i72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and as early as 1869 he had published the great work entitled "Hered- 

 itary Genius," and in " Inquiries into Human Faculty " of 1883, he 

 had suggested the term eugenics for the science of race improvement, 

 and had advanced strong arguments in favor of its practicability. 



Had 1885 instead of 1911 staid his pen, we should have been de- 

 prived of " Natural Inheritance." We should have lacked his greatest 

 contribution to scientific method — one of the most powerful tools of 

 research — the correlation coefficient. Criminologists would have missed 

 his contribution of the finger print method of identification. Biometry 

 would have wanted his personal stimulus and support which has 

 counted so much in the development of the new science. Humani- 

 tarians would have had to wait from another not only the initiation of 

 comprehensive quantitative investigations of the relative significance 

 of heredity and environment — of nature and nurture, as he happily 

 expressed it — but also the courage to urge the possibility of the im- 

 provement of the human stock under present conditions of law and 

 sentiment. 



Ancestry and Training 



One of Galton's great problems, that concerning the relative im- 

 portance of nature and nurture in determining the characteristics of 

 the individual, might be hard to solve from a study of his own family 

 history. 



When one is told that Francis Galton and Charles Darwin were 

 both grandsons of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and learns the mental traits 

 and physical powers of other direct and collateral ascendants, he is 

 ready to cast the ballot at once for inheritance, or nature. But when 

 one opens the delightfully written " Memories of My Life " and reads 

 of his home life and of his contact with profound and alert minds in 

 hospitals and at Cambridge, one hesitates and wonders whether en- 

 vironment, or nurture, should not be credited with a substantial share 

 of his greatness. 



In human families, however, nurture is largely a product of nature. 

 It was not by accident that Samuel John Galton, the manufacturer 

 and contractor, grandfather of Francis Galton, was associated with 

 such men as Priestley, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Keir the chemist, With- 

 ering the botanist, Watt and Boulton. So in the other associations of 

 the family, one can see ability seeking its like; while his attainments 

 may be in part due to economic independence and propitious environ- 

 ment it must be also borne in mind that independence and environ- 

 ment are in their turn referable to the innate ability of the stock from 

 which he came. 



The greatness of the man is attested by the facts that there was a 

 minimum of training and a maximum of accomplishment, and that as 

 in the case of many other intellectual leaders it is impossible to dif- 



