeded as third earl, and married an heiress. By her no issue. 1. Aelis Ford, second earl, wife heiress, mother co-heiress, one son and three daughters. 1. Barrington, second viscount, wife and mother both heiresses, no issue. 2. E. Ford, second duke, married, two heiresses. By one no issue, by the other, two sons.

one bedford second duke married heiress two sons and two daughters one camden second earl wife and mother both heiresses one son and three daughters number of cases total fourteen making a grand total of fourteen cases out of seventy peers resulting in eight instances of absolute stability and in two instances of only one son

i tried the question from another side by taking the marriages of the last peers and comparing the numbers of the children when the mother was a heiress and those when she was not i took precautions to exclude from the latter all cases where the mother was a co-heiress or the father and only son also since heiresses are not so very common i sometimes went back two or three generations for an instance of an heiress marriage in this way i took fifty cases of each

i give them below having first dealt with the actual results in order to turn them into percentages the table is presented on the page with three columns going straight down the number of sons to each marriage and one hundred marriages of each description split in two columns number of cases in which the mother was a hiress and the number of cases in which the mother was not a hiress

i find that among the wives of peers one hundred who are highresses have two hundred and eight sons and two hundred and six daughters one hundred who are not highresses have three hundred and thirty six sons and two hundred and eighty four daughters the table shows how exceedingly precarious must be the line of a descent from a highress especially when younger sons are not apt to marry one-fifth of highresses have no male children at all full third have not more than one child three-fifths have not more than two

it has been the salvation of many families that the husband outlived the heiress whom he first married and was able to leave issue by his second wife every advancement in dignity is a fresh inducement to the introduction of another heiress into the family consequently dukes have a greater impregnation of heiress blood than earls and dukedoms might be expected to be more frequently extinguished than earldoms and earldoms to be more apt to go than baronies experience shows this to be most decidedly the case

sir bernard burke in his preface to the extent peerages states that all the english dukedoms created from the commencement of the order down to the commencement of the reign of charles the second are gone excepting three that emerged in royalty and that only eleven earldoms remained out of the many created by the normans plantagenets and tudors

this concludes my statistics about the heiresses i do not care to go further because one ought to know something more about their several histories before attempting to arrive at very precise results in respect to their facility

A high-risk is not always the sole child of a marriage contracted early in life and during for many years. She may be the surviving child of a larger family, or the child of a late marriage, or the parents may have early left her an orphan. We ought also to consider the family of the husband, whether he be a sole child or one of a large family. These matters would afford a very instructive field of inquiry to those who care to labour in it, but it falls outside my line of work.

the reason i have gone so far is simply to know that although many men of amenability i do not speak of illustrious or prodigious genius have not left descendants behind them it is not because they are sterile but because they are apt to marry sterile women in order to obtain wealth to support the puritans with which their merits have been rewarded

I look upon the peerage as a disastrous institution owing to its destructive effects on our valuable races. The most highly gifted men are ennobled, their elder sons attempt to marry highresses, and their younger ones not to marry at all, for these have not enough fortune to support both a family and an aristocratic position. So the side shoots of the genealogical tree are hacked off, and the leading shoot is blighted, and the breed is lost forever.

it is with much satisfaction that i have traced and i hope finally disposed of the cause why families are apt to become extinct in proportion to their dignity chiefly so on account of my desire to show that able races are not necessarily sterile as secondarily because it may put an end to the wild and ludicrous hypotheses that are frequently stated to account for their extinction chapter eight of hereditary genius

CHAPTER IX. COMMANDERS In times of prolonged war, when the reputation of a great commander can alone be obtained, the profession of arms affords a career that offers its full share of opportunities to men of military genius.

promotion is quick the demand for able men is continuous and very young officers have frequent opportunities of showing their powers hence it follows that the list of great commanders notwithstanding it is short contains several of the most gifted men recorded in history they showed enormous superiority over their contemporaries by excelling in many particulars they were foremost in their day among statesmen and generals and their energy was prodigious

many when they were mere striplings were distinguished for political capacity in their early manhood they bore the whole weight and responsibility of government they animated armies and nations with their spirit they became the champions of great coalitions and coerced millions of other men by the superior power of their own intellect and will

i will run through a few of these names in the order in which they will appear in the appendix to this chapter to show what giants in ability their acts proved them to have been and how great and original was the position they occupied at ages when most youths are kept in the background of general society and hardly suffer to express opinions much less to act contrary to the prevailing sentiments of the day

alexander the great began his career of conquest at the age of twenty having previously spent four years at home in the exercise of more or less sovereign power with a real statesmanlike capacity his life's work was over at thirty-two bonaparte the emperor napoleon i was general of the italian army at twenty-six and thenceforward carried everything before him whether in the field or in the state in rapid succession

he was made emperor at thirty five and had lost waterloo at forty six caesar though he was prevented by political hindrances from attaining high office and from commanding in the field till at forty two was a man of the greatest political promise as a youth nay even as a boy charlemagne began his wars at thirty charles the twelfth of sweden began at eighteen and his ability showed by him at the early period of life was of the highest order

prince eugene commanded the imperial army in austria at twenty five gustavus apulphus was as precocious in war and statesmanship as his descendant charles twelfth hannibal and his family were remarkable for their youthful superiority many of them had obtained the highest commands and had become the terror of the romans before they were what we call of age

the nassau family are equally noteworthy when william the silent was a mere boy he was the trusted confidant even adviser of the emperor charles v his son the great general maurice of nassau was only eighteen when chief command of the low countries then risen in arms against the spaniards his grandson turenne the gifted french general and his great-grandson our william the third were both of them illustrious in early life

Marlborough was from forty-six to fifty years of age during the period of his great success, but he was treated much earlier as a man of high mark. Scorpio Africanus Major was only twenty-four when in chief command in Spain against the Carthaginians. Wellington broke the Mar-Rata power at thirty-five and had won Waterloo at forty-six.

but though the profession of arms in time of prolonged war affords ample opportunities to men of high military genius it is otherwise in peace or in short wars the army in every country is more directly under the influence of the sovereign than any other institution guided by the instinct of self-preservation the patronage of the army is always the last privilege that sovereigns are disposed to yield to democratic demands

hence it is that armies invariably suffer from those evils that are inseparable from courtly patronage rank and political services are apt to be weighed against military ability and incapable officers to occupy high places during periods of peace they may even be able to continue to fill their posts during short wars without creating a public scandal nay sometimes to carry away honours that ought in justice to have been bestowed on the more capable subordinates in rank

it is therefore very necessary in accepting the reputation of a commander as a test of his gifts to confine ourselves as i propose to do to those commanders only whose reputation has been tested by prolonged wars or whose ascendency over other men has been freely acknowledged

there is a singular and curious condition of success in the army and navy quite independent of ability that deserves a few words in order that a young man may fight his way to the top of his profession he must survive many battles

but it so happens that men of equal ability are not equally likely to escape shot free before explaining why let me remark that the danger of being shot in battle is considerable no less than seven out of the thirty-two commanders mentioned in my appendix or between one quarter and one-fifth of them perished in that way

they are charles twelfth gustavus adolphus sir henry lawrence sir john moore nelson tromp and turenne i may add while talking of these things though it does not bear on my argument that four others were murdered viz caesar coligny philip the second of macedon and william the silent and that two committed suicide viz lord clive and hannibal in short forty per cent of the whole number died by violent deaths

there is a principle of natural selection in an enemy's bullets which bears more heavily against large than against small men large men are more likely to be hit i calculate that the chance of man being accidentally shot as in the square root or the product of his height multiplied into his weight

that where a man of sixteen stone in weight and six feet two point five inches high will escape from chance shots for two years a man of eight stone in weight and five feet six inches high would escape for three but the total proportion of the risk run by the large man is i believe considerably greater

He is conspicuous from his size and is therefore more likely to be recognized and made the object of a special aim. It is also in human nature that the shooter should pick out the largest man, just as he would pick out the largest bird in a covey or antelope in a herd. Again, of two men who are aimed at, the bigger is the more likely to be hit, and affording a larger target. This chance is a trifle less than the ratio of his increased sectional area, for it is subject to the law discussed on page 28.

though we are unable to calculate the decrease from our ignorance of the average distance of the enemy and the closeness of his fire at long distances and when the shooting was wild the decrease would be insensible at comparatively close ranges it would be unimportant for even the sums of a and b

Page 34, only about one fifth more than 2a. In the last column of the table, 77 plus 48 equals 125. It's only 21, about one fifth more than 2, multiplied by 48 equals 96. As a matter of fact, commanders are very frequently the objects of special aim. I remember, when Salt visited England, that a story appeared in the newspapers of some English veteran having declared the hero must have lived a charmed life.

for he had covered him with his rifle i think my memory does not deceive me upwards of thirty times he had never the fortune to hit him nelson was killed by one of many shots aimed directly at him by a rifleman in the main top of the french vessel with which his own was closely engaged the total relative chances that being shot in battle of two men of the respective heights and weights i have described are as three to two in favour of the smaller man in respect to accidental shots

and in a decidedly more favourable in respect to direct aim the latter chance being compounded of the two following first a better hope of not being aimed at and second hope of very little less than three to two of not being hit when made the object of an aim this is really an important consideration had nelson been a large man instead of a mere featherweight the probability is that he would not have survived so long

let us for a moment consider the extraordinary dangers he survived leaving out of consideration the early part of his active service which was only occasionally hazardous as also the long interval of peace that followed it we find him at thirty five engaged in active warfare with the french when through his energy at bastia and calvi his name became dreaded throughout the mediterranean at thirty seven he retained great renown from his share in the battle of st vincent

he was afterwards under severe fire at keditz also at teneriffe where he lost an arm by a cannon shot he then received a pension of one thousand pounds a year the memorial which he was required to present on his occasion stated that he had been in action one hundred and twenty times and speaks of other severe wounds besides the loss of his arm and eye

at forty he gained the victory of the nile where the contest was most bloody he thereupon was created baron nelson with a pension of three thousand pounds a year and received the thanks of parliament he was also made duke of bronte by the king of naples and he became idolized in england at forty-three he was engaged in the severe battle of copenhagen at forty-seven was shot at trafalgar

thus his active career extended throughout twelve years during the earlier part of which he was much more frequently under fire than afterwards had he only lived through two-thirds or even three-fourths of his battles he could not have commanded at the nile copenhagen or trafalgar his reputation under those circumstances would have been limited to that of a dashing captain or a young and promising admiral wellington was a small man

if he had been shot in the peninsula his reputation though it would undoubtedly have been very great would have lost the lustre of waterloo in short to have survived is an essential condition to becoming a famed commander yet persons equally endowed with military gifts such as the requisite form of high intellectual immorality and of constitutional vigor are by no means equally qualified to escape shot free

The enemy's bullets are at least dangerous to the smallest man, and therefore small men are more likely to achieve high fame as commanders than their equally gifted contemporaries whose physical frames are larger. I now give tables on precisely the same principle as those in previous chapters. Table 1 is displayed on the page: Summary of relationships of 32 commanders, grouped into 27 or 24 families.

table two is also displayed on the page with three main columns including the degree of kinship and the corresponding letters precisely similar conclusions are to be drawn from these tables as from those i have already given but they make my case much stronger than before

i argue that the more able the man the more numerous ought his able kinsmen to be that in short the names on the third section of table one should on the whole be those of men of greater weight than are included in the first section there cannot be a shadow of doubt that this is the fact but the table shows more its third section is proportionally longer than it was in the statesman

and it was longer in these than in the judges now the average natural gifts of the different groups are proportioned in precisely the same order the commanders are more able than the statesmen and the statesmen are more able than the judges consequently comparing the three groups together we find the abler men to have on the average the larger number of able kinsmen

similarly the proportion borne by those commanders who have any eminent relations at all to those who have not is much greater than it is in statesmen and in these much greater than in the judges their peculiar type of ability is largely transmitted

my limited list of commanders contains several notable families of generals that of william the silent is a most illustrious family and i must say that in at least two out of his four wives namely the daughter of the elector of saxony and that of the great he could not have married more discreetly to have had maurice of nassau for a son turenne for a grandson and now william the third for a great-grandson is a marvellous instance of hereditary gifts another most illustrious family is that of charlemagne

First, Pepin de Heristal, virtual sovereign of France, then his son Charles Martel, who drove back the Saracenic invasion that had overspread the half of France, then his grandson Pepin le Briff, the founder of the Carlovingian dynasty, and lastly, his great-grandson Charlemagne, founder of the Germanic Empire. The three that come last, if not the whole of the four, were of the very highest rank as leaders of men.

another yet more illustrious family is that of alexander including philip of macedon and his second cousin pyrrhus i acknowledge the latter to be a far-off relation but pyrrhus so nearly resembles alexander in character that i am entitled to claim his gifts as hereditary another family is that of hannibal his father and his brothers again there is that of the scipios also the interesting new relationship between marlborough and the duke of berwick

raleigh's kinships are exceedingly appropriate to my argument as affording excellent instances of hereditary special aptitudes i have spoken in the last chapter about wellington out of the marquis of wellesley so i need not repeat myself here of commanders of high but not equally illustrious stamp i should mention the family of napier of lawrence

and the singular naval race of hyde parker there were five brothers grant all highly distinguished in wellington's campaigns i may as well mention that though i know too little about the great asiatic warriors genghis khan and timberlane to insert them in my appendix yet they are doubtfully though very distantly interrelated the distribution of ability among the different degrees of kinship will be seen to follow much the same order as it did in the statesmen and in the judges

CHAPTER X. LITERARY MEN. THOSE WHO ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE APPEARANCE OF GREAT LIBRARIES, AND HAVE ENDEAVORED TO CALCULATE THE NUMBER OF FAMED AUTHORS,

those works they include cannot fail to be astonished at their multitude the years go by and every nation produces literary works of sterling value and stores of books have accumulated for centuries among the authors who are the most eminent this is a question i feel incompetent to answer it would not be difficult to obtain lists of the most notable literary characters of particular periods but i have found none that afford a compact and trustworthy selection of the great writers of all times

mere popular fame in after ages is an exceedingly uncertain test of merit because authors become obsolete their contributions to thought and language are copied and recopied by others and at length they become so incorporated into the current literature and expressions of the day that nobody cares to trace them back to their original sources any more than they interest themselves in tracing the gold converted into sovereigns to the nuggets from which it was derived or to the gold diggers who discovered the nuggets

again a man of fair ability who employs himself in literary turns out a great deal of good work there is always a chance that some of it may attain a reputation very far superior to its real merits because the author may have something to narrate which the world wants to hear or he may have had particular experiences which qualify him to write works of fiction or otherwise to throw out views singularly opposite to the wants of the time but of no importance in after years

here also fame misleads under these circumstances i thought it best not to occupy myself overmuch with older times otherwise i should have been obliged to quote largely in justification my lists of literary worthies but rather to select authors of modern date or those whose reputation has been freshly preserved in england

i have therefore simply gone through dictionaries extracted the names of literary men whom i found the most prominent and have described those who had decidedly eminent relations in my appendix i have therefore left out several whom others might with reason judge worthy to have appeared my list is a very incongruous collection for it includes novelists historians scholars and philosophers

there are only two peculiarities common to all these men the one is a desire of expressing themselves and the other a love of ideas rather than of material possessions mr disraeli who is himself a good instance of hereditary literary power in a speech at the anniversary of the royal literary fund may sixth eighteen sixty eight described the nature of authors

his phrase epitomizes what has been graphically delineated in his own novels and i may add in those of sir edward bulwer letton now lord letton who with his brother sir henry bulwer and his son owen meredith is a still more remarkable example of hereditary literary gifts than mr disraeli he said the author as we must ever remember a peculiar organization

he is a being with a predisposition which with him is irresistible a bent which he cannot in any way avoid whether it drags him to the abstruse researches of erudition or induces him to mount into the fervid and turbulent atmosphere of imagination

the majority of the men described in the appendix to this chapter justified the description by mr disraeli again that the powers of many of them were of the highest order no one can doubt several were prodigies in boyhood as grudius lessing and nebeher many others were distinguished in youth charlotte bront published jane eyre at twenty-two

chetubbriad was of note at an equally early age fenelon made an impression with only fifteen sir philip sidney was of high mark before he was twenty-one and had acquired his great fame and won the heart of the nation in a few more years for he was killed in battle when only thirty-two i may add that there are occasional cases of great literary men having been the reverse of gifted in youth

boylow is the only instance in my appendix he was a dunce in school and dull till he was thirty but among other literary men of whom i have notes goldsmith was accounted a dull child and he was anything but distinguished at dublin university he began to write well at thirty-two rossell was thought a dunce at school when he ran away at sixteen

It is a striking confirmation of what I endeavoured to prove in an early chapter, that the highest order of reputation is independent of external aids. To note how regularly many of the men and women have been educated whose names appear in my appendix, such as Boyleu, the Bront family, Chateaubriand, Fielding, and two Grandmothers, Irving, Carstein, Leibur, Persson, in one sense, Roscoe, Lesage, J.C. Schellinger,

seving and swift i now give my usual table but i do not specify with confidence the numbers of eminent military men contained in the thirty-three families it includes

they have many literary relations of considerable merit but i feel myself unable for the reasons stated at the beginning of this chapter to sort out those that are eminent from among them the families of taylor both those in norwich and those of ongar have been inserted as being of great hereditary interest but only a few of their members see austin are not summed up in the following table table one is displayed on the page summary of relationships of fifty-two literary persons grouped into thirty-three families

the table is broken up into several sections with one relation or two in the family two or three relations or three or four in the family and four or more relations or five or more in the family table two is also displayed on the page with several columns in three main sections the degrees of kinship with the name of the degree and the corresponding letters

it would be both a tedious and unnecessary task if i applied the same tests to this table with the same minuteness that they were applied to those inserted in previous chapters its contents are closely similar in their general character and therefore all that can be derived from an analysis of others may with equal justice be derived from this

the proportion of eminent grandsons is small but the total number is insufficient to enable us to draw conclusions from that fact especially as the number of eminent sons is not small in the same ratio there are other minor peculiarities which will appear more distinctly when all the corresponding tales are collated and discussed towards the end of the book in the meantime we may rest satisfied that an analysis of kinsfolk shows literary genius to be fully as hereditary as any other kind of ability we have hitherto discussed

End of chapter 10. Chapter 11 of Hereditary Genus by Francis Galton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 11. Men of Science.

