58 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



was perhaps the most respectable object a man can have in life, 

 and this desire to increase knowledge amounts in some of our greatest 

 men to the equivalent of Spinoza's Amor dei intellectual is ; in the case 

 of Francis Galton it was rather an " intellectual love of man " which 

 was the motive force in his work. Charles Darwin collected facts 

 bearing on selection without any theory and on a wholesale scale. He 

 made his systematic enquiry and then searched for a law'. This 

 Baconian method was not Francis Galton's. He had formed his 

 problem, and he devised his experiments or recorded his observations 

 so as to give a definite answer yes or no to his questions. It was 

 rather the economy of a business instinct. The inspiration came first, 

 but he did not put it down as possibly his grandfather Erasmus would 

 have done without array of reasoned and well-marshalled facts. He 

 made just the limited observations which confirmed or refuted it, and 

 in almost all Galton's work we see observations collected to answer an 

 individual and relatively closely defined issue. We cannot fit diverse 

 types of mind into rigid categories, but roughly we may say that 

 Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin, and Francis Galton all possessed in 

 a high degree scientific imagination. Erasmus put down his inspira- 

 tions without due demonstration or effective self-criticism. Charles 

 Darwin collected his facts before he allowed his imagination to play on 

 them, he followed his inspirations by self-criticism and due demonstra- 

 tion. Francis Galton used his imagination to find his problem, then 

 narrowed it to a small issue, and tested its truth by experiment and 

 observation before publication. To a certain extent the difference in 

 method is that of Bacon and Newton — possibly that of the biological 

 and mathematical temperament. Something of the difference in 

 Charles Darwin and Francis Galton was hereditary, and marked the 

 concentrated business instinct which Galton inherited from Farmei's 

 and Freames, Braines and Barclays, as well as his own name-stock. It 

 was that business instinct applied in science. Perhaps also the danger 

 of "mental fag," a heritage which we are inclined to think came from 

 the Farmers — was influential in guiding Galton in the matter. He 

 was never a great collector or a mighty reader as his cousin Charles 

 Darwin undoubtedly was. 



In the roving hist again we see Cameron, Barclay and Colyear 

 ancestry rather than Darwin, and, as already hinted, this influenced 

 ' See Life and LeMera, Vol. i, p. S.S. 



