Fallow Years, 1844—1849 207 



where I trust every satisfaction will be afforded. I find of course on the eve of departure 

 that all one's German has vanished as usual, and I shall have to begin the old story 

 again with Ollendorf, satisfying a morbid anxiety as to the hunger of the good baker's 

 dog, etc. I shall expect lessons in Tigheree, and the scimitar exercise. Your giving up 

 mediculeizing is a great blow ; who is henceforth to tell me pleasant stories about lupus, 

 and purpuristic elephantiasis of the pia mater ; you had much better not become a 

 parson, but come with me to Maimachtin in 3 or 4 years. 



Ever most sincerely yours, H. F. Hallam. 



There is little doubt that Galton's view of life was indirectly 

 widened by his residence among and friendship with Mohammedans. 

 He had in later days a great respect and admiration for them ; during 

 his stay in Syria he conformed lai'gely to their way of life and possibly, 

 in a measure, to their i-eligion'. Experience of another great religious 

 faith, the devout followers of which compared in conduct at many 

 points favourably with his own co-religionists, led Galton to a wider 

 view of the origin and function of religion in general, and there is little 

 doubt that from this period he ceased to be an orthodox Christian in 

 the customary sense. Writing in 1869 (see Plate II), Galton says 

 that "the Origin of Species formed a real crisis in my life; your book 

 drove away the constraint of my old superstition, as if it had been 

 a nightmare, and was the first to give me freedom of thought." 

 I think this really means that Galton owed to Darwin a positive faith; 

 his negative attitude towards the old views had arisen thirteen or 

 fourteen years before the publication of The Origin, and had formed 

 to some extent a division between Francis and the more orthodox 

 members of his family. The first blow to orthodoxy came from the 

 expei'ience that more than one religion helped men efficiently in the 

 conduct of life, and brought the ideal into closer touch with the actual 

 as a controlling and purifying factor. Galton taught absolute toleration, 

 both in religious belief and in formal observance ; he was pi-epared for 

 family prayers, if they aided anybody in his household, and he would 

 have accepted a fetish, had he thought the fetish-worshipper thereby 

 better able to face the moral difficulties of life; he had none of the 

 intellectual hatred of Huxley or Cliffijrd for what their minds recognised 



' Bosworth Smith, who advanced the view in 1874 that Mohammedanism was in 

 some respects better suited than Christianity to the Oriental races and to the negro, 

 writes to Galton in 1875: "Your view of Islam as compared with Christianity would, 

 I fancy, from what you said to me, be even more favourable than mine." 