my choice of men of science like that of the men of literature may seem capricious they were both governed to some extent by similar considerations and therefore the preface to my last chapter is a great degree applicable to this there is yet another special difficulty in the selection of a satisfactory first class of scientific men the fact of a person's name being associated with some one striking scientific discovery helps enormously but often unduly to prolong his reputation to after ages

it is notorious that the same discovery is frequently made simultaneously and quite independently by different persons thus to speak of only a few cases in late years the discoveries of photography of electric telegraphy and of the planet neptune through theoretical calculations have all their rival claimants it would seem that discoveries are usually made when the time is ripe for them that is to say when the ideas from which they naturally flow are fermenting in the minds of many men

when apples are ripe a trifling event suffices to decide which of them shall first drop off its stalk so a small accident will often determine the scientific man who shall first make and publish a new discovery there are many persons who have contributed vast numbers of original memoirs all of them of some many of great but none of extraordinary importance these men have the capacity of making a striking discovery though they had not the luck to do so

their work is valuable and remains but the worker is forgotten nay some eminently scientific men have shown their original powers by little more than a continuous flow of helpful suggestions and criticisms which were individually of too little importance to be remembered in the history of science by which in their aggregate formed a notable aid towards its progress

in the scanty history of the once well-known lunar society of the midland countries of which watt belton and darwin were the chief notabilities there is frequent allusion to a man of whom nothing more than the name now remains but who had apparently very great influence on the thoughts of his contemporaries i mean dr small or to take a more recent case i suppose that dr wewell would be generally ranked in the class g of natural ability

his intellectual energy was prodigious his writings unceasing and his conversational powers extraordinary also few will doubt that although the range of his labours was exceedingly wide and scattered science in one form or another was his chief pursuit

his influence on the progress of science during the earlier years of his life was i believe considerable but it is impossible to specify the particulars of that influence or so to justify our opinion that posterity will be likely to pay regard to it biographers will seek in vain for important discoveries in science with which dr well's name may hereafter be identified owing to these considerations the area of my choice is greatly narrowed

i can only include those scientific men who have achieved an enduring reputation or who are otherwise well known to the present generation i have proceeded in my selection just as i did in the case of the literary men namely i have taken the most prominent names from ordinary biographical dictionaries i now annex my usual tables table one is displayed on the page summary of relationships of sixty-five scientific men grouped into forty-three families one relation or two in family

two or three relations or three or four in family and four or more relations or five or more in family and table two is also displayed on page with degrees of kinship of name and degree and corresponding letter

Table 1 confirms all that has been already deduced from the corresponding tables in other groups, but the figures in Table 2 are exceptional. We find a remarkable diminution in the numbers of uppercase F and uppercase G, while uppercase S and uppercase P hold their own. We also find that although the female influence, on the whole, is but little different from previous groups in as much as in the first degree.

uppercase G plus 5 uppercase U plus 8 uppercase N plus 6 uppercase P equals 20 kinsmen through males. 5 lowercase g plus 2 lower U plus 2 lower N plus 0 lower P equals 9 females. And in the second degree, 0 uppercase GF plus 0 uppercase GB plus 3 uppercase US

plus 6 uppercase ns plus 3 uppercase ps equals 12 kinsmen through males 0 lower g upper f plus 0 lower g upper b plus 4 lower u upper s plus 0 lower n upper s plus 0 lower p upper s equals 4 females

totals thirty two through males thirteen through females yet when we examine the lists of kinsmen more closely we shall arrive at different conclusions and we shall find the maternal influence to be unusually strong there are five lower g to one upper g and in fully eight cases out of the forty three the mother was the abler of the two parents these are the mothers of bacon remember also his four maternal aunts of buffeton

de alembert forbes gregory and watt both bertie and jessire had remarkable grandmothers the eminent relations of newton were connected with him by female links it therefore appears to be very important to success in science that a man should have an able mother i believe the reason to be that a child so circumstanced has the good fortune to be delivered from an ordinary narrowing by decent influences of home education

our race is essentially slavish it is the nature of all of us to believe blindly in what we love rather than in what we think most wise we are inclined to look upon an honest unshrinking pursuit of truth as something irreverent we are indignant when others pry into our idols and criticise them with impunity just as a savage flies to arms when a missionary picks his fetish to pieces

women are far more strongly influenced by these feelings than men they are blinder potesians and more servile followers of custom happier they whose mothers did not intensify their naturally slavish dispositions in childhood by the frequent use of phrases such as do not ask questions about this or that for it is wrong to doubt but who showed them by practice and teaching that inquiry may be absolutely free without being irreverent

that reverence for truth is the parent of free inquiry and that indifference or insincerity in that search after truth is one of the most degrading of sins it is clear that a child brought up under the influences i have described is far more likely to succeed as a scientific man than one who was reared under the curb of dogmatic authority

of two men with equal abilities the one who had a truth-loving mother would be more likely to follow the career of science while the other if bred up under extremely narrowing circumstances would become as the gifted children in china nothing better than a student and professor of some dead literature it is i believe owing to the favourable conditions of their early training that an unusually large proportion of the sons of the most gifted men of science become distinguished in the same career

they have been nurtured in an atmosphere of free inquiry and observing as they grow older that myrads of problems lie on every side of them simply waiting for some moderately capable person to take the trouble of engaging in a solution they throw themselves with ardour into a field of labour so peculiarly tempting it is and has been in truth strangely neglected there are hundreds of students of books for one student of nature hundreds of commentators for one original inquirer

the field of real science is in sore wonder labourers the mass of mankind plods on with eyes fixed on the footsteps of the generations that went before too indifferent or too fearful to raise their glances to judge for themselves whether the path on which they are travelling is the best or to learn the conditions by which they are surrounded and affected hence as regards the eminent sons of the scientific men twenty-six in number there are only four whose eminence was not achieved in science

these are the two political sons of arago himself a politician the son of heller and the son of napier as i said before the fathers of the ablest men in science have frequently been unscientific those of cossini and gemellin were scientific men so in a lesser degree than those of the huens napier and de saussure but the remainder namely those of bacon boyle de candolle galelli and leibnitz were either statesmen or literary men

as regards mathematicians when we consider how many among them have been possessed of enormous natural gifts it might have been expected that the lists of their eminent kinsmen would have been yet richer than they are

there are several mathematicians in my appendix especially of the bernoulli family but the names of pascal laplace gorse and others of class upper g or even upper x are absent we might similarly have expected that the senior wranglers of cambridge would afford many noteworthy instances of hereditary ability shown in various careers

but speaking generally this does not seem to be the case i know of several instances where the senior wrangler being eminently a man of mathematical genius as sir william thompson and mr archibald smith is related to other mathematicians or men of science but i know of few senior wranglers whose kinsmen have been eminent in other ways among the exceptions are sir john lefevre

whose brother is the ex-speaker viscount eversley and whose son is the present vice-president of the board of trade and sir f pollock the ex-chief baron whose kinships are described in judges i account for the rarity of such relationships in the following manner a man given to abstract ideas is not likely to succeed in the world unless he be particularly eminent in his particular line of intellectual effort

if the more moderately gifted relative of a great mathematician can discover laws well and good but if he spends his days in puzzling over problems too insignificant to be of practical or theoretical import or else too hard for him to solve or if he simply reads what other people have written he makes no way at all and leaves no name behind him

there are far fewer of numerous intermediate stages between eminence and mediocrity adopted for the occupation of men who are devoted to pure abstractions than for them whose interests are of a social kind chapter twelve of hereditary genius by francis galton this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox dot org recorded by leon harvey chapter twelve poets

the poets and artists generally are men of high aspirations but for all that they are a sensuous erotic race exceedingly irregular in their way of life even the stern and virtue preaching dante is spoken of by boccaccio in most severe terms their talents are usually displayed early in youth when they are first shaken by the tempestuous passion of love

of all who have a place in the appendix to this chapter cowper is the only one who began to write in mature life and none of the others who were named in the heading to my appendix except possibly camions and spencer delayed authorship till after thirty it may be interesting and it is instructive to state a few facts in evidence of their early powers behringer a printer's compositor taught himself what began to publish at sixteen

burns was a village celebrity at sixteen and soon after began to write calderon at fourteen campbell's pleasures of hope was published when he was twenty gildoni produced a comedy manuscript that amazed all who saw it at eight ben jonson a bricklayer's lad fairly worked his way upwards through westminster and cambridge and became famous by his every man and his humour at twenty-four keats a surgeon's apprentice first published at twenty-one and died at twenty-five metastasio

improvised in public when a child and wrote at fifteen tom moore published under the name of thomas little and was famous at twenty three ovid wrote verses from boyhood pope published his pastorels at sixteen and translated the iliad between twenty five and thirty shakespeare must have begun very early for he had written almost all his historical plays by the time he was thirty four schiller a boy of promise became famous through his brigands at twenty three

Sophocles, at the age of 27, beat Aeschylus at the public games. I will now annex the usual tables. Table 1 is displayed on the page: Summary of relationships of 24 poets grouped in 20 families. There are three groups: one relation or two in family, two or three relations or three or four in family, and four or more relations or five or more in family. Table 2 is also displayed on the page with degrees of kinship, with columns of the name of the degree and the corresponding letters.

the results of table two are surprising it appears that if we except the kindred of coleridge and wordsworth who have shown various kinds of ability almost all the relations are in the first degree poets are clearly not founders of families the reason is i think simple and it applies to artists generally to be a great artist requires a rare and so to speak unnatural correlation of qualities

a poet besides his genius must have the severity and steadfast earnestness of those whose dispositions afford few temptations to pleasure and he must at the same time have the utmost delight in the exercise of his senses and affections this is a rare character only to be formed by some happy accident and is therefore unstable in inheritance

Usually people who have strong sensuous tastes go utterly astray and fail in life, and this tendency is clearly shown by numerous instances mentioned in the following appendix who have inherited the dangerous part of a poet's character and not his other qualities that redeem and control it. End of chapter 12 to Hereditary Genius Chapter 13 of Hereditary Genius by Francis Galton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.

recorded by leon harvey chapter thirteen musicians the general remarks i made in the last chapter on artists apply with especial force to musicians

the irregularity of their lives is commonly extreme the union of a painstaking disposition with the temperament requisite for a good musician is as rare as in poets and the distractions incident to the public life of a great performer are vastly greater hence although the fact of the inheritance of musical taste is notorious and undeniable i find it exceedingly difficult to discuss its distribution among families

i also found it impossible to obtain a list of first-class musicians that commanded general approval of a length suitable to my purposes there is an extensive jealousy in the musical world fostered no doubt by the dependence of musicians upon public apparatus for their professional advancement consequently each school disparages others individuals do the same and most biographers are unusually adultery of their heroes and unjust to those with whom they compare them

there exists no firmly established public opinion on the merits of musicians similar to that which exists in regard to poets and painters and it is even difficult to find private persons of fair musical tastes who are qualified to give a deliberate and dispassionate selection of the most eminent musicians as i have mentioned at the head of the appendix to this chapter i was indebted to a literary and artistic friend in whose judgment i have confidence for the selection upon which i worked

The precocity of great musicians is extraordinary. There is no career in which eminence is achieved so early in life as in that of music. I now proceed to give the usual tables. Table 1 is displayed on the page. Summary of relationships of 26 musicians grouped into 14 families. 1 relation or 2 in family, 2 or 3 relations or 3 or 4 in family, 4 or more relations or 5 or more in family. Table 2 is also displayed, with 14 families.

in the first degree second degree third degree all more remote the nearness of degree of the eminent kinsman is just as remarkable as it was in the case of the poets and equally so in the absence of eminent relations through the female lines mendelssohn and meyerbeer are the only musicians in my list whose eminent kinsmen have achieved their success in other careers than that of music chapter

CHAPTER XIV. PAINTERS

among painters as among musicians i think no one doubts that artistic talent is in some degree hereditary the question is rather whether its distribution in families together with the adjuncts necessary to form an eminent painter follow much the same law as that which obtains in respect to other kinds of ability

it would be easy to collect a large number of modern names to show how frequently artistic eminence is shown by kinsmen thus the present generation of the landseers consists of two academicans and one associate of the royal academy who are all of them the sons of an associate the bornier family consists of four painters rosa juliet jules and auguste and they are the children of an artist of some merit

very many more instances could easily be quoted but i wish to reduce evidence of the interrelationship of artists of a yet higher order of merit and i therefore limit my inquiry to the illustrious ancient painters especially of italy and the low countries

these are not numerous only as well as i can make out about forty-two whose natural gifts are unquestionably more than eminent and the fact of about half of them possessing eminent relations and of some of them as the karecki and the van eycks being actually kinsmen is more important to my argument than pages filled with the relationships of men of the classes f or e of artistic gifts

it would be interesting to know the number of art students in europe during the last three or more centuries from whom the forty-two names i have selected are the most illustrious it is assuredly very great but it hardly deserves much pains and investigation because it would afford a minimum not a true indication of the artistic superiority of the forty-two over the rest of the world

the reasons being that the art students are themselves of a selected class lads follow painting as a profession usually because they are instinctively drawn to it and not as a career in which they were placed by accidental circumstances i should estimate the average of the forty-two painters to rank far above the average of class f in the natural gifts necessary for high success in art

In the following table, I have included 10 individuals that do not find a place in the list of 42, namely Isaac Ostade, Jacobo and Genta Bellini, Baddiel, Agostino, Karaki, William Meares, David Teniers, W. Vander Veldt, the older, and Francisco de Ponte, both the older and the younger.

the average rank of these men is far above that of the modern academician though i have not ventured to include them in the most illustrious class i have kept claude in the latter notwithstanding recent strictures on account of his previously long-established reputation table one is displayed on the page summary of relationships of twenty-six painters grouped into fourteen families one relation or two in family two or three relations or three or four in family four or more relations or five or more in family

table two is displayed on the page fourteen families in first degree second degree third degree or more remote the rareness with which artistic eminence passes through more than two degrees of kinship is almost as noticeable here as in the case of musicians and poets chapter

CHAPTER FIFTEEN OF HERPEDITORY GENIUS BY FRANCIS GALTON This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Leon Harvey. CHAPTER FIFTEEN DIVINES I am now to push my statistical survey into regions where precise inquiries seldom penetrate and are not very generally welcomed.

there is commonly so much vagueness of expression on the part of religious writers that i am unable to determine what they really mean when they speak of topics that directly bear on my present inquiry i cannot guess how far their expressions are intended to be understood metaphorically or in some other way to be clothed with a different meaning to what is imposed by the grammatical rules and plain meaning of language

the expressions to which i refer are those which assert the fertility of marriages and the establishment of families to be largely dependent upon godliness i may even take a much wider range and include those other expressions which assert that material well-being generally is influenced by the same cause

i do not propose to occupy myself with criticising the interpretation of these or similar passages or by endeavouring to show how they may be made to accord with fact it is the business of theologians to do these things one is simply to investigate whether or no the assertions they contain according to their prima facie interpretation are or are not in accordance with statistical deductions

if an exceptional providence protects the families of godly men it is the fact that we must take into account natural gifts would then have to be conceived as due in a high and probably measurable degree to ancestral beauty and in a much lower degree than i might otherwise have been inclined to suppose to ancestral natural peculiarities

all of us are familiar with another and exactly opposite opinion it is popularly said that the children of religious parents frequently turn out badly and numerous instances are quoted to support this assertion

If a wider induction and a careful analysis should prove the correctness of this view, it might appear to strongly oppose the theory of heredity. On both these accounts, it is absolutely necessary to the just treatment of my subject to inquire into the history of religious people and learn the extent of their hereditary peculiarities and whether or no their lives are attended by an exceptionally good fortune. I have taken considerable pains to procure a suitable selection of divines for my inquiries.

the roman catholic church is rich in ecclesiastical biography but affords no data from my statistics for the obvious reason that its holy personages of both sexes are celibates and therefore incapable of founding families

a collection of the bishops of our church would also be unsuitable because during many generations they were principally remarkable as administrators scholars polemical writers or courtiers whence it would not be right to conclude from the fact of their having been elevated to the bench that they were men of extraordinary piety

i thought of many other selections of divines which further consideration compelled me to abandon at length i was fortunately directed to one that proved perfectly appropriate to my wants middleton's biographica evangelica four volumes eight seventeen eighty six is exactly the kind of work that suits my inquiries

the biographies contained in it are not too numerous for there are only a hundred and ninety together extending from the reformation to the date of publication speaking more precisely the collection includes the lives of one hundred ninety six even worthies taken from the whole of europe who with the exception of the first four namely

wickliffe huss jerome of prague and john of wesalia died between fifteen twenty seven and seventeen eighty five this leaves one hundred ninety two men during a period of two hundred and fifty eight years or three men in every four a sufficiently rigorous but not too rigorous selection for my purposes

the biographies are written in excellent english with well-weighed epithets and though the collection is to some extent a compilation of other men's writings it may justly be viewed as an integral work in which a proportionate prominence has been given to the lives of the more important men and not as a combination of separate memoirs written without reference to one another belleton assures the reader

in his preface that no bigoted partiality to sex will be found in his collection that his whole attention has been paid to truly great and rigorous characters of all those persuasions which hold the distinguishing principle of the gospel he does not define what in his opinion those principles are but it is easy to see that his leaning is strongly towards the calvinists and he utterly reprobates the papists

i should further say that after reading his work i have gained a much greater respect for the body of divines than i had before one is so frequently scandalized by the pettiness acrimony and fanaticism shown in theological disputes that an inclination to these failings may reasonably be suspected in men of large religious profession but i can assure my readers that middleton's biographies appear to the best of my judgment to refer in by the far greater part to exceedingly noble characters

there are certainly a few personages of very doubtful reputation especially in the earlier part of the work which covers the turbid period of the reformation such as cranmer saintly in his professions unscrupulous in his dealings zealous for nothing bold in speculation a coward and a time-server in action a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend macauley nevertheless i am sure that middleton's collection on the whole is eminently fair and trustworthy

the one hundred ninety six subjects of middleton's biographies may be classified as follow twenty two of them were matires mostly by fire the latest of these homel a pastor in the cavanese in the time of louis the fourteenth was executed sixteen eighty three under circumstances of such singular atrocity that although they have nothing to do with my subject i cannot forbear quoting what middleton says about them

homel was sentenced to the wheel where every limb member and bone of his body was broken with the iron bar forty hours before the executioner was permitted to strike him upon the breast with a stroke which they call le coup de grace the blow of mercy the death-stroke which put an end to all his miseries others of the one hundred ninety six worthies including many of the matires were active leaders in the reformation as wycliffe suingluis luther

ridley calvin beza others were most eminent administrators as archbishops parker grindal and usher a few were thorough-going puritans as bishop potter knox welsh the two erskines and dr j edwards a larger number were men of an extreme but more pleasing form of piety as bunyan baxter watts and george herbert the rest and the majority of the whole list may be described as pious scholars

as a general rule the men in middleton's collection had a considerable intellectual capacity and natural eagerness for study both of which qualities were commonly manifest in boyhood most of them wrote voluminously and were continually engaged in previous services they had evidently a strong need of utterance

they were generally but by no means universally of religious parentage judging by the last one hundred biographies of middleton's collection the earlier part of the work giving too imperfect notices of their ancestry to make it of use to analyse it

it would appear that out of one hundred men only forty-one had one or more eminently religious parents nothing whatever being said of the parentage of the other fifty-nine the forty-one cases are divided thus in seventeen cases a the father was a minister in sixteen cases b the father not being a minister both parents were religious in five cases c

The mother only is mentioned as pious. In two cases d, the mother's nebilities are known to have been religious. In one case e, the father alone is mentioned as pious. There is no case in which either or both parents are distinctly described as having been sinful, though there are two cases f of meanness and one g of overspending. The condition of life of the parents is mentioned in 66 cases, more than one third of the whole.

