Eai-Uj AulliiinntUnjical Rescarcln-H Hi 



research, which science is only slowly, if surely, investi^ting forty year« 

 later. 



To illustrate what he means by "mental aptitudes" (lalton refers to those 

 of the American Indian and of the Negro; both have been reared under the 

 most different environments from the North to the South of the world, and 

 again uiuK-r the most diverse social and politictil institutions, yet in all their 

 essential mental characteristics they remain Ked Man and Negro. Nature, 

 as Galton later expressed it, is ever dominant over nurture. The Ilt-d Man 

 has everywhere great patience, great reticence, great dignity, yet he has the 

 minimum of affectionate and social (pialities compatible with the continuance 

 of his race. 



"The Nogro liaH strong impulsive pos-sions, anil neither p.-ii n-mr, n-ii.<-iiii- im>i digniiy Ih- 

 is warmheHrted, loving towards his muster's children and idolised hy the children in return. 

 He is eminently gregarious, for ho is always jal)l)ering, quarrelling, tom-tr>m-ing and dancing. 

 He is remarkably domestic, and is endowed with such constitutional vigour, and is so prfiliftc 

 that his race is irrepressible." (p. 321.) 



'Plie characterisjition Galton gives of Red Man and Negro — briefly ru- 

 sunied above — has been equalled, if scarcely bettered, by other anthropolo- 

 gists, but it remained for him to draw the e.ssential conclusions that if the 

 Negro is more unlike the Red Man in his mind than in iiis body, and this 

 holds for all the environments in which you find them, then a race is a race 

 because mental and moral characteristics are hereditary, and heredity will 

 maintain these features dominating the slight, we might almost say super- 

 ficial, effects of the most varied environment. 



"Our bodies, minds and capabilities of development have been derived from them [our foro- 

 fathers]. Everything we possess at our birth is a heritage from our ancestors." (p. 321.) 



CJalton next turns to the question whether habits acquired by the 

 parents can be inherited by their offspring, and tliscu.sses it at length. 



"I cannot liscertain that the son of an old soldier learns his drill more quickly than the son 

 of an arti/jiii. T am a.ssured that the sons of fishermen, whose ancestors have pursued the same 

 calling time out of mind, are just as .seasick a.s the sons of landsmen when tliey first go to sea." 



Galton rejects the inheritance of acquired charactei-s whether mental or 

 physical. Then, if in vague language, he propoiuids a doctrine probably for 

 the first time in the history of science, which anioinits to the theory of the 

 continuity of the germ plasm. He boldly asserts that there is nothing iu 

 the embryo of an individual that wa.s not in the embryos of its parents; that 

 all the parental life from embryo to adult age, and from that to senility, has 

 contributed nothing to the offspring embryo. 



"We shall therefore take an approximately correct view of the origin of our life, if wc con- 

 sider our own embryos to have sprung inime<liatcly from those embrj-os whence our parents 

 were tleveloped, and tlie.se from the embryos of their parents, and so on for ever. We should 

 in this way look on the nature of mankind, and perhaps on that of the whole animat- ii, 



lus one continuous system, ever pushing out new branches in all directions, that van r- 



lace, and that bud into separate lives at every point of interlacement." 



"This simile does not at all express the popular notion of life. Most persons seein to have 

 a vague iilea that a new element, specially fivshioned in heaven ami not tiiinsmitte«l by simple 

 de.scent, is introduced into the body nf iv,i\- tuwK Ih.ih infant Smli .1 iiotinii is imfittr<I to 



r II 11 



