1(M» Life and Lvtter» of Fninnx Culdnt 



contained in Middleton's Bioyruphut Ex^angeUca, 1786, and confines his 

 attention to these. In this way he excUides in the first place practically all 

 the founders of great religious movements. In the next place he excludes 

 all Roman Catholic (livine.s, and this on the ground of their celibacy; but 

 still we might question whether i-e.search into their ancestry and coUatends 

 would not nave l)een of great interest, even if no descendants are available. 

 But again, l)efore the Reformation and for two centuries after, to a lesser 

 extent however, churchmen of genius reached eminence largely because they 

 were politicians, or the more illustrious because they were statesmen. On 

 the other hand .some information would surely be available as to the stirps of 

 St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, St Francis, Meister Eckhardt, Johannes 

 Tauler, (ieorge Fox. Swedeimorg, John Wesley and many others who have 

 left their inqjiess on religiou.s thought, and are excluded from the selection 

 of Middleton. If I may say so, that selection seems to me to contain names 

 of persons who in then day may have been eminent for piety, but did not 

 |X>S8ess intellectual ability amounting to genius. Yet Galton himself says 

 that after reading Middleton's work he gained a much greater respect for the 

 body of Divines than he had Ijefore : 



"One is so frequently scandalised by the priiiiii'>s^, airiMmnv ami tiinaticiRm shown in 

 theologicnl disputes, that an inelination to these failings may reasonably \m suspected in men 

 of large religious profes.sion. But 1 am a-ssure my rejulers, that Mi<ldleton's biographies appear, 

 to the best of my judgment, to refer, in by the far grtmter part, to excoe<lingly noble characters. 

 There are certainly a few personages of very doubtful reputation, especially in the earlier part 



of the work, which covers the turbid period of the Iltjformation Nevertheless, I am sure 



that Middleton's collection, on the whole, is eminently fair and trustwortliy." (p. 2.59.) 



Now you may think a bishop an excellent fellow and find a boon 

 companion in a dean ; but even friend ' Punch ' will smile at the gravity of 

 the one, and venture to laugh out-loud at the seriousness with which 

 the other takes himself To make merry over the Divines is not to mock 

 the Divinity — but I fear many of Galton's readers thought so in 1869, and 

 his book for this and other reasons was by some strongly condemned. 

 Yet, perhaps, Galton's chapter on the ' Divin&s ' with all the irony and 

 genial ridicule which make it such good reading is perhaps the subtlfv^^) in 

 its analysis. 



"I am now alx>ut to push my stiktistical survey into regions where precise in(|uiries seldom 

 penetrate, and are not very genemlly welcomed. There is commonly so much vaguenes.s of 

 expression on the part of religious writers that I am unable to determine what they really mean 

 when they speak of topics that directly bear on my present inquiry. I cannot gues.s how far 

 tlu'ir exjjressions are intended to 1x3 understood met«pliorically, or in some other way to b« 

 cluthi-d with a different meaning to what is im|>osed by the grammatical rules and plain meaning 

 of language. The expressions t« which F refer are those which assert the fertility of marriages 

 and the establishment of families to Ix- largely dei)endt'nt on go<llines8. 1 may even take a much 

 wider range and include tlios<! other expressions which assert that material well-being generally 



is influence<l by the same cause What I undertake is sinijily to investigate whether or no 



the assertions they contain, according to their privid facie interpretation, are or are not in 

 accordance with statistical deductions'. If an exceptional providence protects the families of 

 godly men, it is a fact that we must take into account. Natural gifts would then have to be 

 conceived as due, in a high and probably measurable degree to anccstnil piety, and in a much 



' We trace here the germ of Galton's later work on "The Efficacy of Prayer." 