they fall into the following groups four highly connected howelton george prince of van halte john alasco herbert eight ancient families not necessarily wealthy joel deering gilpin hildersham ames bedell lewis de dieu palmer fifteen well connected oeclompadius zuinglius capito farrell jones burgenhages

sandys featley dodd fulk poole baxter griffith jones davies twenty three professional bellingham and top lady officers in army kattaker usher and soren legal seventeen were ministers see list already given devonant merchant six in trade two abbots

weaver twees clothier bunyan tinker watts boarding-school doddridge oilman poor huss ball garnoos phageus latimer six very poor luther pelican musculus cox andreas pride there is therefore nothing anomalous in the parentage of the divines

it is what we should expect to have found among secular scholars born within the same periods of our history the divines are not founders of influential families poverty was not always the reason of this because we read of many whose means were considerable

w gouge left a fair fortune to t gouge wherewith he supported welsh and other charities evans had considerable wealth which he wholly lost by speculations in the south sea bubble and others i mentioned who were highly connected and therefore more or less well off

the only families that produced men of importance are those of soleryn whose descendant was the famous attorney-general of ireland of archbishop sandys whose descendant after several generations became the first lord of sandys and of hooker who is an ancestor of the eminent botanists the late and present directors of the kew botanical gardens the divines as a whole have had hardly any appreciable influence in founding the governing families of england

or in producing other judges statesmen commanders men of literature and science poets or artists the divines are but moderately prolific

judging from the latter biographies about one-half of them were married and there were about five or possibly six children to each marriage that is to say the number actually recorded gives at the rate of four point five but in addition to these occurs about one in six or seven cases the phrase many children the insertion of these occasional unknown but certainly large numbers would swell the average by a trifling amount

again it is sometimes not clear whether the number of children who survived infancy may not be stated by mistake as the number of births and owing to this doubt we must further increase the estimated average now in order that population should not decrease each set of four adults two males and two females must leave at least four children who live to be adults behind them

in the case of the divines we have seen that only one-half are married men therefore each married divine must leave four adults to succeed him if his race is not to decrease this implies an average family of more than six children or as a matter of fact larger families than the divines appear to have had

those who marry often marry more than once we hear in all of eighty-one married men three of these namely junius gettaker and flavel had each of them four wives buser and mather had three and twelve others had two wives each

the frequency with which the divines became widowers is a remarkable fact especially as they did not usually marry when young i account for the early deaths of their wives on the hypothesis that their constitutions were weak and my reasons for thinking so are twofold first a large proportion of them died in childbirth but seven such deaths are mentioned and there is no reason to suppose that all or nearly all that occurred have been recorded by middleton

secondly it appears that the wives of the divines were usually women of great pity now it will be shown a little further on that there is a frequent correlation between an unusually devout disposition and a weak constitution the divines seem to have been very happy in their domestic life

I know a few exceptions to this rule. The wife of T. Cooper was unfaithful, and that of Paul Hooker was a termagant. Yet, in many cases, these simple-hearted worthies had made their proposals under advice, and not through love. Calvin married on Booser's advice, and as for Bishop Hall, he may tell his own story, for it is a typical one. After he had built his house, he says in his autobiography, the

the uncouth solitariness of my life and the extreme incommodity of my single housekeeping drew my thoughts after two years to condescend to the necessity of a married estate which god no less strangely provided for me

for walking from the church on monday in the wet sun week with a grave and reverend minister mr grandage i saw a comely and modest gentlewoman standing at the door of that house where we were invited to a wedding dinner and inquiring of that worthy friend whether he knew her yes quoth he i know her well and have bespoken her for your wife

when i further demanded an account of that answer he told me she was the daughter of a gentleman whom he much respected mr george winnif of brendenham

that out of an opinion had offered the fitness of that match for me he had already treated with her father about it whom he found very apt to entertain it advising me not to neglect the opportunity and not concealing the just praises of the modesty pity good disposition and other virtues that were lodged in that seemly presence i listened to the motion as sent from god and at last drew upon prosecution happily prevailed enjoying the company of that meet-help for the space of forty-nine years

the mortality of the divines follows closely the same order in those who are mentioned in the earlier as in the latter volumes of middleton's collection although the conditions of life must have varied in the periods to which they refer out of the one hundred ninety six nearly half of them died between the ages of fifty five and seventy five one quarter died before fifty five and one quarter after seventy five

sixty two or sixty three is the average age at death in the sense that as many died before that age as after it this is rather less than i have deduced from the other groups of eminent men treated of in this volume dodd the most aged of all the divines lived till he was ninety eight nummel and dumoulin died between ninety and ninety five sancius beza and conant between eighty five and ninety

the diseases that killed them are chiefly those due to a sedentary life for if we exclude the matires one quarter of all the recorded cases were from the stone or stranguary between which diseases the doctors did not then satisfactorily discriminate indeed they murdered bishop wilkins by mistaking the one for the other there are five cases of plague and the rest consist of the following groups in pretty equal proportions

fever and ague lung disease brain attacks and unclassed diseases as regards health the constitutions of most of the divines were remarkably bad it is i find very common among scholars to have been infirm in youth whence partially from inaptitude to join in with other boys in their amusements and partially from unhealthy inactivity of the brain they take eagerly to bookish pursuits

speaking broadly there are three eventualities to these young students they die young or they strengthen as they grow retaining their tastes and enabled to indulge them with sustained energy or they live on in a sickly way the divines are largely recruited from the sickly portion of these adults there is an air of invalidism about most religious biographies that also seems to me to pervade to some degree the lives in middleton's collection

he especially notices the following fourteen or fifteen cases of weak constitution one melancholy d sixty three whose health required continual management two calvin d

fifty five faint thin and consumptive but who nevertheless got through an immense amount of work perhaps we may say three junius lower d forty seven a most infirm and sickly child never expected to reach manhood but he strengthened as he grew and though he died young it was a plague that killed him he moreover survived four wives four down lower d sixty one

a somerset shire vicar who through all his life in health and strength was a professional pilgrim and sojourner in the world five george herbert lower d forty two consumptive and subject of frequent fevers and other infirmities

seemed to have owned the bent of his mind very much to his ill-health for he grew more pious as he became more stricken and we can trace that courageous chivalric character in him which developed itself in a more robust way in his ancestors and brothers who were mostly gallant soldiers one brother was a sailor of reputation another carried twenty-four wounds on his person six bishop potter lewis d sixty four was of a weak constitution melancholic

and peritanical seven chanway lower d twenty four found hard study and work by far an overmatch for him eight baxter lower d seventy six was always in wretched health he was tormented with a stone in the kidney which by the way is said to have been preserved in the college of surgeons nine philip henry lower d sixty five

called the heavenly henry when a young collegian was a weakly child he grew stronger as an adult but ruined his improved health by the sedentary ways of a student's life alternating with excitement in the pulpit where he sweated profusely as he prayed fervently he died of apoplexy ten her louis thirty was such a weakly puny object that his father did not like his becoming a minister lest his stature should render him despicable

eleven moth d unknown age seems another instance hardly any personal anecdote is given of him except that god was pleased to try him many ways which phrase i interpret to include ill-health twelve b lower d twenty nine was naturally infirm and died of a complication of obstinate disorders thirteen her d fifty five

though an early riser was very weakly by nature he was terribly emaciated before his death fourteen guys lower d eighty one a great age for those times was nevertheless sickly he was hectic and overworked in early life afterwards ill and lame and lastly blind fifteen top lady lower d thirty eight struggled in vain for health and a longer life by changing his residence at the sacrifice of his hopes of fortune

in addition to these fifteen cases of constitution stated to have been naturally weak we should count at least twelve of those that broke down under the strain of work even when the labour that ruined their health was unreasonably severe the zeal which girded them to work beyond their strength may be considered as being in some degree the symptom of a faulty constitution each case ought to be considered on its own merits they are as follows one would take her d forty eight

laid the seeds of death by his incredible application two rollo lower d forty three the first principal of the university of edinburgh died in consequence of overwork though an actual case of his death was the stone

three dr reynolds d forty eight called the treasury of all learning human and divine deliberately followed his instinct for overwork to the very grave saying that he would not prosper vitamin vivendi perdere causus lose the ends of living for the sake of life four stock d unknown age spent himself like a taper consuming himself for the good of others

five preston lower d forty one sacrificed his life to excessive zeal he is quoted as an example of the saying that men of great parts have no moderation he died an older man at the age of forty one six herbert palmer lower d forty six after a short illness for having spent much of his natural strength in the service of god there was less work for sickness to do

seven bailey le 54 who was so wholly inconscientious that if he had been at any time but innocently pleasant in the company of his friends it cost him afterwards some sad reflections preserve me for the privilege of such companions lost his health early in life eight clark le 62 was too laborious and had in consequence a fever at forty three which extremely weakened his constitution

nine ulric low d forty eight had an ill habit of body contracted by a sedentary life and an overstraining of his voice in preaching ten isaac watts

seventy four a proficient child but not strong fell very ill at twenty four and again thirty eight and from this he never recovered but passed the rest of his life in congenial seclusion an inmate of the house of sir t aponney afterwards of his widow eleven davies liberty thirty seven

a sprightly boy and keen writer grew into a religious man of so sedentary a disposition that after he was made president of yale college in america he took hardly any exercise he was there killed by a simple cold followed by some imprudence in sermon writing his vital powers being too low to support any physical strain

twelve t jones lady thirty two before the lord was pleased to call him he was walking in the error of his ways then he was afflicted with a disorder that kept him very low and brought him to death's door during all which time his growth in grace was great and remarkable this concludes my list of those divines twenty six in number who were specially noted by middleton as invalids it will be seen that about one half of them were infirm from the first and that the other half became broken down early in life

it must not be supposed that the remainder of the one hundred ninety six were invariably healthy men these biographies dwell little on personal characteristics and therefore their silence on the matter of health must not be interpreted as necessarily meaning that the health was good on the contrary as i said before there is an air of the sick-room running through the collection but to a mere less degree than in religious biographies that i have elsewhere read

a gently complaining and fatigued spirit is that which evangelical divines are very apt to pass their days it is curious how large a part of religious biographies is commonly given up to the occurrences of the sick-room we can easily understand why a considerable space should be devoted to such matters because it is on the death-bed that the belief is surely tested but this is insufficient to account for all we find in middleton and elsewhere

there is i think an actual pleasure shown by evangelical writers in dwelling on occurrences that disgust most people rivet a french divine has strangulation of the intestines which kills him after twelve days suffering

the remedies attempted each successive pang and each corresponding religious ejaculation is recorded and so the history of his battle attack is protracted through forty-five pages which is as much space as is allotted to the entire biographies of four average divines meade's death and its cause is described with equal minuteness and with still more repulsive details but in a less diffused form

i have thus far shown that twenty-six divines out of the one hundred ninety six or one eighth part of them were certainly invalid and i have laid much stress on the hypothesis that silence about health does not mean healthiness however i can add other reasons to corroborate my very strong impression that the divines are on the whole an ailing body of men

i can show that the number of persons mentioned as robust are disproportionately few and i would claim a comparison between the numbers of the notably weak and the notably strong rather than one between the notably weak and the rest of the one hundred ninety six

in professions where men are obliged to speak much in public the constitutional vigour of those who succeed is commonly extraordinary it would be impossible to read a collection of lives of eminent orators lawyers and the like without being impressed with the lightness of the number of those who have constitutions of iron but this is not at all the case with the divines for middleton speaks of only twelve or perhaps thirteen men who were remarkable for their vigour

Two very instructive facts appear in connection with these vigorous divines.

we find on the one hand that of the twelve or thirteen who were decidedly robust five if not six were irregular and wild in their youth and on the other hand that only three or four divines are stated to have been irregular in their youth who were not also men of notably robust constitutions we are therefore compelled to conclude that robustness of constitution is antagonistic in a very marked degree to an extremely pious disposition

first as to those who have been vigorous in constitution and wild in youth they are five or six in number one be lower d eighty six was a robust man of very strong constitution and what is very unusual among hard students never felt the headache he yielded as a youth to the allurements of pleasure and wrote poems of a very licentious character two welch low d fifty three

was of strong robust constitution and underwent a great deal of fatigue in youth he was a border thief three rothwell lower d sixty four was handsome well set of great strength of body and activity he hunted bowled and shot he also poached a little though he was a clergyman he did not reform till late and still the devil assaulted him much and long he got on particularly well with his parishioners in a wild part of the north of england

four grimshaw lower d fifty five was only once sick for the space of sixteen years though he used his body with less consideration than a merciful man would use his beast he was educated religiously but broke loose at eighteen at cambridge at the age of twenty six being then a swearing drunken person he was partially converted and at thirty four his preaching began to be profitable then followed twenty one years of eminent usefulness

five whitefield d fifty six had extraordinary activity constantly preaching and constantly travelling he had great constitutional powers though from disease he grew corpulent after forty he was extremely irregular in early youth drinking and pilfering stephen ecclesiastical biographies six it is probable that troas ought to be added to this list it will again be spoken of in the next category but one

Next, as to those who were vigorous in constitution but not irregular in youth. There are seven in number. 1. Peter Matur. Lower D. 62. A large, healthy man of grave, sedate, and well-composed countenance. His parts and learning were very uncommon. 2. Meade. Lower D. 52. Was a fine, handsome, dignified man. Middleton remarks that his vitals were strong, and he did not mind the cold.

and that he had a sound mind in a sound body he was a sceptic when a student at college but not wild three battle the seventy two a tall graceful dignified man a favourite even with italian papists suffered no decay of his natural powers till near his death four leighton they were seventy of a sudden attack of pleurisy he looked so fresh up to that time that age seemed to stand still with him five

d fifty three of a malignant fever but his strength was such that he might have been expected to live till eighty he was turned to religion when a boy by an attack of smallpox six alex d seventy six had an uncommon share of health and spirits he was a singularly amiable capable and popular man seven harrison d

unknown age a strong robust man full of flesh and blood humble devout and of bright natural parts this concludes the list i have been surprised to find none of the type of cromwell's ironsides lastly as to those who are regular in youth but who are not mentioned as being vigorous in constitution they are three or four in number according to trousse is omitted or included one william perkins d forty three a cheerful pleasant man

was wild and a spendthrift at cambridge and not converted till twenty four two bunyan vicious in youth was converted in a wild and regular way and had many backslidings throughout his career three trouse they were eighty two

his biography is deficient in particulars about which one would like to be informed but his long life followed a bad beginning appears to be a sign of an unusually strong constitution and to qualify him for insertion in my first category he was sent to france to learn the language and he learned also every kind of french

the same process was repeated in portugal the steps by which his character became remarkably changed are not recorded neither are his personal characteristics four t jones that thirty two has already been included among the invalids having been wild in youth but rendered pious by serious and lingering ill-health

i now come to the relationships of the divines recollecting that there are only one hundred ninety six of them altogether that they are selected from the whole of protestant europe at the average rate of twenty two men in thirty years the following results are quite as remarkable as those met within the other groups

seventeen out of the one hundred ninety six are interrelated thus simon gyrinus is uncle of thomas who is father of john james and there are others of note in this remarkable family of peasant origin white tager's maternal uncle was dr nowell robert abbott bishop of salisbury is brother to archbishop abbott downe's maternal uncle was bishop jowell dodd's grandson daughter's son was bishop wilkins william gouge was father to thomas gouge philip henry was father to matthew henry

ebenezer eschyn was brother to ralph eschyn there are eight others who have remarkable relationships mostly with religious people namely knox's grandson the son of a daughter who married john welch and josiah welch the cock of the conscience f junius had a son also called francis a learned oxonian by his daughter who married j g

he had for grandchildren dionysius and isaac phusias famous for their learning don was descended through his mother from lord chancellor sir john moore and judge restall herbert was brother to lord herbert of chabery and had other eminent and interesting relationships hush's connections are most remarkable for his father father's brother mother's father mother's brother and his own brother were all very eminent men in their day

the mother's brother of louis de dieu was professor of leyden the father and grandfather of maither were eminent ministers the father and three brothers of saurin were remarkably eloquent it cannot be doubted from these facts that religious gifts are on the whole hereditary but there are curious exemptions to the rule

millerton's work must not be considered as free from omissions of these exceptional cases neither he nor any other biographer would conceive it to be his duty to write about a class of facts which are important for us to obtain namely the cases in which the sons of religious parents turned out badly i have only lighted on a single instance of this apparent perversion of the laws of heredity in the whole of millerton's work namely that of archbishop matthew

but it is often said that such cases are not uncommon i rely mostly for my belief in their existence upon social experiences of modern date which could not be published without giving pain to innocent individuals those of which i know with certainty are not numerous but are sufficient to convince me of there being a real foundation for the popular notion the notoriety of some recent cases will i trust satisfy the reader and absolve me from entering any further into details

the summary of the results concerning the divines to which i have thus far arrived is that they are not founders of families who have exercised a notable influence on our history whether that influence be derived from the abilities wealth or social position of any of their members

that they are a moderately prolific race rather under than above the average that their average age at death is a trifle less than that of the eminent men comprised in my other groups that they commonly suffer from overwork that they have usually wretched constitutions that those whose constitutions were vigorous were mostly wild in their youth and conversely that most of those who had been wild in their youth and did not become pious till later in life were men of vigorous constitutions

that a pious disposition is decidedly hereditary that there are also frequent cases of sons of pious parents who turned out very badly but i shall have something to say on what appears to me to be the reason for this i therefore see no reason to believe that the divines are an exceptionally favoured race in any respect but rather that they are less fortunate than other men i now annex my usual tables table one is displayed on the page

summary of relationships of thirty three of the divines of middleton's biographica evangelica grouped into twenty five families table two is also displayed of degrees of kinship a comparison of the relative influences of the male and female lines of descent is made in the following table in the second degree one a g plus three p u plus zero a n plus zero a p equals four kinship through males

4g + 7u + 1n + 4p = 16 kinships through females. In the third degree, 0gF + 0gB + 2uS + 0nS + 0pS kinships through males.

1gF + 1gB + 0uS + 0nS + 0pS = 2 kinships through females. This table shows that the influence of the female line has an unusually large effect in qualifying a man to become eminent in the religious world. The only other group in which the influence of the female line is even comparable in its magnitude is that of scientific men.

and i believe the reasons laid down when speaking of them will apply mutatis mutandis to the divines it requires unusual qualifications and some of them of a feminine caste to become a leading theologian a man must not only have appropriate abilities and zeal and power of work but the postulates of the creed that he professes must be so firmly ingrained into his mind as to be the equivalents of axioms

the diversities of creeds held by earnest good and conscientious men show to a candid looker-on that there can be no certainty as to any point on which many of such men think differently but a divine must not accept this view he must be convinced of the absolute security of the groundwork of his peculiar faith a blind conviction which can best be obtained through maternal teachings in the years of childhood

i will now endeavour to account for the fact which i am compelled to acknowledge that the children of very religious parents occasionally turn out extremely badly it is a fact that has all the appearance of being a serious violation of the law of heredity and as such has caused me more hesitation and difficulty than i have felt about any other part of my inquiry however i am perfectly satisfied that this apparent anomaly is entirely explained by what i am about to lay before the reader

premising that it obliged me to enter into a more free and thorough analysis of the religious character than would otherwise have been suitable to these pages the disposition that qualifies a man to attain a place in a collection like that of the biographica evangelica can best be studied by comparing it with one that while it contrasts with it in essentials closely resembles it in all the unimportant respects

thus we may exclude from our comparison all except those whose average moral dispositions are elevated some grades above those of men generally and we may also exclude all except such as think very earnestly reverently and conscientiously upon religious matters

there remained a range in their views and for the most part in the natural disposition that inclines them to adopt those views from the extremist beauty to the extremist scepticism the biographica evangelica affords many instances that approach to the former ideal and we may easily select from history men who have approached to the latter

in order to contrast and so understand the nature of the differences between the two ideal extremes we must lay aside for a while our own religious predilections whatever they may be and place ourselves resolutely on a point equidistant from both whence we can survey them alternately and with equal eye

let us then begin clearly understanding that we are supposing both the sceptic and the religious man may be equally earnest virtuous temperate and affectionate both perfectly convinced of the truth of their respective tenets and both finding moral content in such conclusions as those tenets imply

the religious man affirms that he is conscious of an indwelling spirit of grace that consoles guides and dictates and that he could not stand if it were taken away from him it renders easy the trials of his life and calms the dread that would otherwise be occasioned by the prospect of death

he gives directions and inspires motives and speaks through the voice of the conscience as an oracle upon what is right and what is wrong he will add that the presence of this spirit of grace is a matter that no argument or theory is capable of explaining away inasmuch as the conviction of its presence is fundamental in its nature and the signs of its action are as unmistakable as those of any other actions made known to us through the medium of the senses

The religious man would further dwell on the moral doctrine of the form of creed that he professes, but this we must eliminate from the discussion, because the moral doctrines of the different forms of creed are exceedingly diverse, some tending to self-culture and asceticism, and others to active benevolence. But we are seeking to find the nature of a religious disposition so far as it is common to all creeds.

