The Ancestry of Francis Gallon 7 



which most of us would also agree with Darwin — not the least Galton 

 himself — with the proviso, that that mental faculty also is largely 

 subject to hereditary control. 



And Darwin did not hesitate to give expression to his conversion 

 in Tlie Descent of Man published two years later (Ed. 1885, p. 28). 



" So in regard to mental qualities, their transmission is manifest in our dogs, horses 

 and other domestic animals. Besides special tastes and habits, general intelligence, 

 courage, bad and good tempers, etc., are certainly transmitted. With man we see 

 similar facts in almost every family ; and we now know, through the admirable labours 

 of Mr Galton, that genius which implies a wonderfully complex combination of high 

 faculties, tends to be inherited ; and, on the other hand, it is too certain that insanity 

 and deteriorated mental powers likewise run in families." 



The chief conclusion of Galton's work, the most fixed principle 

 of his teaching, was the like inheritance of the mental and physical 

 characters. Many passages in his writings show that he fully appre- 

 ciated the modifications introduced by environment, but these modifica- 

 tions can be for any character plus or minus in effect, and on the 

 average the hereditary factor comes out as the main controlling 

 feature. 



It seems only a few months ago that talking with him over the 

 almost bitter feeling which the work of the Galton Laboratory on 

 environment had called forth, he said : " I wish they (the critics of 

 that work) would study the subject of twins," and referred to his 

 investigations of 1875. I wonder how many of those critics have 

 studied Galton's papers on twins ! Had they done so, would they 

 have supposed that the contrast of Nurture and Nature was a new 

 fad of the Director of the Eugenics Laboratory, and had not been 

 recognised and rendered definite by Francis Galton himself Let 

 such study the section in Hereditary Genius entitled " Nature and 

 Nurture," and its words : 



" When nature and nurture compete for supremacy on equal terms in the sense to 

 be explained, the former proves the stronger. It is needless to insist that neither is 

 self-sufficient ; the highest natural endowments may be starved by defective nurture, 

 while no carefulness of nurture can overcome the evil tendencies of an intrinsically bad 

 physique, weak brain, or brutal disposition. Differences of nurture stamp unmistakable 

 marks on the disposition of the soldier, clergyman, or scholar, but are wholly insufficient 

 to efface the deeper marks of individual character" (p. 12). 



How did Galton try to solve the relative sti-engths of " nature 

 and nurture" — this " convenient jingle of words," as he terms it, which 



