Earhj AnthrojK)Unjlnil /fr/nan'/ien 1 I.'. 



it mot with ii cool n-coptiini, it wa.s l>ecuu.so tlui world woh not hjhj tor it. 

 Tw\) men, liowever, j)tireiv»Hl its viilue; Darwin wrote: "1 congmtuhite you 

 on prcxlucing what 1 am convinced will prove a memorable work" (see our 

 Plate I, Vol. i): and Alfred R. Wallace said of it in the just-born Nature^: 

 "Turiiinf; now to the ooneluiliiig chii|>terM of the IkjoIc, we iiii>et with suiiie of the most 

 startling iintl HUggottivf ideas to U^ found in any mo<loni work.... Theao concluding chapters 

 stamp Mr Oalton as an original thinker, as well aa a forcible and elo<juent writt-r, and his book 

 will trtke rank aa an iniiM>rtant and valuable addition to the science of human nature." 



Those judgments, not contemporary newspaper opinions, have stood the 

 test of time. 



C. PAPERS CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH THE THEME 

 OF IIEKEDITARY GENIUS 



Two further popular papers are closely related to Galton's Hereditary 

 Genius a.\u\ may be con.sidered here. The first is entitled: "Statistical IiKpiiries 

 into the Etttcacy of Prayer"; it appeared in the Fortniyhtly for August 

 1 872*. It led to a cei-tain amount of controversy in the pages of The Spectator 

 in which Galton took part, but it also so paine^ — I think unrea.sonably — many 

 worthy folk that Galton was treated for a time Jis a very flippant freethinker. 

 His opponents asserted first that the desire to pray is intuitive in man, and 

 secondly that the cofjency of intuition is greater than that of observation. 

 If the word 'intuitive' be interpreted to mean 'instinctive' and the words 

 *to pray' be interpreted 'to cry out in despair or in agony,' then the terrible 

 cry of the young rabbit when the stoat springs upon him — a cry which is 

 made to no one in particular — is an intuitive i>rayer. But if prayer means an 

 appeal for temporal aid to a supernatural power, then the savage does not 

 pray until the missionary teaches him. As Galton points out, obedience to 

 dreams, belief in incantations, fear of witchcraft, fetish worship and tabu 

 are intuitive, for they occur in uncivilised peoples all the world over. In 

 modern civilisation the mother replaces the missionary and the child is taught 

 with caressing earnestness to pray for temporal blessings, and in distress 

 to appeal for aid to an all-seeing and all-loving deity. What wonder that 

 this nursery-theology pervades human life, and being associated with a child's 

 earliest and deepest feelings, should come to be looked on ;\s intuitive! The 

 habit of prayer, until its source has been analysed, is held to be of primeval 

 origin. The theologians who accept the objective efficacy of prayer — i.e. not 

 merely its subjective value to certain natures, but its power to produce 

 temporal blessings — are the descendants of those who only a few centuries 

 ago believed in the efficacy of auguries, of ordeals, of ecclesiastical blessings 

 and cursings, in the existence of demoniacal possession and the value of 

 exorcisms, in the possibility of witchcraft and of miraculous cures. All these 

 the English Church has now suppressed as of 'superstitious' origin. But it 

 wjis the more or less unconscious use of statistics which demonstrated the 

 idle character of these 'intuitive' beliefs. Observation proved greater than 

 ' March 17, 1870, Vol. i, p. 501. ' Vol. xn, N.S. pp. 125-35. 



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