The skeptic takes a position antagonistic to that which I have described.

as appertaining to the religious man he acknowledges the sense of an indwelling spirit which possibly he may assert to have himself experienced in its full intensity but he denies its objectivity he argues that as it is everywhere acknowledged to be a fit question for the intellect to decide whether other convictions however fundamental are really true or whether the evidences of the senses are in every given case to be depended upon

so it is perfectly legitimate to submit religious convictions to a similar analysis he will say that a floating speck in the vision and a ringing in the ears are capable of being discriminated by the intellect from the effects of external influences that in lands where mirage is common the experienced traveller has to decide on the truth of the appearance of water by the circumstances of each particular case

and as to fundamental convictions he will add that it is well known the intellect can successfully grapple them for kant and his followers have shown reasons to which all metaphysicians ascribe weight

that time and space are neither of them objective realities but only forms which under our minds by virtue of our own constitution are compelled to act the sceptic therefore claiming to bring the question of the objective existence of the spirit of grace under intellectual examination has decided whether rightly or not has nothing to do with our inquiries that it is subjective not objective

he argues that it is not self-consistent in its action inasmuch as it prompts different people in different ways and the same person in different ways at different times that there is no sharp demarcation between the promptings that are validly natural and those that are considered supernatural lastly that convictions of right and wrong are misleading inasmuch as a person who indulges in them without check from the reason becomes a blind partizan and partizans on hostile sides feel them in equal strength

as to the sense of consolation derived from the creature of a fond imagination he will point to the experiences of the nursery where the girl tells all its griefs to its doll converses with it takes counsel with it and consoles by it putting unconsciously her own words into the mouth of the doll

for these and similar reasons which it is only necessary for me to state and not to weigh the thorough-going ideal sceptic deliberately crushes those very sentiments and convictions which the religious man prizes above all things he pronounces them to be idols created by the imagination and therefore to be equally abhorred with idols made by the hands of gross and material

thus far we have only pointed out an intellectual difference a matter of no direct service in itself in solving the question on which we are engaged but of the utmost importance when the sceptic and religious man are supposed to rest contentedly in their separate conclusions in order that a man may be a contented sceptic of the most extreme type

he must have confidence in himself that he is qualified to stand absolutely alone in the presence of the severest trials of life and of the terrors of impending death his nature must have sufficient self-assertion and stoicism to make him believe that he can act the whole of his part upon earth without assistance

this is the ideal form of the most extreme scepticism to which some few may nearly approach but it is questionable if any have ever reached on the other hand the support of a stronger arm and of a consoling voice are absolute necessities to a man who has a religious disposition he is conscious of an incongruity in his nature and of an instability in his disposition and he knows his insufficiency to help himself

but all humanity is more or less subject to these feelings especially in sickness in youth and in old age and women are more affected by them than men the most vigorous are conscious of secret weaknesses and failings which give them often in direct proportion to their intellectual stoicism agonies of self-distrust

but in the extreme and ideal form which we are supposing the incongruity and instability would be extreme he would not be fit to be a freeman for he could not exist without a confessor and a master here then is a broad distinction between the natural dispositions of the two classes of men the man of religious constitution considers the contented sceptic to be foolhardy and sure to fail miserably

the sceptic considers the man of an extremely pious disposition to be slavish and inclined to superstition it is sometimes said that a conviction of sin is a characteristic of a religious disposition i think however the strong sense of sinfulness in a christian to be partly due to the doctrines of his intellectual

the sceptic equally with the religious man would feel disgust and shame at his miserable weakness in having done yesterday in the heat of some impulse things which to-day in his calm moments he disapproves he is sensible that if another person had done the same thing he would have shunned him so he similarly shuns the contemplation of his own self he feels he has done that which makes him unworthy of the society of pure-minded men

that he is a distinguished pariah who would deserve to be driven out with indignation if his recent acts and real character were suddenly disclosed the christian feels all this and something more he feels he has committed his faults in the full sight of a pure god that he acts ungratefully and cruelly to a being full of love and compassion who died as a sacrifice for sins like those he has just committed

the considerations add extreme poignancy to their sense of sin but it must be recollected that they depend upon no difference of character if the sceptic held the same intellectual creed he would feel them in precisely the same way as a religious man it is not necessarily dullness of heart that keeps him back it is also sometimes believed that puritanic ways are associated with strong religious professions

but a Puritan tenancy is by no means an essential part of a religious disposition. The Puritan's character is joyless and morose. He is most happy, or to speak less paradoxically, most at peace with himself when sad. It is a mental condition correlated with well-known Puritan features, black straight hair, hallowed cheeks, and sallow complexion. A bright blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, curly-haired youth would seem an anomaly in a Puritanical assembly.

but there are many divines mentioned in middleton whose character was most sunny and joyful and whose society was dearly prized showing distinctly that the puritan type is a speciality and by no means an inviolable ingredient in the constitution of men who are naturally inclined to pity the result of all these considerations is to show that the chief peculiarity in the moral nature of the pious man is his conscious instability

he is liable to extremes now swinging forwards into regions of enthusiasm adoration and self-sacrifice now backwards into sensuality and selfishness very devout people are apt to style themselves the most miserable of sinners and i think they may be taken to a considerable extent at their word it would appear that their disposition is to sin more frequently and to repeat more fervently than those whose constitutions are stoical and therefore of a more symmetrical and orderly character

the amplitude of the moral oscillations of religious men is greater than that of others whose average moral position is the same the table page thirty four of the distribution of natural gifts is necessarily as true of morals as of intellect or of muscle if we class a vast number of men into fourteen classes separated by equal grades of morality as regards their natural disposition the number of men per million in the different classes will be as stated in the table

i have no doubt that many of middleton's divines belong to class abrgi in respect to their active benevolence unselfishness and other admirable qualities but men of the lowest grades of morals may also have pious amplitudes thus among prisoners the best attendants on religious worship are often the worst criminals

I do not, however, think it is always an act of conscious hypocrisy in bad men when they make pious professions, but rather that they are deeply conscious of the instability of their characters and that they fly to devotion as a resource and consolation. These views will, I think, explain the apparent anomaly why the children of extremely pious parents occasionally turn out very badly. The parents are naturally gifted with high moral characters combined with instability of disposition.

but these peculiarities are in no way correlated. It must therefore often happen that the child will inherit the one and not the other. If this heritage consists of the moral gifts without great instability, he will not feel the need of extreme piety. If he inherits great instability without morality, he will be very likely to disgrace his name. End of chapter 15 Chapter 16 of Hereditary Genius by Francis Galton

CHAPTER XVI. SENIOR CLASSICS OF CAMBRIDGE The position of senior classic at Cambridge is of the same rank in regard to classical achievement as that of the senior wrangler is to achievement in mathematics. Therefore, all that I said about the severity of the selection implied by the latter degree is strictly applicable to the former.

i have chosen the senior classics for the subject of this chapter rather than the senior wranglers for the reasons explained in page one hundred ninety seven the classical tripos was established in the year eighteen twenty four there have therefore been forty-six lists between that time and the year eighteen sixty nine both inclusive

in nine cases out of these two or more names were bracketed together at the head of the list as equal in merit leaving thirty-six cases of men who were distinctly the first classics of their civil years their names are as follow malkin isaacson stratton kennedy selwyn soames wordsworth kennedy lashington

bunbury kennedy goulburn osborne humphrey freeman cope denman main leshington elwyn perrone lightfoot roby hawkins butler brown clark sidgwick abbott jebb wilson moss whitelaw smith sandys kennedy

it will be observed that the name of kennedy occurs no less than four times and that of lushington twice in this short series i will give the genealogies of these and of a few others of which i have particulars and which i have italicised in the above list

begging it at the same time to be understood that i do not mean to say that many of the remainder may not also be distinguished for the eminence of their kinsmen i have not cared to make extensive and minute inquiries because the following list is amply sufficient for my purpose it is obvious that the descending relationships must be generally deficient since the oldest of all the senior classics took his degree in eighteen thirty four and would therefore be only about fifty-seven at the present time

for the most part the sons have yet to be proved and the grandsons to be born there is no case in my list of only a single eminent relationship there are four namely denman golbin selwyn and sidgwick of only two or three all the others have four or upwards chapter sixteen chapter seventeen of hereditary genius by francis galton

CHAPTER XVII. ORSMAN I propose to supplement what I have written about brain by two short chapters on muscle. No one doubts that muscle is hereditary in horses and dogs, but humankind are so blind to facts and so governed by preconceptions. I have heard it frequently asserted that muscle is not hereditary in men,

oarsmen and wrestlers have maintained that their heroes spring up capriciously so i have thought it advisable to make inquiries into the matter the results i have obtained will beat down another place of refuge for those who insist that each man is an independent creation and not a mere function physically morally and intellectually of ancestral qualities and external influences in respect to oarsmen let me assure the reader that they are no insignificant fraction of the community

no mere waifs and strays from those who follow more civilized pursuits a perfect passion for roaming pervades large classes at newcastle when a great race takes place all business is at a standstill factories are closed shops are shut and offices deserted the number of men who fall within the attraction of the career is very great and there can be no doubt that a large proportion of those among them who are qualified to succeed brilliantly obey the attraction and pursue it

for information in this and the following chapters i am entirely indebted to the kind inquiries made for me by mr robert spence watson of newcastle whose local knowledge is very considerable and whose sympathies with athletic amusements are strong mr watson put himself into continual communication with one of the highest i believe by far the highest authority on boating matters a person who had reported nearly every boating race to the newspapers for the last quarter of a century

the list in the appendix to this chapter includes the names of nearly all the rowing men of note who were figured upon the tyne during the past six and twenty years it also includes some of the rowers on the thames but the information about these is not so certain the names are not picked and chosen but the best men have been taken of whom any certain knowledge could be obtained

it is not easy to classify the rowers especially as many of the men have rarely if ever pulled in skiff matches but formed part of crews in pair-oared four-oared or six-oared matches their performances have however been carefully examined and criticised by mr watson and his assessor who have divided them into four classes i have marked the names of the lowest with brackets and have attached to them the phrase moderately good

these are men who have either disappointed expectations founded on early promise or have not rowed often enough to show of what feats they are really capable no complete failure is included fewer amateurs can cope with men of this class notwithstanding the mediocrity of their abilities when judged by a professional standard

the next ascending grade is also distinguished by brackets but no qualifying expression is added to their names they consist of the steady reliable men who form good racing crews the two superior grades contain the men whose names are printed without brackets whom in short i treat as being eminently gifted in order to make a distinction between the two grades i add to the list of the men who belong to the higher of them the phrase very excellent oarsmen

it is not possible to do more than give a rough notion of the places into which these four grades would respectively fall in my table page the four of natural gifts i have only two data to help me

the first is that i am informed that in the early part of eighteen sixty eight the tyne amateur rowing club which is the most important institution of that kind in the north of england had been fifteen years in excellence and had comprised in all three hundred and seventy seven members that three of these as judged by amateurish standards of comparison had been considered of surpassing excellence as skiff rowers and that the best of these three was looked upon as equal to or perhaps a trifle better than

the least good of the brothers matfin who barely ranks as an excellent rower the other datum in the deliberative pen of the authorities to whom i am indebted for the materials of this chapter that not one man in ten will succeed as a rower even of the lower of the two grades whose names are marked in my appendix by brackets and that not one in one hundred rowers attains to excellence hence the minimum qualification for excellence is possessed by only one man in one thousand

there is a rough accordance between these two data a rowing club consists in part of naturally selected men they are not men all of whom have been taken at haphazard as regards their powers of rowing a large part are undoubtedly mere conscripts from the race of clubbable men but there must always be a considerable number who would not have joined the club save for their consciousness of possessing gifts and tastes that specially qualified them for success on the water

to be the best oarsman of three hundred and seventy seven men who are comprised in a correct rowing club means much more than to be the best of three hundred and seventy seven men taken at hapazard it would be much nearer the truth to say that in means being the best of all who might have joined the club had they been so inclined and had appeared desirable members

upon these grounds see also my remarks in page twelve it is a very moderate estimate to conclude that the qualifications for excellence as an oarsman are only possessed by one man in one thousand

the very excellent oarsmen imply i presume a much more rigorous selection but i really have no data whatever on which to found an estimate many men who found they could attain no higher rank than excellence would abandon the unprofitable pursuit of match rowing for more regular and as some would say creditable occupations

we shall not be more than half a grade wrong if we consider the excellent oarsman to rank in at least class f of natural gifts with respect to rowing ability and the very excellent to fall well within it i do not propose to take any pains in analyzing these relationships for the data are inadequate rowing was comparatively little practiced in previous generations so we cannot expect to meet with evidence of ancestral peculiarities among the oarsmen

again the successful rowers are mostly single men and some of the best have no children it is important in respect to this to recollect the frequent trainings they have gone through mr watson mentions to me one well-known man who has trained for an enormous number of races and during the time of each training was more absenteeist and in an amazing health

then after each trial was over he calmly gave way and without committing any great excess remained for weeks in a state of fuddle this is too often the history of these men there in the appendix only three families each containing more than one excellent oarsman they are clasper matfin and taylor and the total relationships existing towards the ablest member of each family are eight upper b and one

There appears to be no intermarriage except in the one case that is mentioned between the families of the rowers. Indeed, there is much jealousy between the rival families.

i am wholly indebted for the information contained in this chapter as i was for that in the last to mr robert spence watson with the assistance of a well-informed champion wrestler that gentleman has examined into the history of those of the one hundred seventy two men of whom anything could be learned who were either first or second at carlisle or newcastle since the establishment of the championship at those places at the first in eighteen o nine and at the second in eighteen thirty nine

it is exceedingly difficult to estimate the performances of the ancestors of the present generation because there were scarcely any prizes in former days matches there then made simply for honour we must not expect to be able to trace ancestral gifts among the wrestlers to a greater degree than among the oarsmen

i should add that i made several attempts to obtain information on wrestling families in lake districts of westmoreland and cumberland but entirely without success no records seem to have been kept of the yearly meetings at kenswick and bonus and the wrestling deeds of past years have fallen out of mind there are eighteen families in my appendix containing between them forty-six wrestlers

and the relationships existing towards the ableist wrestler of the family are 1 upper F, 21 upper B, 7 upper S, and 1 lower N. End of chapter 18 Chapter 19 of Hereditary Genius by Francis Galton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in their public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Leon Harvey Chapter 19 Comparison of Results

let us now bring our scattered results side to side for the purpose of comparison and judge at the extent to which they corroborate one another how far they confirm the provisional calculations made in the chapter on judges from more scanty data and where and why they contrast the number of cases of hereditary genius analyzed in the several chapters of my book amount to a large total

i have dealt with no less than three hundred families containing between them nearly one thousand eminent men of whom four hundred and fifteen are illustrious or at all events of such note as to deserve being printed in black type at the head of a paragraph if there be such a thing as a decided law of distribution of genius in families it is sure to become manifest when we deal statistically with so large a body of examples

In comparing the results obtained from the different groups of eminent men, it will be our most convenient course to compare the columns of the several tables.

column b gives the number of kinsmen in various degrees on the supposition that the number of families in the group to which it refers is one hundred all the entries under b have therefore the same common measure they are all percentages and admit of direct inter comparison i hope i have made myself quite clear lest there should remain any misapprehension it is best to give an example

Thus, the families of divines are only 25 in number, and in those 25 families there are 7 eminent fathers, 9 brothers and 10 sons. Now, in order to raise these numbers to percentages, 7, 9 and 10 must be multiplied by the number of times that 25 goes into 100, namely by 4. They will then become 28, 36 and 40, and will be found entered as such in column B, page 275, the

the parent numbers seven nine ten appearing in the same table in the column a in the following table the columns b of all the different groups are printed side by side i have however thrown painters and musicians into a single group of artists because their numbers were too small to make it worth while to consider them apart a table is displayed on the page with three main columns descending

titled, The Number of Families is Containing More than One Eminent, and the Total Number of Men in All the Families, Separate Groups, and All Groups Together. And next to these is a column B, calculated from the whole of the families put together, with the intention of giving a general average, and I have further attached to it its appropriate columns C and D, not so much for particular use in this chapter, as for the convenience of the reader who may wish to make comparisons with the other tables, from the different point of view which D affords.

