February 2, 191 1] 



NATURE 



441 



and to sociology. In this idea itself there is nothing 

 novel; many ol the world's great minds have realised 

 the same truth. What did Roger Bacon say towards 

 the middle of the thirteenth century? 



'• He who knows not mathematics cannot know any 

 other science, and what is more, cannot discover his 

 own ignorance or find its proper remedies." 



How was it echoed again, full two hundred years 

 later, by Leonardo da Vinci? 



" Nessuna humana investigatione si po dimandare 

 vera scientia s'essa non passa per le mattematiche di- 

 monstrationi." Libro di pittura i. i. 



We wait another century and hear Lord Bacon's 

 aphorism : — 



■'The chief cause of failure in operation (especially 

 after natures have been diligently investigated) is the 

 ill-determination and measurement of the forces and 

 actions of bodies. Now the forces and actions of 

 bodies are circumscribed or measured by distances of 

 space, or by moments of time, or by concentration of 

 quantitv, or by predominance of virtue ; and unless 

 these four things have been well and carefully 

 weighed, we shall have sciences, fair perhaps in 

 theory, but in practice inefficient. The four instances 

 which are useful in this point of view I class under 

 one head as Mathematical Instances and Instances of 

 Measurements.'' 



The words actually used by Lord Bacon for his 

 third and fourth instances are "per unionem quanti 

 aut per praedominantiam virtutis." They cover verj- 

 fully the sociological, psychological, and genetic 

 phenomena which Francis Galton kept so closely in 

 view. 



Another hundred years, and again a great thinker 

 echoes the same idea : — 



" Ich behaupte aber, dass in jeder besonderen Natur- 

 lehre nur so viel eigentliche \\'issenschaft angetroffen 

 werden konne, als darin Mathematik anzutreffen ist." 

 Kant : Metaphysische Aitfangsgriinde der Naturu'issen- 

 schajt. Sammtliche Werke, Bd. iv., S., 360. 

 Leipzig, 1867. 



Lastly, coming down to our own age, the great 

 contemporary of Galton, Lord Kelvin, wrote : — 



"When you can measure what you are speaking 

 about and express it in numbers, you know something 

 about it, but when you cannot measure it, when you 

 cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a 

 meagre and unsatisfacton,' kind." 



Clearly, then, Francis Galton was far from originat- 

 ing the idea that exact quantitative methods are 

 applicable far beyond the range of the physical 

 sciences. Wherein lies then his significance for the 

 science of to-day and, perhaps, more still for the 

 science of the future? Not solely in the fact that he 

 sketched in broad lines the manner in which quantita- 

 tive methods could be applied to many branches of 

 descriptive science, but that without being a professor 

 or teacher of students, he succeeded in creating a 

 school of enthusiastic disciples who, inspired by him, 

 have carried his work and his suggestions into prac- 

 tice in craniometry, anthropology, sociology, genetics, 

 and medicine. The elements in Galton 's character and 

 life which made this achievement possible for him 

 are manifold. Heredity, tradition, education, 

 economic independence, all played their parts, and not 

 least among these stands hereditary temperament. 

 No vounger man who knew Francis Galton at all 

 intimately failed to be influenced by his mar\'ellous 

 keenness, his wide but wise generosity of suggestion 

 and practical help, and above all, his equable and 

 lovable personality. His manifest pleasure and grati- 

 tude for the simplest little thing done for him ; his 

 complete respect for the time and duties of others, 

 ■whether they were his friends or the servants of his 



NO. 2153, VOL. 85] 



own household, produced a reverence which worked 

 its effect, not only on his immediate environment, but 

 upon the men who carried his inspirations and sug- 

 gestions into practical science. 



The exact biological bearing of religious differen- 

 tiation upon the creation of human types has, perhaps, 

 never been fully studied. The doctrines of George 

 Fox drew together many men and women of a kindred 

 spirit, and the stringent regulations as to outside 

 marriage led not only to a union of similar natures, 

 but, we venture to think, almost created a biological 

 type. Not only did the Society of Friends unite men 

 religiously, but it produced special temperaments 

 genetically. Even to this day it is strange how men 

 whose families have ceased to be Quakers, yet find 

 that their common sympathies and temperaments arise 

 from Quaker descent. Galton owed the evenness 

 of his temper, his placid acceptance of criticism, but 

 his power of steady persistence in his own work and 

 his own views, very largely to his Quaker ancestry, 

 to the Galton and Barclay blood. The fact that 

 Galton was never in controversy was, of course, 

 partly due to the novelty of many of his methods and 

 ideas; they were beyond his generation, which left 

 them largely on one side. Even his work on the 

 heredity of the mental and moral characters in man 

 was looked upon as merely academic, and its real 

 bearing on social habits is only now being realised 

 and pressed home. 



For one man who had read " Hereditary Genius " 

 (1869), "Human Faculty" (1880), and "Natural In- 

 heritance " (1889), there were ten who had studied 

 "The Origin of Species " or " Man's Place in Nature." 

 But the former were the natural sequel to the latter, 

 and Galton realised at once not only, as Darwin and 

 Huxley did, that the new doctrines applied to man, 

 but also that they must eventually be preached as a 

 guide to human conduct in social activities. Looked at 

 from this aspect, his labour to make anthropometry in 

 both its physical and psychical branches an exact 

 science ; his discover}' that new types of analysis are 

 wanted to replace mathematical function in biological 

 and social studies, and lastly, his advocacy of 

 Eugenics — the science of the right breeding and train- 

 ing of man — are seen to be successive steps in a con- 

 tinuous ascent. The positive conception that science 

 exists to serve man, and that its highest function is 

 not merely to supply his material wants, but to show 

 him how to elevate himself by obedience to biological 

 principles, was the crowning conception of his life. 

 He lived to see the wide appreciation of his teaching 

 in both Germany and .\merica, and, to perhaps a 

 lesser extent, in Great Britain. But he did not live to 

 see the controversies which will inevitably arise, as the 

 world in general more clearly realises that not all its 

 customs, not all its beliefs, not all 5ts supposed 

 morality and charity, are consonant with scientific 

 knowledge. 



But if the fact that Galton was never in controversv 

 had partly a basis in the historic evolution of ideas, 

 it was also deeply rooted in his temperament, the 

 temperament of one portion of his stock. He con- 

 sidered criticism, not as it affected the reputation of 

 his own work, but as it affected his own estimate 

 of the validity of his own work, and he adopted it or 

 passed it by accordingly. Only once do I remember on 

 a public occasion a slight severity in his usuallv gentle 

 tone. A medical man of distinction, speaking obviouslv 

 without any knowledge of the literature of the subject, 

 had asserted that the supposition that the children of 

 parents with certain mental and moral peculiarities 

 would reproduce these features, arose from a totallv 

 false conception of what the laws of heredity are. 

 The mental and moral aptitudes were for the speaker 



