526 SOCIAL ASPECTS OF BIOLOGICAL RESULTS 



because of mis-education, but also because there is a simul- 

 taneous appearance of an enormously greater number of boys 

 who are emphatically not of this type. 



Dr. Farr, the eminent statistician, tried to estimate the social 

 money-worth of the average baby born to an Essex labourer, 

 supposing him to live as long as and after the manner of his class. 

 Allowing for cost of maintenance during the two helpless periods 

 of infancy and senile infirmity, Dr. Farr came to the conclusion 

 that the national value of the baby was about £5. If £50 be 

 nearer the mark, it does not affect the argument. 



" On a similar principle," Mr. Galton says, " the worth of a 

 + X-class baby would be reckoned in thousands of pounds. 

 Some such ' talented ' folk fail, but most succeed, and may 

 succeed greatly. They found industries, establish vast under- 

 takings, increase the wealth of multitudes, and amass large 

 fortunes for themselves. Others," he continues, " whether they 

 be rich or poor, are the guides and lights of the nation, raising 

 its tone, enlightening its difficulties, and improving its ideals. 

 The great gain that England received through the immigration 

 of the Huguenots would be insignificant to what she would derive 

 from an annual addition of a few hundred children of the classes 

 + W and +X." 



Now, however, comes the crux of the whole argument. By 

 a method expounded in his " Natural Inheritance," Mr. Galton 

 has endeavoured to express in a standard table precisely how 

 each generation of a classified population is derived from its 

 predecessors. Keeping to the terminology that the groups 

 above mediocrity are +S, +T, +U, +V, + W, +X, let us 

 inquire with Galton into the origin of 35 male members of the 

 very excellent grade +V (fourth above mediocrity, 1 in 300). 

 (That these are not mainly due to marriages of + V-class 

 parents is probably suggested by our everyday experience, 

 and this observational conclusion is borne out by the statistics, 

 which, in regard to some qualities, such as stature, can be made 