the general uniformity in the distribution of ability among the kinsmen in the different groups is strikingly manifest the eminent sons are almost invariably more numerous than the eminent brothers and these are a trifle more numerous than the eminent fathers

on proceeding further down the table we come to a sudden dropping off of the numbers of the second grade of kinship namely of the grandfathers uncles nephews and grandsons this diminution is conspicuous in the entries in column d the meaning of which has already been fully described in page eighty one eighty three on reaching the third grade of kinship another abrupt dropping off in numbers is again met with but the first cousins are found to occupy a decidedly better position than other relations within the third grade

we further observe that while the proportionate abundance of eminent kinsmen in the various grades is closely similar in all the groups the proportions deduced from the entire body of illustrious men four hundred and fifteen in number coincide with peculiar general accuracy with those we obtained from a large subdivision of one hundred and nine judges

they cannot therefore remain adept at the existence of a law of distribution of ability in families or that is pretty accurately expressed by the figures in column b under the heading of eminent men of all classes i do not however think it worth while to submit a diagram like that in page eighty three derived from the column d in the last table because little dependence can be placed on the entries in c by the help of which that column had to be calculated

when i began my inquiries i did indeed try to obtain real and not estimated data of the sea by inquiring into the total numbers of kinsmen in each degree of every illustrious man as well as of those who achieved eminence i wearied myself for a long time with searching biographies but finding the results very disproportionate to the labor and continually open to doubt after they had been obtained i gave up the task and resigned myself to the rough but ready method of estimating averages

it is earnestly to be desired that breeders of animals would furnish tables like mine on the distribution of different marked physical qualities in families the results would be far more than mere matters of curiosity and would afford constance for formulae by which i shall briefly show in a subsequent chapter the laws of heredity as they are now understood may admit of being expressed

in contrasting the comms b of the different groups the first notable peculiarity that catches the eye is the small number of the sons of commanders they being thirty-one while the average of all the groups is forty-eight there is nothing anomalous in this irregularity i have already shown when speaking of the commanders that they usually begin their active careers in youth and therefore if married at all they are mostly away from their wives on military service

it is also worth while to point out a few particular cases where exceptional circumstances stood in the way of the commander's leaving male issue because the total number of those included in my lists is so small being only thirty-two as to make them of appreciable importance in effecting the results thus alexander the great was continually engaged in distant wars and died in early manhood he had one posthumous son but that son was murdered for political reasons when still a boy

julius caesar an exceedingly profligate man left one illegitimate son by cleopatra but that son was also murdered for political reasons when still a boy nelson married a widow who had no children by her former husband and therefore was probably more or less infertile by nature napoleon i was entirely separated from mary louise after she had borne him one son

though the great commanders have but few immediate descendants yet the number of their eminent grandsons is as great as in the other groups ascribe this to the superiority of their breed which ensures eminence to an unusually large proportion of their kinsmen

the next exceptional entry in the table is the number of eminent fathers of the great scientific men as compared with that of their sons there being only twenty-six of the former to sixty of the latter whereas the average of all the groups gives thirty-one and forty-eight i have already attempted to account for this by showing first

that scientific men owe much to the training and to the blood of their mothers and secondly that the first in the family who has scientific gifts is not nearly so likely to achieve eminence as the descendant who is taught to follow science as a profession and not to waste his powers on pointless speculations the next peculiarity in the table is the small number of eminent fathers in the group of poets this group is too small to make me attach much importance to the deviation it may be mere accident

the artists are not a much larger group than the poets consisting as they do of only twenty-eight families but the number of their eminent sons is enormous and quite exceptional it is eighty-nine whereas the average of all the groups is only forty-eight the remarks i made about the descendant of a great scientific man prospering in science more than his ancestor are eminently true as regards artists

for the fairly gifted son of a great painter or musician is far more likely to become a professional celebrity than another man who has equal natural ability but is not especially educated for professional life the large number of arda's sons who have become emmett testifies to the strongly hereditary character of their peculiar ability while if the reader will turn to the account of the herschel family

page two hundred fifteen two hundred sixteen he will readily understand that many persons may have decided artistic gifts who have adopted some other more regular solid or lucrative occupation

i have now done with the exceptional cases it will be observed that they are mere minor variations in the law expressed by the general average of all the groups for if we say that every ten illustrious men who have any eminent relations at all we find three or four eminent fathers four or five eminent brothers and five or six eminent sons we shall be right in seventeen instances out of twenty-four and in the seven cases where we are wrong the error will consist of less than one unit in two cases

the fathers of the commanders and men of literature of one unit in four cases the father of poets and the sons of judges commanders and divines and of more than one unit in the sole case of the sons of artists the deviations from the average are generally greater in the second and third grades of kinship because the numbers of instances in the several groups are generally small

but as the proportions in the large subdivision of the eighty five judges correspond with extreme closeness to those of the general average we are perfectly justified in accepting the latter with confidence the final and most important result remains to be worked out it is this if we know nothing else about a person than that he is a father brother son grandson or other relation of an illustrious man what is the chance that he is or will be

column e in page sixty one gives the reply for judges it remains for us to discover what it is for illustrious men generally in each of the chapters i have given such data as i possessed fit for combining with the results in column d in order to make the required calculation

they consist of the proportion of men whose relations achieved eminence compared with the total number into whose relationships are inquired the general result is that exactly one-half of the illustrious men have one or more eminent relations consequently if we divide the entries in column d of eminent men of all classes a two hundred seventeen by two we shall obtain the corresponding column e

the reader may however suspect the fairness of my selection he may recollect my difficulty avowed in many chapters of finding suitable selections and will suspect that i have yielded to the temptation of inserting more than a due share of favourable cases and i cannot wholly deny the charge for i can recollect a few names that probably occurred to me owing to the double or triple weight given to them by the commonated performances of two or three persons

therefore i acknowledge it to be quite necessary in the interests of truth to appeal to some wholly independent selection of names and will take for that purpose the saints or whatever their right name may be of the comtist calendar many of my readers will know to what i am referring how august comte desiring to found a religion of humanity selected a list of names from those to whom human development was most indebted

and assign the months to the most important the weeks to the next class and the days to the third i have nothing whatever to do with the comte's doctrines in these pages his disciples dislike darwinism and therefore cannot be expected to be favourable to many of the discussions in this book so i have the more satisfaction in the independence of the testimony afforded by his calendar to the truth of my views again no one can doubt that comte's selections are entirely original

for he was the last man to pin his faith upon that popular opinion which he aspired to lead every name in his calendar was weighed we may be sure with scrupulous care though i dare say with a rather crazy balance before it was inserted in the place which he assigned for it in his calendar

The calendar consists of 13 months, each containing 4 weeks. The following table gives the representatives of the 13 months in capital letters, and those of the 52 weeks in ordinary type. I have not thought it worthwhile to transcribe the representatives of the several days. Those marked with a * are included in my appendices as having eminent relations. Those with a +

might have been so included it will be observed that there are from ten to twenty persons of whose kinships we know nothing or next to nothing and therefore they should be struck out of the list such as numa buddha homer phidias thales pythagoras archimedes apollinus hipparchus st paul among the remaining fifty five or forty five persons no less than twenty seven or one half have eminent relations one theocracy initial plus moses

Numa Buddha + Confucius Muhammad 2. Ancient poetry Homer + Aeschylus Phidias + Aristophanes Virgil 3. Ancient philosophy * Aristotle Thales Pythagoras Socrates Plato 4. Ancient science

Archimedes, plus Hippocrates, Apollinus, Hipparchus, star Pliny the Elder. 5. Military Civilization, star Caesar, Themistocles, star Alexander, star Scipio, Trajan. 6. Catholicism, St. Paul, plus St. Augustine, Hildebrand, St. Bernard, Bocet. 7. Feudal Civilization, Charlemagne,

Alfred Godfrey Innocent III St. Louis 8. Modern Epic Dante Star Ariosto Raphael Tasso Star Milton 9. Modern Industry Gutenberg Columbus Falkenson Star Watt Plus Montgolfier 10. Modern Drama Shakespeare Calderon Star Cornell

11. Modern Philosophy 12. Modern Politics 13. Modern Science

Bycat. Star. Galilee. Star. Newton. Lavoisier. Gaul.

it is singularly interesting to observe how strongly the results obtained from comte selection corroborate my own i am sure then we shall be within the mark if we consider column d in the table page three hundred seventeen to refer to the eminent kinsmen not to the large group of illustrious and eminent men but of the more select portion of illustrious men only and then calculate our column e by dividing the entries under d by two

For example, I reckon the chances of kinsmen of illustrious men rising or having risen to eminence to be 15.5 to 100 in the case of fathers, 13.5 to 100 in the case of brothers, 24 to 100 in the case of sons. By putting these and the remaining proportions into a more convenient form, we obtain the following results. In first grade, the chance of the father is 1 to 6, of each brother 1 to 7, of each son 1 to 4.

in second grade of each grandfather one to twenty five of each uncle one to forty of each nephew one to forty of each grandson one to twenty nine in the third grade the chance of each member is about one to two hundred excepting in the case of first cousins where it is one to one hundred

the large number of eminent descendants from illustrious men must not be looked upon as expressing the results of their marriage with mediocre women for the average ability of the wives of such men is above mediocrity this is my strong conviction after reading very many biographies although it clashes with a commonly expressed opinion that clever men marry silly women it is not easy to prove my point without a considerable mass of quotations to show the estimate in which the wives of a large body of illustrious men were held by their intimate friends

but the two following arguments are not without weight first the lady whom a man marries is very commonly one whom he has often met in the society of his own friends and therefore not likely to be a silly woman she is also usually related to some of them and therefore has a probability of being hereditarily gifted secondly as a matter of fact a large number of eminent men marry eminent women if the reader runs his eye through my appendices he will find many such instances

philip the second of magadon and olympius caesar's liaison with cleopatra marlborough and his most able wife helvetius married a charming lady whose hand was also sought by both franklin and turgot august wilhelm von schlegel was heart and soul devoted to madame

necker's wife was a blue stocking of the purest hue robert stephens the learned printer had petronella for his wife the lord keeper sir nicholas bacon and the great lord burleigh married two of the highly accomplished daughters of sir anthony cook every one of these names which i have taken from the appendices of to my chapters on commanders statesmen and literary men are those of decidedly eminent women

they establish the existence of a tendency of like to like among intellectual men and women and make it most probable that the marriages of illustrious men with women of classes a and d are very common on the other hand there is no evidence of a strongly marked antagonistic taste of clever men liking really half-witted women a man may be conscious of serious defects in his character and select a wife to supplement what he wants

as a shy man may be attracted by a woman who has no other merits than those of a talker and a manager also a young awkward philosopher may accredit the first girl who cares to show an interest in him with greater intelligence than she possesses but these are exceptional instances the great fact remains that able men take pleasure in the society of intelligent women and if they can find such as would in other respects be suitable they will marry them in preference to mediocrities

i think therefore that the results given in my tables under the head of sons should be ascribed to the marriages of men of class f and above with women whose natural gifts are on the average not inferior to those of class b and possibly between b and c i will now contrast the power of the male and female lines of kinship in the transmission of ability and for that purpose will reduce the actual figures into percentages

As an example of the process, we may take the case of the judges. Here, as will be observed in the footnote, the actual figures correspond to the specified variety of kinship are 41, 16, 19, 1, making a total of 77. Now I raise these to what they would be if this total were raised to 100. In short, I multiply them by 100 and divide by 77, which converts them into 53, 21, 25, 1. And these are the figures inserted in the table.

the actual figures are a table is displayed on the page titled as the actual figures are it has several columns running down with the corresponding letters followed by judges statesmen commanders literary scientific poets artists divines and totals

it will be observed that the ratio of the total kinships through male and female lines is almost identical in the first five columns namely in judges statesmen commanders men of literature and men of science and is as seventy to thirty or more than two to one the uniformity of this ratio is evidence of the existence of a law but it is difficult to say upon what the law depends because the ratios are different for different varieties of kinship thus

To confine ourselves to those in the second grade which are sufficiently numerous to give averages on which dependence may be placed, we find that the sum of the ratios of upper G, upper U, upper N, upper P to those of lower G, lower U, lower N, lower P is also a little more than 2 to 1. Now the actual figures are as follow: 21 upper G, 23 upper U, 40 upper N, 26 upper P equals 110 in all.

21, lower g, 16, lower u, 10, lower n, 6, lower p, equals 53 in all. The first idea which will occur is that the relative smallness of the numbers in the lower line appears only in those kinships which are most difficult to trace through the female descent, and that the apparent inferiority is in exact proportion to that difficulty. Thus the parentage of a man's mother is invariably stated in his biography. Consequently, an eminent

g is no less likely to be overlooked than a upper g but a lower u is more likely to be overlooked than an upper u and an lower n and lower p much more likely than an upper n and upper p however the solution suggested by these facts is not wholly satisfactory because the differences appear to be as great in the well-known families of the statesmen and commanders as in the obscure ones of literary and scientific men

it would seem from this and from what i shall have to say about the divines that i have hunted out the eminent kinsmen in these degrees with pretty equal completeness in both male and female lines the only reasonable solution which i can suggest besides that of inheriting capacity of the female line for transmitting the peculiar forms of ability we are now discussing is that the aunts sisters and daughters of eminent men do not marry on the average so frequently as other women

they would be likely not to marry so much or so soon as other women because they would be accustomed to a higher form of culture and intellectual and moral tone in their family circle than they could easily find elsewhere especially owing to the narrowness of their means

their society were restricted to the persons in their immediate neighbourhood again one portion of them would certainly be of a dogmatic and self-assertive type and therefore unattractive to men and others would fail to attract owing to their having shy odd manners often met with in young persons of genius which are disadvantageous to the matrimonial chances of young women it will be observed in corroboration of this theory that it accounts for g being as large as g

because a man must have an equal number of lower g and upper g, but he need not have an equal number of lower u, lower n, lower p, and upper u, upper n, upper p. Owing to want of further information, I am compelled to leave this question somewhat undecided. If my column c of my tables had been based on facts instead of an estimate, these facts would have afforded the information I want.

in the case of poets and artists the influence of the female line is enormously less than the male and in these the solution i have suggested would be even more appropriate than in the previous groups

among the divines we come to a wholly new order of things here the proportions are as simply inverted the female influence being to the male of seventy three to twenty seven instead of as in the average of the first five columns thirty to seventy i have already in the chapters on divines spoken at so much length about the power of female influence in nurturing religious dispositions that i need not recur to that question

As regards the presumed disinclination to marriage among the female relatives of eminent men generally, an exception must certainly be made in the case of those of the divines. They consider intellectual ability and a cultured mind of small importance compared with pious professions, and religious society is particularly large, owing to habits of association for religious purposes. Therefore, the necessity of choosing a pious husband is no maternal hindrance to the marriage of a near-female relation of an eminent divine."

there is a common opinion that great men have remarkable mothers no doubt they are largely indebted to maternal influences but the popular belief ascribes an undue and incredible share to them i account for the belief by the fact that great men have usually high moral natures and are affectionate and reverential inasmuch as mere brain without heart is insufficient to achieve eminence such men are naturally disposed to show extreme filial regard and to publish the good qualities of their mothers with exaggerated praise

i regret i am unable to solve the simple question whether and how far men and women who are prodigious of men so and it will be seen from my point of view of that future of the human race as described in a subsequent chapter that the fertility of eminent men is a more important fact for me to establish than that of prodigies there are many difficulties in the way of discovering whether genius is or is not correlated with infertility one and a very serious one is that people will agree upon the names of those who were pre-eminently men of genius

nor even upon the definition of the word another is that the men selected as examples are usually ancients or at all events those who lived so long ago it is often and always very difficult to learn anything about their families another difficulty lies in the fact that the man who has no children is likely to do more for his profession and to devote himself more thoroughly to the good of the public than if he had them

a very gifted man will almost always rise as i believe to eminence but if he is handicapped with the weight of a wife and children in the race of life he cannot be expected to keep as much in the front as if he were single he cannot have no other pressing cause on his attention so domestic sorrows anxieties and petty cares no yearly child no periodical infantile epidemics no constant professional toil for the maintenance of a large family

there are other obstacles in the way of leaving descendants in the second generation the daughters would not be so likely as other girls to marry for the reasons stated a few pages back but the health of the sons is liable to be ruined by overwork the sons of gifted men are decidedly more precocious than their parents as a reference to my epitomises will distinctly show

i do not care to quote cases because it is a normal fact and equal to what is observed in diseases and in growths of all kinds as well as clearly laid down by mr darwin the result is that the precocious child is looked upon as a prodigy abler even than his parent because the parent's abilities at the same age were less and he is pushed forward in every way by home influences until serious harm is done to his constitution

so much for the difficulties in the way of arriving at a right judgment on the question before us most assuredly a surprising number of the ablest men appear to have left no descendants but we are justified from what i have said in ascribing a very considerable part of the adductor instances to other causes than an inherent tendency to barrenness in men and women of genius i believe there is a large residuum which must be ascribed and i agree thus far with the suggestion

of prosper lucas that as giants and dwarfs are rarely prolific so men of prodigiously large or small intellectual powers may be expected to be deficient in fertility on the other hand i utterly disagree with the assertion of that famous author on heredity that true genius is invariably isolated

there is a prevalent belief somewhat in accordance with the subject of the last paragraph but one that men of genius are unhealthy puny beings all brain and no muscle weak sighted and generally of poorer constitutions i think most of my readers would be surprised at the stature and physical frames of the heroes of history who fill my pages they could be assembled together in a hall

i would undertake to pick out any group of them even out of that of the divines see page two hundred seventy two hundred seventy one and eleven who should compete in any physical feats whatever against similar selections from groups of twice or thrice their number taken at haphazard from equally well-fed classes

in the notes i made previous to writing this book i have begun to make memoranda of the physical gifts of my heroes and regret now that i did not continue the plan but there is even almost enough printed in the appendices to warrant my assertion i do not deny that many men of extraordinary mental gifts have had wretched constitutions

but deny them to be an essential or even the usual accomplishment university facts are as good as any others to serve as examples so i will mention that both high wranglers and high classics have been frequently the first oarsmen of their years the honorary george denman

who was senior classic in eighteen forty two was the stroke of the university crew sir william thompson the second wrangler in eighteen forty five won the sculls in the very first boat race between the two universities three men who afterwards became bishops rowed in one of the commanding boats and another rowed in the other it is the second and third-rate students who are usually weekly

A collection of living magnets in various branches of intellectual achievement is always a feast to my eyes, being as they are, such massive, vigorous, capable-looking animals.

i took some pains to investigate the law of mortality in the different groups and drew illustrative curves in order to see whether there was anything abnormal in the constitutions of eminent men and this result certainly came out which goes far to show that the gifted men consist of two categories the very weak and the very strong it was that the curve of mortality does not make a single bend but rises to a minor culminating point and then descending again takes a fresh departure for its principal arc

there is a want of continuity in the regularity of its sweep i conclude that among the gifted men there is a small class who have weak and excitable constitutions who are destined to early death and that the remainder consists of men likely to enjoy a vigorous old age

this double culmination was strongly marked in the group of artists and distinctly so in that of poets but it came out with most startling definition when i laid out the cases of which i made notes ninety-two in number of men remarkable for their precocity their first culmination was at the age of thirty-eight then the death-rate sank to the age of forty-two at fifty-two it had again risen to what it was at thirty-eight and it attained its maximum at sixty-four

The mortality of the men who did not appear to have been eminently precocious, 180 cases in all, followed a perfectly normal curve, rising steadily to a maximum of 68 years, and then declining as steadily. The scientific men lived the longest, and the number of early deaths among them was decidedly less than in any of the other groups. The last general remark I have to make is that features and mental abilities do not seem to be correlated.

the son may resemble his parent in being an able man but it does not therefore follow that he will also resemble him in features i know of families where the children who had not the features of their parents inherited their disposition and ability and the remaining children had just the converse gifts in looking at the portraits in the late national exhibitions i was extremely struck with the absence of family likeness in cases where i had expected to find it

I cannot prove this point without illustrations. The reader must therefore permit me to leave its evidence in an avowedly incomplete form.

in concluding this chapter i may point out some of the groups that i have omitted to discuss the foremost engineers are a body of men possessed of remarkable natural qualities they are not only able men but are also possessed of singular powers of physical endurance and boldness combined with clear views of what can and what cannot be effected i have included watt and stevenson among the men of science but the brunells and the curious family of meyern going back for nine if not twelve generations

all able and many eminent in their professions and several others deserve notice i do not however see my way to making a selection of eminently gifted engineers because their success depends in a very great degree on early opportunities if a great engineering business is once established with well-selected men in their heads and various departments it is easy to keep up the name and credit for more than one generation after the death of its gifted originator

The actors are very closely connected, so much so as to form a cast. But here, as with the engineers, we have great difficulty in distinguishing the evidently gifted from those whose success is likely due to the accident of education. I do not, however, like to pass them over without a notice of the Campbell family, who filled so long a space in the eyes of the British world two generations ago. The following is their pedigree. A family tree is displayed on the page.

i was desirous of obtaining facts bearing on hereditary from china and there the system of examination is notoriously strict and far-reaching and boys of promise are sure to be passed on from step to step until they have reached the highest level at which they are capable the first honor of the year in a population of some four hundred millions the senior classic and senior regular rolled into one is the

have the chuan yans ever related together is a question i have asked and to which a reply was promised to me by a friend of high distinction in china but which has not reached me up to the time i am writing these lines however i put a question on the subject into the pages of the hong-kong notes and queries

august eighteen sixty eight i found at all events one case of a woman who after bearing a child who afterwards became a chuan yang was divorced from her husband but marrying again she bore a second child who also became a chuan yang to her next husband i feel the utmost confidence that if the question were thoroughly gone into by a really competent person china would afford a perfect treasury of facts bearing on hereditary

There is, however, a considerable difficulty in making these inquiries arising from the paucity of surnames in China and also from the necessity of going back to periods, and there are many such when corruption was far less rife in China than it is at present.

