12 Lift- ttt/ Li'tti-r* of Francis Gallon 



provided also in like measure for literally hundreds of their contem- 

 poraries. If nurture could produce such mental characters as we find 

 in both, then we should count such men by the tens instead of by 

 units. Nurture indeed ! Let us listen to what Galton himself says 

 of his school the King Edward's School at Birmingham : 



"The literary provender provided at Dr Jeune's school disagreed wholly with my 

 mental digestion. The time spent there was a period of stagnation to myself, which for 

 many years I deeply deplored, for I was very willing and eager to learn, and could have 

 learnt much, if a suitable teacher had been at hand to direct and encourage me." 

 (Memories, p. 21.) 



Or, again, try Darwin ! Writing of Shrewsbury, his school, he says : 

 " The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank," and 

 again of his course at Edinburgh : 



"The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures, and these were intolerably 

 dull, with the exception of those on chemistry by Hope ; but to my mind there are no 

 advantages and many disadvantages in lectures compared with reading." (Life, i, p. 36.) 



At Cambridge both cousins took Poll degrees. Darwin says that his 

 three years at Cambridge were "wasted as far as the academical 

 studies were concerned, as completely as at Edinburgh and at school." 

 Galton wondered at the narrowness of Cambridge, " for not a soul 

 seemed to have the slightest knowledge of, or interest in, what I had 

 acquired in my medical education, and what we have since learnt to 

 call Biology" (Memories, p. 59). 



Undoubtedly their Cambridge time gave Darwin and Galton much 

 friends and the leisure to develop on their own lines. But in neither 

 case was it nurture moulding the men, it was nature making the best 

 use of an uncongenial environment. 



It may be said that the nurture was not that of school or college, 

 but the nurture of the home. Both men were the exceptional members 

 of genei-ally able stocks. That in many respects their home-conditions 

 were sympathetic goes without saying, but these home conditions were 

 similar to those of others of their own stock and of many contem- 

 poraries. It may be said that their common grandfather was a man 

 of distinction, and that although his writings were open to the world, 

 Charles Darwin and Francis Galton, although born after Erasmus's 

 death, came by family tradition more closely in touch with his teaching. 



Yet here is what Charles Darwin wrote of his grandfather's chief 

 work ; he is speaking about his Edinburgh acquaintance with R. E. 



