CHAPTER II 



THE ANCESTRY OF FRANCIS GALTON 



IT is only fitting that an early chapter of the life of Francis Galton 

 should be devoted to some account of the ancestry of a man, who did 

 so much to make the world at large appreciate the value of a good 

 series of forbears. To some it may seem that Francis Galton in his 

 Memories may have said all that is needful on the point of ancestry ; to 

 others the mere statement that he was a grandson of Erasmus Darwin 

 and a half-cousin to Charles Darwin may appear to account for his 

 ability and for the directions of his scientific work. To a third group 

 of persons, which has been much in evidence of late, the doctrine that 

 mental characters are inherited appears to be not only absurd, but 

 a sign of mental depravity in its upholders ; they would probably 

 consider without investigation that both Charles Darwin and Francis 

 Galton were intellectually the product of their environments, and that 

 all further inquiry was wasted energy. Because there are so many able 

 men whose ancestry is insignificant, the group to which I refer has 

 never mastered the paradox that, while ability is inherited, a majority 

 of able men have not had a noteworthy ancestry. Pairs of exceptional 

 parents produce exceptional sons at a rate more than ten times as great 

 as commonplace parents, but because exceptional parents only form 

 about one-half per cent, of the community exceptional men as a rule 

 have not had a noteworthy ancestry. 



It is peculiarly fitting in this place to turn to the question of 

 ancestry, because if there is one point in his work that Francis Galton 

 laid emphasis upon it was that the mental aptitudes are hereditary. 

 His three chief works, Hereditary Genius, English Men of Science and 

 Inquiries into Human Faculty were essentially devoted to the thesis 

 that mental characters are inherited in the same manner and at the 

 same rate as the physical characters. Even in his Natural Inheritance, 

 Galton's fourth great book, he writes : 



"We may therefore conclude that the same law... which governs the inheritance 

 both of Stature and Eye-colour, applies equally to the Artistic Faculty" (p. 162). 