The records of the Olympian Games in the palmy days of Greece, which were scrupulously kept by the Ilians, would have been an excellent mind to dig into for facts bearing on hereditary, but they are not now to be had. However, I find one incidental circumstance in their history that is worth a few lines of notice. It appears there was a single instance of a married woman having ventured to be present while the Games were going on, although death was the penalty of the attempt.

She was found out, but excused because her father, brothers, and sons had all been victors. End of chapter 19 Chapter 20 of Hereditary Genius by Francis Galton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Leon Harvey Chapter 20 The Comparative Worth of Different Races

i have now completed what i have to say concerning the kinships of individuals and proceed in this chapter to attempt a wider treatment of my subject through a consideration of nations and races every long-established race has necessarily its peculiar fitness for the conditions under which it has lived owing to the sure operation of darwin's law of natural selection

however i am not much concerned for the present with the greater part of those aptitudes but only with such as are available in some form or other of high civilization we may reckon upon the advent of a time when civilization which is now sparse and feeble and far more superficial than it is vaunted to be shall overspread the globe ultimately it is sure to do so because civilization is the necessary fruit of high intelligence when found in a social animal

and there is no plainer lesson to be read off the face of nature than that the result of the operation of her laws is to evoke intelligence in connection with sociability intelligence is as much an advantage to an animal as physical strength or any other natural gift and therefore out of two varieties of any race of animal who are equally endowed in other respects the most intelligent variety is sure to prevail in the battle of life

similarly among animals as intelligent as man the most social race is sure to prevail other qualities being equal under even a very moderate form of material civilization a vast number of aptitudes acquired through the survivorship of the fittest and the unsparing destruction of the unfit for hundreds of generations have become as obsolete as the old male coach habits and customs since the establishment of railroads and there is not the slightest use in attempting to preserve them they are hindrances

and not gains to civilization. I shall refer to some of these a little further on, but I will first speak of the qualities needed in civilized society. They are, speaking generally, such as will enable a race to supply a large contingent to the various groups of eminent men, of whom I have treated in my several chapters, without going so far as to say that this very convenient test is perfectly fair, where are at all events justified in making considerable use of it, as I will do in the estimates I am about to give.

in comparing the worth of different races i shall make frequent use of the law of deviation from the average to which i have already been much beholden and to save the reader's time and patience i propose to act upon an assumption that would require a good deal of discussion of limit and to which the reader may at first demur which cannot lead to any error of importance in a rough provisional inquiry i shall assume that the intervals between the grades of ability are the same in all the races

that is if the ability of class a of one race be equal to the ability of class c in another then the ability of class b of the former shall be supposed equal to that of the class d of the latter and so on i know this cannot be strictly true for it would be in defiance of analogy if the variability of all races were precisely the same

but on the other hand there is good reason to expect that the error introduced by the assumption it cannot sensibly effect the off-hand results for which i alone i propose to employ it or over the rough data i shall deduce will go far to show the justice of this expectation

let us then compare the negro race with the anglo-saxon with respect to those qualities alone which are capable of producing judges statesmen commanders men of literature and science poets artists and divines if the negro race in america had been affected by no social disabilities a comparison of their achievements with those of the whites in their several branches of intellectual effort having regard to the total number of their respective populations would give the necessary information as matters stand we must be content with much rougher data

First, the Negro race has occasionally, but very rarely, produced such men as to assent the overture, who are of our class upper F. That is to say, its upper X, or its total classes above upper G, appear to correspond with our upper F, showing a difference of not less than two grades between the blacks and white races, and it may be more.

Secondly, the Negro race is by no means wholly deficient in men capable of becoming good factors, thriving merchants, and otherwise considerably raised above the average of whites. That is to say, it cannot unfrequently supply men corresponding to our class, Upper C, or even Upper D. It will be recollected that Upper C implies a selection of 1 in 16, or somewhat more, than the natural abilities possessed by average 4 men of common juries, and that Upper D is as 1 in 64.

a degree of ability that is sure to make a man successful in life in short classes e and f for the negro may roughly be considered as the equivalent of our c and d a result which again points to the conclusion that the average intellectual standard of the negro race is some two grades below our own

Thirdly, we may compare, but with much caution, the relative position of Negroes in their native country with that of the travellers who visit them. The latter no doubt bring with them the knowledge current in civilised lands, but that is an advantage of less importance, as we are apt to suppose. A native chief has as good an education in the art of ruling men as can be desired.

he is continually exercised in personal government and usually maintains his place by the ascendancy of his character shown every day over his subjects and rivals a traveller in wild countries also feels to a certain degree the position of a commander and as to confront native chiefs at every inhabited place the result is familiar enough the white traveller almost invariably holds his own in their presence

it is seldom that we hear of a white traveller meeting with a black chief whom he feels to be the better man i have often discussed this subject with competent persons and can only recall a few cases of the inferiority of the white man certainly not more than might be ascribed to an average actual difference of three grades of which one may be due to the relative demerits of native education and the remaining two to a difference in natural gifts

fourthly the number among the negroes of those whom we should call half-witted men is very large every book alluding to negro servants in america is full of instances i was myself much impressed by this fact during my travels in africa the mistakes the negroes made in their own matters were so childish stupid and simpleton-like as frequently to make me ashamed of my own species

i do not think it any exaggeration to say that their lower c is as low as our lower e which would be a difference of two grades as before i have no information as to actual idiocy among the negroes i mean of course of their class of idiocy which is not due to disease

the australian type is at least one grade below the african negro i possess a few serviceable data about the natural capacity of the australian but not sufficient to induce me to invite the reader to consider them

the average standard of the lowland scotch and the english north-country men is decidedly a fraction of a grade superior to that of the ordinary english because the number of the former who attain to eminence is far greater than the proportionate number of their race would have led us to expect the same superiority is distinctly shown by a comparison of the well-being of the masses of the population for the scotch labourer is much less of a drudge than the englishmen of the midland countries

he does his work better and lives his life besides the peasant women of northumberland work all day in the fields and are not broken down by the work on the contrary they take pride in their efficiency labour as girls and when married they attend well to the comfort of their homes it is perfectly distressing to me to witness the draggled drudged mean look of the mass of individuals especially of the women that one meets in the streets of london and other purely english towns

The conditions of their life seem too hard for their constitutions, and to be crushing them into degeneracy.

the ablest race of whom history bears record is unquestionably the ancient greek partially because their masterpieces in the principal departments of intellectual activity are still unsurpassed and in many respects unequalled and partially because the population that gave birth to the creators of those masterpieces was very small of the various greek sub-races that of attica was the ablest and she was no doubt largely indebted to the following cause for her superiority

athens opened her arms to immigrants but not indiscriminately for her social life was such that none but very able men could take any pleasure in it on the other hand she offered attractions such as men of the highest ability and culture could find in no other city

Thus, by a system of partially unconscious selection, she built up a magnificent breed of human animals, which, in a space of one century, viz. between 530 and 430 BC, produced the following illustrious persons, fourteen in number. Statesmen and commanders Themistocles, mother an alien, Miltiades, Aristides, Somen, son of Miltiades, Pericles,

son of xanthippus the victor of my hail literary and scientific men thucydides socrates xenophon plato poets aeschylus sophocles euripides aristophanes sculptor

we are able to make a closely approximate estimate of the population that produced these men because the number of the inhabitants of attica has been a matter of frequent inquiry and critics appear at length to be quite agreed in the general results it seems that the little district of attica contained during its most flourishing period smith's dictionary of greek and roman geography less than ninety thousand native free-born persons forty thousand resident aliens and a labouring and artesian population of four hundred thousand slaves

The first item is the only one that concerns us here, namely the 90,000 freeborn persons. Again, the common estimate that population renews itself three times in a century is very close to the truth, and may be accepted in the present case. Consequently, we have to deal with the population of 270,000 freeborn persons, or 135,000 males, born in the century I've named.

Of these, about one-half would survive the age of twenty-six, and one-third would survive that of fifty. As fourteen Athenians became illustrious, the selection is only as one to four in respect to the former limitation, and as one to three in respect to the latter.

Referring to the table on page 34, it will be seen that this degree of selection corresponds very fairly to the classes upperF,

one in four thousand three hundred and above of the athenian race again as upper g is one sixteenth or one seventeenth as numerous as upper f it would be reasonable to expect to find one of class g among the fourteen we might however by accident meet with two three or even four of that class say pericles socrates plato and

now let us compare the athenian standard of ability with that of our own race and time we have no man to put by the side of socrates and phidias because the millions of all europe breeding as they have done for the subsequent two thousand years have never produced their equals

They are therefore two or three grades above our upper G. They might rank as upper I or upper J, but suppose we do not count them at all, saying that some freak of nature acting at that time may have produced them. What must we say about the rest? Pericles and Plato would rank, I suppose, the one among the greatest of philosophical statesmen, and the other as at least the equal of Lord Bacon. They would therefore stand somewhere among our unclassed

upper x one or two grades above upper g let us call them between upper h and upper i all the remainder of the upper f of the athenian race would rank above our upper g and equal or close upon our upper h

it follows from all this that the average ability of the athenian race is on the lowest possible estimate nearly two grades higher than our own that is about as much as our race is above that of the african negro this estimate which may seem prodigious to some is confirmed by the quick intelligence and high culture of the athenian commonalty before whom literary works

were recited and works of art exhibited, of a far more severe character than could possibly be appreciated by the average of our race, the calibre of whose intellect is easily gouged by a glance at the contents of a railway bookstore. We know and may guess something more of the reason why this marvelously gifted race declined. Social morality grew exceedingly lax, marriage became unfashionable and was avoided. Many of the more ambitious and accomplished women were avowed courtesans and consequently infertile.

and the mothers of the incoming population were of a heterogeneous class in a small sea-bordered country where emigration and immigration are constantly going on and where the manners are as dissolute as were those of greece in the period of which i speak the purity of a race would necessarily fail it can be therefore no surprise to us though it has been a severe misfortune to humanity that the high athenian breed decayed and disappeared for if it had maintained its excellence and had multiplied and spread over large countries

displacing inferior populations which it well might have done for it was exceedingly prolific it would assuredly have accomplished results advantageous to human civilization to a degree that transcends our power of imagination if we could raise the average standard of our race by only one grade what vast changes would be produced the number of men of natural gifts equal to those of the eminent men of the present day would be necessarily increased more than tenfold

as will be seen by the fourth column in the table page thirty four because there would be two thousand four hundred twenty three of them in each million instead of only two hundred thirty three but far more important to the progress of civilization would be the increase in the yet higher orders of intellect

we know how intimately the course of events is dependent on the thoughts of a few illustrious men if the first-rate men in the different groups had never been born even if those among them who have had a place in my appendices on account of their hereditary gifts had never existed the world would be very different to what it is

now the table shows that the numbers of these in the loftiest grades of intellect would be increased in a still higher proportion than that of which i have been speaking thus the men that now rank under the class upper g would be increased seventeenfold by raising the average ability of the whole nation a single grade we see by the table that all england contains on the average of course of several years only six men between the ages of thirty and eighty whose natural gives succeed class upper g

but in a country of the same population as ours whose average was one grade higher there would be eighty-two of such men and in another whose average was two grades higher such as i believe the athenian to have been in the interval five hundred thirty to four hundred thirty b c no less than one thousand three hundred fifty five them would be found

there is no improbability that so gifted a breed being able to maintain itself as an athenian experience widely understood has sufficiently proved and as has also been proved by what i have written about the judges whose fertility is undoubted although their average natural ability is up ref or five point five degrees above the average of our own and three point five above that of the average athenians

it seems to me most essential to the well-being of future generations that the average standard of ability of the present time should be raised civilization is a new condition imposed upon man by the course of events just as in the history of geological changes new conditions have continually been imposed on different races of animals

they have had the effect either of modifying the nature of the races through the process of natural selection whenever the changes were sufficiently low and the race sufficiently pliant or of destroying them altogether when the changes were too abrupt or the race unyielding the number of the races of mankind that have been entirely destroyed under the pressure of the requirements of an incoming civilization reads us a terrible lesson

probably in no former period of the world has the destruction of the races of any animal whatever been effected over such wide areas and with such startling rapidity as in the case of savage man in the north american continent in the west indian islands in the cape of good hope in australia new zealand and van diemen's land the human denizens of vast regions have been entirely swept away in the short space of three centuries

less by the pressure of a stronger race than through the influence of a civilization they were incapable of supporting and we too the foremost laborers in creating this civilization are beginning to show ourselves incapable of keeping pace with our own work the needs of centralization communication and culture call for more brains and mental stamina than the average of our race possesses

we are in crying want for a greater fund of ability in all stations of life for neither the classes of statesmen philosophers artisans nor laborers are up to the modern complexity of their several professions an extended civilization like ours comprises more interests than the ordinary statesmen or philosophers or our present race are capable of dealing with when it exacts more intelligent work than our ordinary artisans and laborers are capable of performing

our race is overweight and appears likely to be dredged into degeneracy by demands that exceed its powers if its average ability were raised to a grade or two our new classes upper f and upper g would conduct the complex affairs of the state at home and abroad as easily as our present upper f and upper g when in the position of country squires are able to manage the affairs of their establishments and tenantry

All other classes of the community would be similarly promoted to the level of work required by the nineteenth century if the average standard of the race were raised.

when the severity of the struggle for existence is not too great for the powers of the race its action is healthy and conservative otherwise it is deadly just as we may see exemplified in the scanty wretched vegetation that leaves a precarious existence near the summer snow-line of the alps and disappears altogether a little higher up we want as much backbone as we can get but bear the racket to which we are henceforward to be exposed and as good brains as possible to contrive machinery for modern life to work as smoothly than at present

we can in some degree raise the nature of man to a level with the new conditions imposed upon his existence and we can also in some degree modify the conditions to suit his name it is clearly right that both these powers should be exerted with the view of bringing his nature and the conditions of his existence into as close harmony as possible

in proportion as the world becomes filled with mankind the relations of society necessarily increase in complexity and the nomadic disposition found in most barbarians becomes unsuitable to the novel conditions

there is a most unusual unanimity in respect to the causes of incapacity of savages for civilization among writers on those hunting and migratory nations who are brought into contact with advancing colonization and perish as they invariably do by the contact they tell us that the labor of such men is neither constant nor steady that the love of a wandering independent life prevents their settling anywhere to work except for a short time when urged by want and encouraged by kind treatment

meadows says that the chinese call the barbarous races on their borders by a phrase which means hither and thither not fixed and any amounts of evidence might be adduced to show how deeply bohemian habits of one kind or another were ingrained in the nature of the men who inhabited most parts of the earth now overspread by the anglo-saxon and other civilized races

Luckily, there is still room for adventure, and a man who feels the cravings of a roving, adventurous spirit to be too strong for a resistance may yet find a legitimate outlet for it in either colonies, in the army, or on board ship. But such a spirit is, on the whole, a heirloom that brings more impatient restlessness and beatings of the wings against cage bars than persons of more civilized characters can readily comprehend, and it is directly at war with the more modern portion of our moral natures.

If a man be purely a nomad, he is only to be nomadic, and his instinct is satisfied; but no Englishmen of the nineteenth century are purely nomadic.

the most so among them have also inherited many civilized cravings and are necessarily starved when they become wanderers in the same way as the wandering instinct is starved when they are settled at home consequently their nature is opposite wants which can never be satisfied except by chance through some very exceptional turn of circumstances this is a serious calamity and as the bohemianism in the nature of our race is destined to perish the sooner it goes the happier for mankind

the social requirements of english life are steadily destroying it no man who only works by fits and starts is able to obtain his living nowadays for he has not a chance of thriving in competition for steady workmen if his nature revolts against the monotony of daily labour he is tempted to the public-house to intemperance and it may be to poaching and a much more serious crime otherwise he banishes himself from our shores

in the first case he is unlikely to leave as many children as men of more domestic and marrying habits in the second case his breed is wholly lost to england by this steady riddance of the bohemian spirit of our race the artesian part of our population is slowly becoming bred to its duties and the primary qualities of the typical modern british workman are already the very opposite of those of the nomad

what they are now as well described by mr chadwick are consisting of great bodily strength applied under the command of a steadily preserving will mental self-contentedness impassivity to external irrelevant impressions which carry them through the continued repetition of toilsome labor steady as time it is curious to remark how unimportant in modern civilization has become the once famous and thoroughbred looking nomad

The type of his features, which is probably in some degree correlated with his peculiar form of adventurous disposition, is no longer characteristic of our rulers, and is rarely found among celebrities of the present day. It is more often met with among the undistinguished members of highly born families, and especially among the less conspicuous officers of the army. Modern leading men in all parts of eminence, as may easily be seen in a collection of photographs, are of a coarser and more robust breed.

less excitable and dashing but endowed with far more ruggedness and real vigor such also is the case as regards the german portion of the austrian nation they are far more high caste in appearance than the prussians who are so plain that it is disagreeable to travel northwards from vienna and watch the change here the prussians appear possessed of the greater moral and physical stamina

much more alien to the genius of an enlightened civilization than the nomadic habit is the impulsive and uncontrolled nature of the savage a civilized man must bear in forbear he must keep before his mind the claims of the morrow as clearly as those of the passing minute of the absent as well as the present

this is the most triumphant of the new conditions imposed on man by civilization and the one that makes it hopeless for any but exceptional natures among savages to live under them the instinct of a savage is admirably constant with the needs of savage life every day he is in danger through transient causes he lives from hand to mouth

in the hour and for the hour without care for the past or forethought for the future but such as instinct is utterly at fault in civilized life the half-proclaimed savage being unable to deal with more subjects of consideration than are directly before him is continually doing acts through mere melodramonious incapacity at which he is afterwards deeply grieved and annoyed

The nearer inducements always seem to him, through his uncorrected sense of moral perspective, to be incurably larger than others of the same actual size.

but more remote consequently with the temptation of the moment as being yielded to and passed away and its bitter result comes in its turn before the man he is amazed and remorseful at his past weakness it seems incredible that he should have done that yesterday which to-day seems so silly so unjust and so unkindly the newly reclaimed barbarian with the impulsive unstable nature of the savage

when lie also chances to be gifted with a peculiarly generous and affectionate disposition is of all others the man most oppressed with the sense of sin now it is a just assertion and a common theme of moralists of many creeds that man such as we find him is born with an imperfect nature he has lofty aspirations but there is a weakness in his disposition which incapacitates him from carrying his nobler purposes into effect

he sees that some particular course of action is his duty and should be his delight but his inclinations are fickle and base and do not conform to his better judgment the whole moral nature of man is tainted with sin which prevents him from doing the things he knows to be right

the explanation i offer of this apparent anomaly seems perfectly satisfactory from a scientific point of view it is neither more nor less than that of the development of our nature whether under darwin's law of natural selection or through the effects of changed ancestral habits has not yet overtaken the development of our moral civilization man was barbarous but yesterday and therefore it is not to be expected that the natural aptitudes of his race should already have become moulded into accordance with his very recent advance

we men of the present centuries are like animals suddenly transplanted among new conditions of climate and of food our instincts fail us under the altered circumstances

My theory is confirmed by the fact that the members of old civilizations are far less sensible than recent converts from barbarism, of their nature being inadequate to their moral needs. The conscience of a negro is aghast at his own wild and impulsive nature and is easily stirred by a preacher, but it is scarcely possible to ruffle the self-complacency of a steady-going Chinaman.

the sense of original sin would show according to my theory not that man was fallen from a higher state but that he was rising in moral culture with more rapidity than the nature of his race could follow my view is corroborated by the conclusion reached at the end of each of the many independent lines of ethnological research that the human race were utter savages in the beginning and that after my raids of years of barbarism man has but very recently found his way into the paths of morality and civilization

