96 Life ami Letters of Franch Galtoit 



and the investigation would be well worth making. Galton himself naliscd 

 that there might be other points than the sterility of heiresses: 



"The reason I have gone so far w simply to show that, iilthough iimiiy men of eminent 

 ability (I do not speak of illustrious or prodigious geniuH) have not left deHcendants behind 

 them, it is by no means always because they arc sterile, but liecause they are apt t^) marry 

 sterile women, in order to support the peenv>;es with which their Ujerits iiave l)een rewarded. 

 I look upon the peerage as a (lisa.str<ms institution, owing to it-s destructive efft-cts on our 

 valuable rac»«. The most highly gifted men arc ennobled; their elder sons are U'nipte<l to 

 marry heiresses, and their j'ounger sons not to marry at all, for these have not enough fortune 

 to 8up|X)rt lK>th a family and an aristocratical position. 80 the si<le-,shoots of the genealogical 

 tree are hack*>d off, and the leading shoot is blighted, and the l)ree<l is lo.st for ever. It is with 

 much .satisfaction that I have traced and, I hope finally disposed of, an important cause why 

 families are apt to become extinct in projR)rtion to their dignity — chiefly so, on account of my 

 desire to show that able races are not neces,sarily sterile, and secondarily because it may put an 

 end to the wild and ludicrous hypotheses that are fre<iuently started to account for their 

 destruction." (pp. 139-40.) 



The following chapters on 'Commanders,' 'Literary Men,' 'Men of Science,' 

 'Poets,' 'Painters,' 'Musicians' and 'Divines' and 'Senior Classics' we must 

 pass over more briefly ; they follow the ssime general lines fis those on 'Judges' 

 and 'Statesmen,' and the same general criticisms apply. Perhaps the most 

 important of these is that, up to and including 'Men of Science,' Galton still 

 ap[)ears to consider that 100 eminent men have only 100 sons who reach 

 adult life. If the wickedness of Judges and the heiress-hunting of Statesmen 

 could justify such a fertility, it certainly does not seem reasonable in the 

 case of other clas-ses; although as I have pointed out it does not really aflfect 

 Galton's main argument, it still seems to render the column C of his Tables 

 unsatisfactory. 



In the case of 'Commanders' Galton points out the early age at which 

 they generally achieved greatness. He also points out that they have not a 

 long life, and that as their relative chance of being shot varies as the square 

 root of the product of their height and weight, the man who lives to be a 

 great commander will prolmbly be small. 



"Had Nelson been a large man, instead of a mere feather-weight, the probability is that he 

 would not have survived so long." (p. 145.) 



Galton does not draw the obvious moral that it is good policy not to face 

 your foe, but to approach him edgewise ! 



"The enemy's bullets are least dangerous to the smallest men, and therefore small men an- 

 more likely to achieve fame as commanders than their equally gifted contemporaries -.1.,,... 

 physical frames are larger." (p. 146). 



Under 'Men of Science,' a subject which Galton was to take up again 

 later, there are many topics of interest raised. Galton notes that in the 

 case of science the mother appears to play a greater part than the father. 

 There is a long passage here — one of the finest Galton ever wrote — and one, 

 notwithstanding its length, I feel lx)und to cite. It runs: 



" It therefore appears to be very important to success in science that a man should have 

 an able mother. I lielieve the reason to \n\ that a child so circumstance<l has the goo<i fortune 

 to be delivered fnim the ordinary narrowing, partisan influences of home education. Our race 

 is emntially slavish ; it is the nature of all of us to lx;licvc blindly in what we love, rather 



