14 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



repelled by the florid language or the want of reasoned inference drawn 

 from marslialled facts. Part of this is due to his date, but not all, for 

 his time carries us to the Wollastons, Young, Kerwan, Priestley and 

 Smeaton, some of whom were close intimates of Darwin himself, to 

 say nothing of the great continental physiologists, naturalists and 

 mathematicians. Darwin's defects were partly due to his environment, 

 the incessant occupation of a most popular physician, which hindered 

 the possibility of a life wholly devoted to science, the smaller interests 

 and the want of friction with the best minds which must often occur in 

 narrow provincial circles — though the neighbouring Birmingham was in 

 those days a centre of considerable mental activity. Yet beyond all this 

 there was something of the prophet about Erasmus Darwin. He had 

 thrown oflP the old teleological dogmas and was seeking a new theory 

 of life, and he had inspirations even if his poetical representation of 

 them wearied his grandsons and in no lesser degree wearies a still 

 more modern reader. To start examining the characters of living 

 forms not with a view of seeing in them evidence of design, but of 

 testing their utility to the owner and how he or his stock might have 

 acquired them, was a real step forward. Had Erasmus Darwin been 

 by calling a man of science and not of medicine, doubtless many of 

 his inspirations would have perished under his own analysis. Others 

 would have stood his trained criticism, and been established by 

 marshalled facts — as true scientific knowledge. As it is we regard 

 him as a most interesting pei'sonality, almost as a man of genius ; but 

 rather as evidence of the general ability of the Darwin stock, than as 

 a powerful environmental or traditional factor influencing the develop- 

 ment of either Charles Darwin or Francis Galton '. 



With our present views on heredity, we look upon Charles Darwin 

 and Francis Galton as drawing their ability from the same reservoir as 

 Erasmus Darwin did, but we realise that it only flowed from him to 

 them in the sense that he was the conduit, not the source of the 

 ability. 



' This view was fully accepted by Francis Galton himself. Writing of men of 

 science in his Hereditary Genius (1869) he says: "The number of individuals in the 

 Darwin family who have followed some branch of natural history is very remarkable — 

 the more so because it so happens that the tastes appear (I speak from private sources 

 of knowledge) to have been more personal than traditional. There is a strong element 

 of individuality in the different uiembers of the race which is adverse to traditional 

 influence." 