CHAPTER XXI. INFLUENCES THAT AFFECT THE NATURAL ABILITY OF NATIONS

before speaking of the influences which affect the natural ability and intelligence of nations and races i must beg the reader to bring distinctly before his mind how reasonable it is that such influences should be expected to exist how consonant it is to all analogy and experience to expect that the control of the nature of future generations should be as much within the power of the living as the health and well-being of the individual is in the power of the guardians of his youth

We are exceedingly ignorant of the reasons why we exist, confident only that individual life is a portion of some vaster system that struggles arduously onwards, towards ends, that are dimly seen or wholly unknown to us by means of the various affinities, the sentiments, the intelligences, the tastes, the appetites, of innumerable personalities who ceaselessly succeed one another on the stage of existence.

there is nothing that appears to assign a more exceptional or sacred character to a race than the families or individuals that compose it we know how careless nature is of the lives of individuals we have seen how careless she is of eminent families how they are built up flourish and decay just the same may be said of races and of the world itself

also by analogy of other scenes of existence than this particular planet of one of innumerable suns our world appears hitherto to have developed itself mainly under the influence of unreasoning affinities

but of late man slowly growing to be intelligent humane and capable has appeared on the scene of life and profoundly modified its conditions he has already become able to look after his own interests in an incomparably more far-sighted manner than in the old prehistoric days of barbarism and flint knives he is already able to act on the experiences of the past to combine closely with distant allies and to prepare for future wants known only through the intelligence long before their pressure has become felt

he has introduced a vast deal of civilization and hygiene which influence to an immense degree his own well-being and that of his children it remains for him to bring other policies into action that shall tell of the natural gifts of his race it would be writing to no practically useful purpose were i to discuss the effect that might be produced on the population by such social arrangements as existed in sparta

they are so alien and repulsive to modern feelings that it is useless to say anything about them so i shall wholly confine my remarks to agencies that are actually at work and upon which there can be no hesitation in speaking i shall have occasion to show that certain influences retard the average age of marriage

while others hasten it. And the general character of my argument will be to prove that an enormous effect upon the average natural ability of a race may be produced by means of those influences. I shall argue that the wisest policy is that which results in retarding the average age of marriage among the weak, and in hastening it among the vigorous classes; whereas most unhappily for us the influence of numerous social agencies has been strongly and banefully exerted in a precisely opposite direction.

an estimate of the effect of the average age of marriage on the growth of any section of a nation is therefore the first subject that requires investigation everybody is prepared to admit that it is an element sure to prove some sensible effect but few will anticipate its real magnitude or will be disposed to believe that its results have so vast and irresistible an influence on the natural ability of a race that i shall be able to demonstrate

The average age of marriage affects population in a threefold manner. Firstly, those who marry when young have the larger families. Secondly, they produce more generations within a given period, and therefore, the growth of a prolific race, progressing as it does, geometrically, will be vastly increased at the end of a long period by a habit of early marriages. And thirdly, more generations are alive at the same time among those races who marry when they are young.

In explanation of the aggregate effects of these three influences, it will be best to take two examples that are widely but not extremely separated. Suppose two men, M and N, about 22 years old, each of them having, therefore, the expectation of living to the age of 55 or 33 years longer, and suppose that M marries at once, and that his descendants, when they arrive at the same age, do the same.

but that n delays until he is laid by money and does not marry before he is thirty-three years old.

That is to say, 11 years later than M, and his descendants also follow his example. Let us further make the two very moderate suppositions that the early marriages of race M result in an increase of 1.5 in the next generation and also in the production of 3.75 generations in a century, or the late marriages of the race N result in an increase of only 1.25 in the next generation and in 2.5 generations in one century.

It will be found that an increase of 1.5 in each generation accumulating on the principle of compound interest during 3.75 generations becomes rather more than 18 over 4 times the original amount, while an increase of 1.25 for 2.5 generations is barely as much as 7 over 4 times the original amount. Consequently, the increase of the ratio of M at the end of a century will be greater than that of N in the ratio of 18 to 7.

that is to say it will be rather more than two point five times as great in two centuries the progeny of m will be more than six times and in three centuries more than fifteen times as numerous as those of n the proportion which the progeny of m will bear at any time to the total living population will be still greater than this owing to the number of generations of m who are alive at the same time being greater than those of n

the reader will not find any difficulty in estimating the effect of these conditions if he begins by ignoring children and all others below the age of twenty-two and also by supposing the population to be stationary in its number in consecutive generations

we have agreed in the case of m to allow three point seven five generations to one century which gives about twenty seven years to each generation then when one of this race is twenty two years old his father will on the average in many cases be twenty seven years older or forty nine and as a father lives to fifty five he will survive the advent of his son to manhood for the space of six years

Consequently, during the 27 years intervening between each two generations, there will be found one mature life for the whole period and one other mature life during a period of six years, which gives, for the total mature life of the race M, a number which may be expressed by the fraction 6 plus 27 over 27 or 33 over 27.

The diagram represents the course of three consecutive generations of race M. The middle line refers to that of the individual about whom I have just been speaking, the upper one to that of his father, and the lower to his son. The dotted line indicates the period of life before the age of 22. The double line, the period between 22 and the average time at which his son is born. The dark line is the remainder of his life. A graph is displayed on the page. A term of 27 years between two generations.

on the other hand a man of the race n which does not contribute more than two point five generations to a century that is to say forty years to a single generation does not attain the age of twenty-two until on the average of many cases seven years after his father's death

for the father was forty years old when his son was born, and died at the age of fifty-five when the son was only fifteen years old. In other words, during each period of eighteen plus fifteen plus seven, or forty years, men of matured life for the rates N are alive for only eighteen plus fifteen, or thirty-three of them. Hence, the total matured life for the rates N may be expressed by the fraction thirty-three over forty.

A graph is displayed on the page, a term of 40 years between two generations. It follows that the relative population due to the races of M and N is as 33/27 to 33/40, or as 40/27, which is very nearly as 5/3.

we have been calculating on the supposition that the population remains stationary because it was more convenient to do so but the results of our calculation will hold nearly true for all cases because if population should increase the larger number of living descendants tends to counterbalance the diminished number of living ancestry and conversely if it decreases

Combining the above ratio of 5 to 3 with those previously obtained, it results that at the end of one century from the time when the races M and N started fair with equal numbers, the proportion of mature men of race M will be four times as numerous as those of race N. At the end of two centuries, they will be ten times as numerous, and at the end of three centuries, no less than 26 times as numerous.

I trust the reader will realize the heavy doom which these figures pronounce against all subsections of prolific races in which there is the custom to put off the period of marriage until middle age. It is a maxim of Malthus that the period of marriage ought to be delayed in order that the earth may not be overcrowded by a population for whom there is no place at the great table of nature.

if this doctrine influenced all classes alike i should have nothing to say about it here one way or another for it would hardly affect the discussions in this book but as it is put forward as a rule of conduct for the prudent part of mankind to follow we will see imprudent are necessarily left free to disregard it i have no hesitation in saying that it is a most pernicious rule of conduct in its bearing upon race

its effect would be such as to cause the race of the prudent to fall after a few centuries into an almost incredible inferiority of numbers to that of the imprudent that it is therefore calculated to bring utter ruin upon the breed of any country where the doctrine prevailed

i protest against the able of races being encouraged to do withdraw in this way from the struggle for existence it may seem monstrous that the weak should be crowded out by the strong but it is still more monstrous that the races best fitted to play their part on the stage of life should be crowded out by the incompetent the ailing and the desponding the time may hereafter arrive in far distant years when the population of the earth shall be kept as strictly within the bounds of number and suitability of race

as the sheep on a well-ordered moor or the plants in an orchard-house in the meantime let us do what we can to encourage the manipulation of the races best fitted to invent and conform to a high and generous civilization and not out of a mistaken instinct of giving support to the weak prevent the incoming of strong and hardy individuals

the long period of the dark ages under which europe has lain is due i believe in a very considerable degree to the celibacy enjoined by religious orders on their votaries

whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature that fitted him or her to deeds of charity to meditation to literature or to art the social condition of the time was such that they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the church but the church chose to preach an exact celibacy the consequence was that these gentle natures had no continuance and thus by policies so singularly unwise and suicidal that i am hardly able to speak of it without impatience

The church brutalized the breed of our forefathers.

she acted precisely as if she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community to be alone the parents of future generations she practised the arts which breeders would use who aimed at creating ferocious courage and stupid natures no wonder that sub-law prevailed for centuries over europe the wonder rather is that enough good remained in the veins of europeans to enable their race to rise to its present very moderate level of natural immorality

a relic of this monastic spirit clings to our universities who say to every man who shows intellectual powers of the kind they delight to honour here is an income of from one to two hundred pounds a year with free lodging and various advantages in the way of board and society we give it you on account of your ability take it and enjoy it all your life if you like we exact no condition on your continuing to hold it but one namely that you shall not marry

the policy of the religious world in europe was exerted in another direction with a hardly less cruel effect on the nature of future generations by means of persecutions which brought thousands of the foremost thinkers and men of political aptitudes to the scaffold or imprisoned them during a large part of their manhood or drove them as emigrants into other lands

in every one of these cases the check upon their leaving issue was very considerable hence the church having first captured all the gentle natures and condemned them to celibacy made another sweep of her huge nets this time fishing in stirring waters to catch those who were the most fearless truth-seeking and intelligent in their modes of thought and therefore the most suitable parents of a high civilization

and put a strong check if not a direct stop to their progeny those she reserved on these occasions to breed the generations of the future were the servile the indifferent and again the stupid thus as she to repeat my expression brutalized human nature by her system of celibacy applied to the gentle she demoralized it

by whose system of persecution of the intelligent the sincere and the free is enough to make the blood boil to think of the blind folly that has caused the foremost nations of struggling humanity to be the heirs of such hateful ancestry and that has so bred our instincts as to keep them in an unnecessarily long-continued antagonism with the essential requirements of a steadily advancing civilization

in consequence of this imperfection of our natures in respect to the conditions under which we have to live we are even now almost as much harassed by the sense of moral incapacity and sin as were the early convents from barbarism and we steep ourselves in half-unconscious self-deception and hypocrisy

as a partial refuge from its instance our avowed creeds remain at variance with our real rules of conduct and we lead a due life of barren religious mentalism and gross materialistic

the extent to which persecution must have affected european races is easily measured by a few well-known statistical facts thus as regards metrodome and imprisonment the spanish nation was drained to free thinkers at the rate of one thousand persons annually for the three centuries between fourteen seventy one and seventeen eighty one an average of one hundred persons having been executed

and 900 imprisoned every year during that period. The actual data during those 300 years are 32,000 burnt, 17,000 persons burnt in effigy, I presume they mostly died in prison or escaped from Spain, and 291,000 condemned to various terms of imprisonment and other penalties. It is impossible that any nation could stand a policy like this without paying a heavy penalty in the deterioration of its breed.

as has notably been the result in the formation of the superstitious unintelligent spanish race of the present day italy was also frightfully persecuted at an earlier date

in the diocese of como alone more than one thousand were tried annually by the inquisitors for many years and three hundred were burnt in a single year fourteen sixteen the french persecutions by which the english have been large gainers through receiving their industrial refugees were on a nearly similar scale in the seventeenth century three or four hundred thousand protestants perished in prison and the galleys for their attempts to escape were on the scaffold

and an equal number emigrated mr smiles in his admirable book on the huguenots has traced the influence of these and of the flemish emigrants on england and shows clearly that she owes to them almost all her industrial arts and very much of the most valuable life-blood of her modern race

there has been another emigration from france of not unequal magnitude but followed by very different results namely that of the revolution in seventeen eighty nine it is most instructive to contrast the effects of the two the protestant emigrants were able men and have profoundly influenced for good both our breed and our history on the other hand the political refugees had but poor average stamina and have left scarcely any traces behind them

it is very remarkable how large a proportion of the eminent men of all countries bear foreign names and are the children of political refugees men well qualified to introduce a valuable strain of blood we cannot fail to reflect on the glorious destiny of a country that should maintain during many generations the policy of attracting eminently desirable refugees but not others out of encouraging their settlement and the naturalization of their children

no nation has parted with more emigrants than england but whether she has hitherto been on the whole a gainer or a loser by the practice i am not sure no doubt she has lost a very large number of families of sterling worth especially of labourers and artisans but as a rule the very ablest men are strongly disinclined to emigrate

they feel that their fortune is assured at home and unless their spirit of adventure is overwhelmingly strong they prefer to live in the high intellectual and moral atmosphere of the more intelligent circles of english society to a self-banishment among people of altogether lower grades of mind and interests

england has certainly got rid of a great deal of refuse through means of emigration she has found an outlet for men of adventurous and bohemian natures who are excellently adapted for colonizing a new country but are not wanted in old civilizations and she has also been disembarrassed of a vast number of turbulent radicals and the like men who are decidedly able but by no means eminent and whose zeal self-confidence and irreverence far outbalance their other qualities

the rapid rise of new colonies and the decay of old civilizations is i believe mainly due to their respective social agencies which in the one case promote and in the other case retard the marriages of the most suitable breeds in a young colony a strong arm and an enterprising brain are the most appropriate fortune for a marrying man and again as women are few the inferior males are seldom likely to marry in an old civilization the agencies are more complex among the active ambitious classes none

but the inheritors of fortune are likely to marry young there is especially a run against men of classes upper c upper d and upper e those i mean whose future fortune is not assured except through a good deal of self-denial and effort it is almost impossible that they should succeed well and rise high in society if they hamper themselves with a wife in their early manhood men of classes upper f and upper g are more independent but they are not nearly as so numerous

and therefore their breed though intrinsically of more worth than upper e or upper d has much less effect on the standard of the nation at large but even if men of classes upper f and upper g marry young and ultimately make fortunes and achieve peerages or high social position they become infected with the ambition current in all old civilizations of founding families

thence result the evils i have already described in speaking of the marriages of elder sons with heiresses and of the suppression of the marriages of the younger sons again there is a constant tendency of the best men in the country to settle in the great cities where marriages are less prolific and children are less likely to live

owing to these several causes there is a steady check in an old civilization upon the fertility of the abloh classes the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed so the race gradually deteriorates becoming in each successive generation less fitted for a high civilization although it retains the external appearances of one until the time comes when the whole political and social fabric caves in and a greater or less relapse to barbarism takes place

during the reign of which the race is perhaps able to recover its tone.

the best form of civilization in respect to the improvement of the race would be one in which society was not costly where incomes were chiefly derived from professional sources and not much through inheritance where every lad had a chance of showing his abilities and if highly gifted was enabled to achieve a first-class education and entrance into professional life by the liberal help of the exhibitions and scholarships which he had gained in his early youth

where marriage was held in as high honor as in ancient jewish times where the pride of race was encouraged of course i do not refer to the nonsensical sentiment of the present day that goes under that name where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods and lastly where the better sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed and their descendants naturalized chapter twenty one

chapter twenty two of hereditary genius by francis galton this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox dot org recorded by leon harvey chapter twenty two general considerations it is confidently asserted by all modern physiologists that the life of every plant and animal is built up of an enormous number of subordinate lives

that each organism consists of a multitude of elemental parts which are to a great extent independent of each other that each organ has its proper life or autonomy and can develop and reproduce itself independently of other tissues

see darwin on domestication of plants and animals volume two page three hundred and sixty eight three hundred sixty nine thus the word man when rightly understood becomes a noun of multitude because he is composed of millions perhaps billions of cells each of which possesses in some sort an independent life and is parent of other cells he is a conscious whole formed by the joint agencies of a host of what appear to us to be unconscious or barely conscious elements

mr darwin in his remarkable theory of pangenesis takes two great strides from this starting-point he supposes first that each cell having of course its individual peculiarities breeds nearly true to its kind by propagating innumerable germs or to use his expression gemmules which circulate in the blood and multiply there remaining in that inchoate form until they are able to fix themselves upon other more or less perfect tissue and that they become developed into regular cells

secondly the germs are supposed to be solely governed by their respective natural affinities in selecting their points of attachment and that consequently the marvellous structure of the living form is built up under the influence of innumerable blind affinities and not under that of a central controlling power

this theory propounded by mr darwin as provisional and avowedly based in some degree on pure hypothesis and very largely on analogy is whether it be true or not of enormous service to those who inquire into heredity it gives a key that unlocks every one of the hitherto unopened barriers to our comprehension of its nature

It binds within the compass of a singularly simple law the multifarious forms of reproduction witnessed in the wide range of organic life, and it brings all these forms of reproduction under the same conditions as govern the ordinary growth of each individual. It is therefore very advisable that we should look at the facts of hereditary genius from the point of view which the theory of pan-genesis affords, and to this I will endeavour to guide the reader.

Every type of character in a living being may be compared to the typical appearance always found in different descriptions of assemblages. It is true that the life of an animal is conscious, and that the elements on which it is based are apparently unconscious, while exactly the reverse is the case in the corporate life of a body of men. Nevertheless, the employment of this analogy will help us considerably in obtaining a clear understanding of the laws which govern hereditary, and they will not mislead us.

when used in the manner i propose the assemblages of which i speak are such as are uncontrolled by any central authority but have assumed their typical appearance through the free action of the individuals who compose them each man being bent on his immediate interests and finding his place under the sole influence of an effective affinity to his neighbours a small rising watering-place affords as good an illustration as any of which i can think

it is often hardly possible to trace its first beginnings two or three houses were perhaps built for private use and becoming accidentally vacant were seen and rented by holiday folk who praised the locality and raised demand for further accommodation other houses were built to meet the requirement this led to an inn

to the daily visit of the baker's and butcher's cart the postman and so forth then as the village increased and shops began to be established young artisans and other floating gemmials of english population in search of a place where they might advantageously attach themselves became fixed

and so each new opportunity was seized upon and each opening filled up as soon or very soon after it existed the general result of these purely selfish affinities is that watering-places are curiously similar even before the speculative builder has stepped in we may predict what kind of shops will be found and how they will be placed

nay, even what kinds of books and placards will you put up in the windows. So, notwithstanding abundant individual peculiarities, we find them to have a strong generic identity.

the type of these watering-places is certainly a durable one the human materials of which they are made remain similar and so are the conditions under which they exist of having to supply the wants of the average british holiday seeker therefore the watering-place would always breed true to its kind it would do so by detaching an offshoot of the ficeparius principle or like a polyp from which you may snip off a bit which thenceforward lives an independent life and grows into a complete animal

or to compare it with a higher order of life two watering-places at some distance apart might between them afford material to raise another in an intermediate locality precisely the same remarks might be made about fishing villages or manufacturing towns or new settlements in the bush or an encampment of gold-diggers each of these would read true to its kind

if we go to more stationary forms of society than our own we shall find numerous examples of the purest breed thus the htntot kraal or village of today diners in no way from those described in the earliest travellers or to take an immensely longer leap the information gathered from the most ancient paintings in egypt accords with our observations of the modern life of the descendants of those peoples whom the paintings represent

next let us consider the nature of hybrids suppose a town to be formed under the influence of two others that differ the one a watering-place and the other a fishing-town what will be the result we find that particular combination to be usually favourable because the different elements do not interfere with but rather support one another

The fishing interest gives greater solidarity to the place than the more ephemeral presence of the tourist population can furnish. The picturesque seaside life is also an attraction to visitors, and the fishermen cater for their food. On the other hand, the watering place gives more varied conditions of existence to the fishermen. The visitors are very properly mulched, directly or indirectly, for charities, roads, and the like, and they are not unwelcome customers in various ways to their fellow townsmen.

