GALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 163 



that it can only be said in a figurative sense to inherit from more 

 remote ancestors. I shall soon refer to proof that the persistency 

 of adaptive types is due to natural selection, and not to any prin- 

 ciple of organic stability which is independent of selection, although 

 this view itself at once brings up difficulties. 



If it be true, if the stability of adaptive types is due to the 

 survival of the fittest, why do we have a type and not a fixed 

 standard ? If speed and courage and strength are good things, 

 why is not every surviving individual as swift as the swiftest, as 

 brave as the bravest, and as strong as the strongest? Why does 

 not every individual have every useful quality developed to the 

 highest excellence which it may reach in any individual of the 

 species ? Why should we find that diversity among individuals 

 which usually passes under the name of " variation " ? 



We can measure strength and can treat it abstractly, and we can 

 artificially select and breed from the strongest members of a stock, 

 neglecting all other features; but this is not what happens in 

 nature. Here the most favored individuals are not the strongest, 

 but the ones in which all the qualities of the species are most 

 perfectly coordinated with each other in relation to the external 

 world. Excessive strength may involve deficiency in some other 

 essential, and the mean or average strength of the species is that 

 degree of strength which is most in harmony with the mean degree 

 of development of all the other characteristics of the species, and 

 the individuals which depart too widely from this mean, either 

 through excess or deficiency of strength, are the ones which are 

 ultimately exterminated. 



Galton has himself given such a clear statement of the way a 

 type is established by selection that it cannot be improved upon, 

 and I quote it in his own words : " Suppose," he says, " that we 

 are considering the stature of some animal that is liable to be 

 hunted by certain beasts of prey in a particular country. So far 

 as he is big of his kind, he would be better able than the medi- 

 ocres to crush through the thick grass and foliage whenever he 

 was scampering for his life, to jump over obstacles, and possibly 

 to run somewhat faster than they. So far as he is small of his 

 kind, he would be better able to run through narrow openings, 

 to make quick turns, and to hide himself. Under the general 



