Earlji Atit/tro/tofot/ical Renearchen 07 



thun ill tlint which wu think moot witnt. W'l- atv iiicIiiiMl to Kiok upon an honmt, uniihrinkin({ 

 pursuit of truth an Miiiiipthing irreverent. Wo arc iiKli^^iuint wh««ii others pry into our idols, anri 

 criticiKO tlipni with impunity, just as a Hnvugp IlieH to urniH wh)-n ii uiiNNionHry picks his fi-tish 

 to pipco«. WonwMi iirt) fur inoro stronxly inHuencetl hy theiw^ fw'lii ' ' ire 



blinder paitiHnns and more servile followers of custom. Hivppy are tl it 



int<'nsify their naturully sliivish dis(>o8itions in childhixxl, hy the freijuciit u.sc of | -h 



ii.s, "I)o not ask (|ueslionK iilKiut thi.s or that, for it is wrong to douht"; Imt who mIi m, 



hy practice and teaching;, that inijuiry may Ih! absolutely iree without Ixjint' ', that 



reverenct) for truth is the parent of free incjuiry, and that indifl'erenw) or in in the 



search after truth is one of the most degrading of sins. It is clear that a child brought up 

 under the influences I have descrilit>d is far more likely to succeed as a scientific man than one 

 who was rejinxl under the curl> of <logmatic authority. Of two men of («<|ual abilities, the one 

 who has a truth-loving mother would Ixi the more likely to follow the career of scienc<!; while 

 the other, if bred up under extremely narrowing circumstances, would Injcome as the gifted 

 children in (,'hiiHi, nothing better than a student and profes-sor of some dejid literature. 



It is, I U'lieve, owing to the favourable conditions of their early training that an unusually 

 large proportion of the sons of th<^ most gifU-d men of science l)ecom« distinguishe*! in the same 

 career. They have been nurtured in an atmosphere of free in<[uiry, and observing as thev grow 

 older that myriads of problems lie on every side of them, simply waiting for some  Iv 



capable person t4i take the trouble of engjiging in their .solution, they throw then. iili 



ardour into a field of labour so jieenliarly tempting. It is and liius Is-en, in truth, .strangely 

 neglected. There are hundreds of students oi books for one student of nature; hundreds of 

 eonnnentators for one original ini|uirer. The field of real science is in sore want of laltourera. 

 The mass of mankind plods on, with eyes fixetl on the footsteps of the generations that went 

 before, too inditferent or too fearful to raise their glances to judge for themselves whether the 

 path on which they are travelling is the Ijest, or to learn the conditions by which they are 

 surrounded and affected." (pp. 19()-7.) 



Such was Gralton's view of the relation of the higher freethought to sciencse, 

 and those who know his writings closely and knew the man him.self will 

 recognise how much of his own course in life thevse sentences depict; he threw 

 himself with ardour into almost every field of inquiry, ahsolutely free of cus- 

 tomary opinion, regardless, perhaps occasionally too regardless, of the foot- 

 steps of the generations that went before; he was essentially a student of 

 phenomena and not of hooks. 



In mathematicians among the men of science he seems somewhat dis^ip- 

 j)ointed, for 



"when we consider how many among them have been j)o.ssesse<l of enormous natural gifts it 

 might have been expecte<l that the lists of their eminent kinsmen would have b«H;n richer than 

 they are." (p. 198.) 



Galton reali.sed fully the Bernoiillis and the Gregorys, Ijiit wrotv loo early 

 to have realised the Darwins, who combine mathematics and natural science. 

 For his criticism is that while he knows senior wranglers related to other 



I mathematicians, he does not think they have enough kinsmen eminent in 



t other ways. 



"I account for the rarity of such relationship in the following manner. A man given to 

 abstract idea-s is not likely to succeed in the world, unless he is particularly eminent in his 

 peculiar line of intellectual eflbrt. If the more moderately gifted relative of a great mathe- 

 matician can discover laws, well and go<xl ; but if he spends his days in puzzling over problenw 

 too insignificant to be of practical or theoretical import, or else too hard for him to solve, or if 

 he simply reads what other i>eople have written, he niakes no way at all, and le.ives no name 

 l)ehiml him. There are fewer of the numerous intermwHate stages between eminence and 



i> u II 13 