Let us take another instance of an hybrid, one that leads to a different result. Suppose an enterprising manufacturer from a town of no great distance from an incipient watering hole discovers advantages in its minerals, water power, or means of access, and prepares to set up his mill in the place. We may predict what will follow with much certainty. Either the place will be forsaken as a watering place, or the manufacturer will be in some way or other got rid of.

the two elements are discordant the dirt and noise and rough artisans engaged in the manufactory are uncongenial to the population of a watering-place the moral i have in view will be clear to the reader i wish to show that because a well-conditioned man marries a well-conditioned woman each of pure blood as regards to any natural gift it does not in the least follow that the hybrid offspring will succeed

i will continue to employ the same metaphor to explain the manner in which apparent sports of nature are produced such as the sudden appearance of a man of great abilities in undistinguished families

mr darwin maintains in a theory of pangenesis that the gemmules of innumerable qualities derived from ancestral sources circulate in the blood and propagate themselves generation after generation still in the state of gemmules but fail in developing themselves into cells because other antagonistic gemmules are prepotent and overmaster them in the struggle for points of attachment

Hence there is a vastly larger number of capabilities in every living being than ever find expression, and for every patient element there are countless latent ones.

the character of a man is wholly formed through these gemmules that have succeeded in attaching themselves the remainder have been overpowered by their antagonists count for nothing just as the policy of a democracy is formed by that of the majority of its citizens or as the parliamentary voice of any place is determined by the dominant political views of the electors in both instances the disintent minority is powerless

let however by the virtue of the more rapid propagation of one class of electors say of an irish population the numerical strength of the weaker party is supposed to gradually increase until the minority becomes the majority then there will be a sudden reversal or revolution of the political equilibrium and the character of the borough or nation as evidenced by its corporate acts will be entirely changed

This corresponds to a so-called sport of nature, again to make the simile still more closely appropriate to our wants. Suppose that by some alteration in the system of representation, two boroughs each containing an Irish element and a large minority, the one having always returned a Whig and the other a Conservative, to be combined into a single borough returning one member. It is clear that the Whig and the Conservative party will neutralise one another.

and that the union of the two irish minorities will form a strong majority and that a member professing irish interests is sure to be returned this strictly corresponds to the case where the son has marked peculiarities which neither of his parents possessed in a patent form the dominant influence of pure blood over mongrel alliances is also easily to be understood by the simile of the two boroughs

for if every perfect and incollate voter in one of them that is to say every male man and child be a radical to his backbone the incoming of such a compact mass would overpower the dividing politics of the inhabitants of the other with which it was combined

these similes which are perfectly legitimate according to the theory of pangenesis are well worthy of being indulged in for they give considerable precision to our views on hereditary and compel facts that appear anomalous at first sight to fall into intelligible order i will now explain what i presume ought to be understood when we speak of the stability of types

and what is the nature of the changes through which one type yields to another stability is a word taken from the language of mechanics it is felt to be an apt word let us see what the conception of types would be when applied to mechanical conditions it is shown by mr darwin in his great theory of the origin of species that all forms of organic life are in some sense convertible into one another

for all have according to his views sprung from common ancestry and therefore a and b having both descended from c the lines of descent might be remounted from a to c and redescended from c to b yet the changes are not by insensible gradations there are many but not an infinite number of intermediate links how is the law of continuity to be satisfied by a series of changes and jerks

the mechanical conception would be that of a rough stone having in consequence of its roughness a vast number of natural facets on any of which it might rest in stable equilibrium that is to say when pushed it would somewhat yield

When pushed much harder, it would again yield, but in a less degree. In either case, on the pressure being withdrawn, it would fall back into its first position. But if, by a powerful effort, the stone is compelled to overpass the limits of the face set on which it has hithero found rest, it will tumble over into a new position of stability, when just the same proceedings must be gone through as before, before it can be dislodged and rolled another step onwards.

the various positions of stable equilibrium may be looked upon as so many typical attitudes of the stone the type being more durable as the limits of its stability are wider we also see clearly that there is no violation of the law of continuity in the movements of the stone though it can only repose in certain widely separated positions

Now for another metaphor, taken from a more complex system of forces. We've all known what it is to be jammed in the midst of a great crowd, struggling and pushing and swerving, to and fro, in its endeavour to make a way through some narrow passage. There is a deadlock. Each member of the crowd is pushing, the mass is agitated, but there is no progress. If by a great effort a man drives those in front of him but a few inches forwards, a

A recoil is pretty sure to follow, and there is no ultimate advance. At length, by some accidental unison of effort, the deadlock yields. A forward movement is made, and the elements of the crowd fall into slightly varied combinations. But in a few seconds, there is another deadlock, which is relieved after a while through just the same process as before. Each of these formations of the crowd in which they have found themselves in a deadlock is a position of stable equilibrium, and represents a typical attitude.

it is easy to form a general idea of the conditions of stable equilibrium in the organic world where one element is so correlated with another that there must be an enormous number of unstable combinations for each that is capable of maintaining itself unchanged generation after generation

I will now make a few remarks on the subject of individual variation. The gem mules when every cell of every organism is developed are supposed, in the theory of pangenesis, to be derived from two causes. The one, unchanged inheritance. The other, changed inheritance. Mr Darwin in his latter work, Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, shows fairly clearly that individual variation is a somewhat more important feature than we might have expected.

it becomes an interesting inquiry to determine how much of a person's constitution is due on an average to the unchanged gifts of a remote ancestry and how much in the accumulation of individual variations the doctrine of pangenesis gives excellent materials for mathematical formulae

the constants of which might be supplied through averages of facts like those contained in my tables if they were prepared for the purpose my own data too lacks to go upon the averages ought to refer to some simple physical characteristic unmistakable in its quality and not subject to the doubts which attend the appraisement of ability let us remark that there need be no hesitation in accepting averages for this purpose for the meaning and value of an average are perfectly clear

It would represent the results, supposing the competing gemmules to be equally fertile and also supposing the proportion of the gemmules affected by individual variation to be constant in all the cases.

The immediate consequence of the theory of pangenesis is somewhat startling. It appears to show that a man is wholly built up of his own and ancestral peculiarities, and only in an infinitesimal degree of characteristics handed down in an unchanged form from extremely ancient times. It would follow that under a prolonged term of constant conditions, it would matter little or nothing what were the characteristics of the early progenitors of a race, the type being supposed

constant, for the progeny would invariably be moulded by those of its more recent ancestry. The reason for what I have just stated is easily to be comprehended if easy though improbable figures be employed in illustration. Suppose for the sake merely of a very simple numerical example that a child acquired one tenth of his nature from individual variation and inherited the remaining nine tenths from his parents.

It follows that his two parents would have handed down only nine-tenths of nine-tenths, or 0.81 from his grandparents, 0.729 from his great-grandparents, and so on, the numerator of the fraction increasing in each successive step less rapidly than the denominator, until we arrive at a vanishing value of the fraction.

The part inherited by this child in an unchanged form from all his ancestors above the 50th degree would be only one five-thousandth of his whole nature. I do not see why any serious difficulty should stand in the way of mathematicians in framing a compact formula based on their theory of pangenesis to express the composition of organic beings in terms of their inherited and individual peculiarities, and to give us—

after certain constraints had been determined, the means of foretelling the average distribution of characteristics among a large multitude of offspring whose parentage was known, the problem would have to be attacked on the following principle.

the average proportion of gemmules modified by individual variation under various conditions preceding birth clearly admits of being determined by observation and the deviations from that average may be determined by the same theory in the law of chances to which i have so often referred again the proportion of other gemmules which are transmitted in an unmodified form would be similarly treated for the children would on the average inherit the gemmules in the same proportion as they existed in their parents

but in each child there would be a deviation from that average the table in page thirty four is identical with the special case in which only two forms of gemmules had to be considered and in which they existed in equal numbers in both parents if the theory of pangenesis be true not only might the average qualities of the descendants of groups a and b a and c a and d and every other combination be predicted but also the numbers of them who deviate in various proportions from their averages

thus the issue of f and a ought to result in so and so for an average and in such and such numbers per million of a b c d e f g c classes the latent gemmules equally admit of being determined from the patient characteristics of many previous generations and the tendency to revision into any ancient form ought also to be admit of being calculated

In short, the theory of pangenesis brings all the influences that bear on hereditary into a form that is appropriate for the grasp of mathematical analysis. I will conclude by saying a few words upon what is to be understood by the phrase "individuality". The artificial breeding of fish has been the subject of so many books, shows and lectures that everyone has become more or less familiar with its processes.

the milt taken from the male is allowed to fall upon the ova that have been deposited by the female which thereupon rapidly change their appearance and gradually without any other agency an embryo fish may be observed to develop itself inside each of them

the ovum may have been separated for many days from the female the milt for many hours from the male they are therefore entirely detached portions of organized matter leaving their own separate organic existences and at the instant or very shortly after they touch the foundations are laid of an individual life but where was that life during the long interval of separation of the milt and roe from the parent fish

if these substances were possessed of conscious lives in the interim then two lives will have been merged into one individuality by the process

which is a direct contradiction in terms if neither had conscious lives then consciousness was produced by an operation as much under human control as anything can be it may not be said that the ovum was always alive and the milt had merely an accessory influence because a young fish inherits its character from its parents equally and there is an abundance of other physiological data to disprove the idea

therefore so far as fish are concerned the creation of new life is as unrestrictedly within the compass of human power as the creation of any material product whatever from a combination of given elements

Again, suppose a breeder of fish to have two kinds of milt belonging to salmon of different character, each in a separate cup and two sorts of over, each also in a separate cup . Then he can make this option the fish and , or else the fish . Therefore, not only the creation of the lives of fish in a general sense, but also the specific character of individual lives within wide limits is unrestrictedly under human control.

the power of the director of an establishment for breeding fish is of exactly the same quality as that of a cook in her kitchen both director and cook require certain elements to work upon but having got them they can create a fish or a dinner as the case may be according to a predetermined pattern now all generation is physiologically the same and therefore the reflections raised by what has been stated of fish are equally applicable to the life of man

the entire human race or any one of its varieties may indefinitely increase its number by a system of early marriages or it may wholly annihilate itself by the observance of celibacy it may also introduce new human forms by means of the intermarriage of varieties and of a change in the conditions of life it follows that the human race has a large control over its future forms of activity far more than any individual has over his own since the freedom of individuals is narrowly restricted by the cost in energy of exercising their wills

Their state may be compared to that of cattle in an open pasture, each tethered closely to a peg by an elastic cord.

These can graze in any direction for short distances with little effort, because the cord stretches easily at first, but the further they range, the more powerfully it does its elastic force pull backwards against them. The extreme limit of their several ranges must lie at that distance from the peg where the maximum supply of nervous force from the chemical machinery of their bodies can evolve, is only just equivalent to the outflow required to resist the strain of the cord.

now the freedom of humankind considered as a whole is far greater than this for it can gradually modify its own nature or to keep to the previous metaphor it can cause the pegs themselves to be continually shifted it can advance them from point to point towards new and better pastures over wide areas whose bounds are as yet unknown

nature teems with latent life which man has large powers of evoking out of the forms and to the extent which he desires we must not permit ourselves to consider each human or other personality as something supernaturally added to the stock of nature but rather as a segregation of what already existed out of new shape and as a regular consequence of previous conditions

Neither must we be misled by the word "individuality" because it appears, from the many facts and arguments in this book, that our personalities are not so independent as our self-consciousness leads us to believe. We may look upon each individual as something not wholly detached from its parent source, as a wave that has been lifted and shaped by normal conditions in an unknown, illimitable ocean.

There is decidedly a solidarity as well as a separateness in all human and probably in all lives whatsoever, and this consideration goes far as I think to establish an opinion that the constitution of the living universe is a pure theism, and that its form of activity is what may be described as cooperative. It points to the conclusion that all life is single in its essence.

but various ever varying and interactive in its manifestations and that men and all other living animals are active workers and sharers in a vastly more extended system of cosmic action than any of ourselves much less of them can possibly comprehend

it also suggests that they may contribute more or less unconsciously to the manifestation of a far higher life than our own somewhat as i do not propose to push the metaphor too far the individual selves of one of the more complex animals contribute to the manifestation of its higher order of personality end of chapter twenty two appendix to hereditary genius by francis galton

This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Leon Harvey. Appendix. The deviations from the average are given in the following table of M-quadrat as far as 80 grades. They are intended to be reckoned on either side of the average and therefore extended over a total range of 160 grades.

The 80th is a deviation so extreme that the chances of it being exceeded upwards or downwards, whichever of the two events we please to select, is only 5 million 4 million 999 thousand 992 divided by 10 million equals 8 over 10 million or less than 1 in a million. That is to say, when firing at a target

less than one out of a million shots taking the average of many millions will hit it at a greater height than eighty of quetelet's grades above the mean of all the shots and an equally small number will hit it lower than the eightieth grade below the same mean column m gives the chance of a shot falling into any given grade

80 multiplied by 2 or 160 in total number. Column N represents the chances from another point of view. It is derived directly from M and shows the probability of a short line between any specific grade and the mean.

each figure in n consisting of the sum of all the figures in m up to the grade in question and inclusive thus as we see by column m the chance against a shot falling into the first grade superior or inferior whichever we please to select is 0.025225 to 1 and 0.025124 to 1

against its falling into the second and 0.024924 to 1 against its falling into the third. Then the chance against its falling between the mean and the third grade inclusive is clearly the sum of these three numbers or 0.075273 which is the entry in column M opposite the grade 3. Tabled by Quetelet is displayed on the page with 40 rows proceeding down from grade or rank of the group.

Column M, the probability of drawing each group. Column M, sum of the probabilities commencing at the most probable group. Number of the grade. M, probability of drawing each group. And N, sum of the probabilities commencing at the most probable group. These columns may be used for due purposes.

The one is to calculate a table like that in page 34, where I have simply lumped 11 or quadrilateral grades into 1, so that my classes upper A and lower A correspond to his grade 11 in column N, my classes upper B and lower B to the difference between his grades 22 and 11, my upper C and lower C to that between his grades 33 and 22, and so on.

the other is as a test whether or no a group of events so due to the same general causes because if they are their classification will afford numbers that correspond with those in the table otherwise they will not this test can be employed in page thirty thirty one and thirty three

the method of conducting the comparison is easily to be understood by the following example in the figures of which i take from quetelet it seems that four hundred eighty seven observations of the right ascension of the polar star were made at greenwich between eighteen thirty six and eighteen thirty nine and are recorded in the publications of the observatory after having been corrected for precision mutation

etc and subject only to errors of observation if they are grouped into classes separated by grades of not five seconds the numbers in each of these classes will be as shown in column three page three hundred eighty

We raise them in the proportion of 1000 to 487 in order to make the ratios decimal and therefore comparable with the figures in Quedlet's table and then insert them in column 4. These tell us that it has been found by a pretty large experience that the chance of an observation falling within the class of 0.5 seconds from the main is 150 to 1000, of its falling within the class of 1 second is 126 to 1000 and so on for the rest.

This information is analogous to that given in column M of Quetelet's table, and we shall now proceed to calculate from 4 to column 5, which is analogous to Quetelet's N. The method of doing so is, however, different. N was formed by adding the entries of M from the average outwards. We must set to work in the converse way of working from the outside inwards, because the exact mean is not supposed to have been ascertained, and also because this method of working would be somewhat the more convenient.

even if we had ascertained the mean. A table is displayed on the page with 10 columns displaying the classes, the range in each class, the number of observations in each class, events per 1000 by experience, probabilities derived from experience, corresponding grade in n, differences, revised grades, probabilities derived from calculation, and events per 1000 by calculation.

Now, wherever the mean may lie, it is certain that the chance is 500 to 1000 against an observation being on one specific side of it, say the minus side. Therefore, column 4, by showing that no observation lies outside the class, 3.5 seconds, tacitly states that it is 500 to 1000, or 0.500 to 1.00 against any observation lying between 3.5 seconds and the mean.

1.500 is therefore written in column 5, opposite 3.5 seconds. Again, as according to 4, there were only two cases in this class. 3.5 seconds, it is 500 minus 2 equals 498 to 1000, that any observation will lie between class 3 seconds and the average, and 0.498 is written in column 5, opposite to 3 seconds.

Similarly, 498 - 13 = 486 is written opposite to 2.5 seconds, and we proceed in this way until we fall within the observations that form part of the group of the mean. 168 in number. Our remainder is 68. It ought, strictly speaking, to be equal to one half of 168, or 84. We therefore may conclude that the mean has been taken a travel too high.

A calculation made in exactly the same way, from positive 3.5 seconds inwards to the mean, will take in the other portion of the mean group, namely 100. Now we compare our results with Quedlitz column n, and see to which of these grades the number of now column 5 are severely equal. The grades in question are written in column 6. In proportion, these observations are strictly according with the law of deviation from the mean, so the intervals between the grades in column 6 will approach to equality. What they actually are is shown in column 7.

We cannot expect the two extreme terms to be given results of much value because the numbers of observations are too few, but taking only the remainder in consideration, we find that the average interval of 6.5 is very generally adhered to.

now then let us see what the numbers in the cases would have been by theory if starting either from two point five a little lower than two point six as we agreed it ought to be above the average or from four below it we construct a series of classes according to quidlet's grades having a common interval of six point five

Column 8 shows what the classes would be, column 9 shows the corresponding figures taken directly from Quedlert's N, and column 10 gives the difference between these figures, which are so closely accorded with the entries in column 4 as to place it beyond all doubt that the areas in the Greenwich Observations are strictly governed by the law of a deviation from the average.

it remains that i should say a very few words on the principle of the law of deviation from the average or as it is commonly called the law of errors of observations due to laplace every variable event depends on a number of variable causes and each of these owing to the very fact of its variability depends upon other variables and so on step after step till one knows not where to stop

also by the very fact that each of these causes being a variable event it has a mean value and therefore it is i am merely altering the phrase an even chance in any case that the event should be greater or less than the mean

now it is asserted to be a matter of secondary moment to busy ourselves in respect to these minute causes further then as to the probability of their exceeding or falling short of their several mean values and the chance of a larger or smaller number of them doing so in any given case resembles the chance well-known calculators of the results that would be met with when making a draw out of an urn containing an equal quantity of black and white balls of enormous numbers

each ball that is drawn out has an equal chance of being black or white just as each subordinate event has an equal chance of exceeding or falling short of its main value i cannot enter further here into the philosophy of this view the latest writer upon it is mr crofton in a paper read before the royal society in april eighteen sixty nine a table made on the above hypothesis has been constructed by

and will be found in the appendix page 267 of Quedlert's Letters on Probabilities translated by Downes, Leighton & Co. 1849. But it does not extend nearly so far as letter M Quedlert. The letter is calculated on a very simple principle, being the results of drawing 999 balls out of an urn containing black and white balls in equal quantities in enormous numbers. His grade number 1 is the case of drawing 499 white and 500 black.

is 2 in 498 white and 501 black, and so on, the 80th being 420 white and 579 black. It makes no sensible difference in the general form of results when these large numbers are taken what their actual amount may be. The value of a grade will of course be very different, but almost exactly the same quality of curve would be obtained if the figures in Quedlitz or Cornut's tables were protracted.

all this is shown by quillett in his comparison of the two tables a table is displayed on the page with an alphabetical list of the letters and the relationships to which they correspond the end of hereditary genius by francis galton