CJl AFTER XI 



PSYCHOLOCJICAL INVESTKJATIONS 



"While recognising the awful mystery of conscious existence and the inscrutable back- 

 ground of evolution, we liiul that ils tiic fon-niOHt outcome of many and long birth-throes, 

 intelligent and kindl}' man linds himself in lM>ing. lie knows how petty he is, but he also 

 percoiveH that he stands here on this particular earth, at this particular time, as the heir of 

 untold ages and in the van of circumstance. Ho ought therefore, I think, to Ik.' less ditfidont 

 than he is usually instructed to b<s and to rise to the conception that he ha.s a considerable 

 function to perform in tlio order of eventH, and that liis exertions are nee<Iod. It seems to mo 

 that ho should look u|x>n himself more as a frf>eman, with power of shaping the course of 

 future hunianit}', and that he should look Ufx>n himself le-ss as the subject of a despotic govern- 

 ment, in which case it would Ix; his chief merit to depend wholly ujion what had l»een regulated 

 for him, and to render abject obedience." 



Fkancis G ALTON, Ifujuiriei) into Human Fac^Uty, 1883. 



Jntroilfictori/. We have marked the transition of Galtons mind from 

 interest in geographical to intercut in anthropological studies. But once 

 deeply interested in physical anthropology, he very soon grasped that the 

 superHcial anthropometric characters were no adequate index to the real 

 man himself Probably to the day of his death he would have been un- 

 willing to admit that the size of a man's head had no real prognostic value 

 as a measure of his intelligence. But he graduallv came to the conclusion 

 that the static anthropometric superficial characters aHbrded little index to 

 a man's mentality, and from the middle of the seventies onwards Gralton's 

 thoughts turned more and more to the psychometric side of anthropology. He 

 thus grew to have less and less faith in any superHcial or IxxUly measurements 

 being of psychological importance. He did not, I think, consider whether 

 the dynamic anthropometric chanicters were more closely related than the 

 staticjJ to metital efficiency; indeed the measurement of the correlation 

 between the physiological functioning of the various orgiins of the body 

 and its psychical activities is a problem of ipilte recent days; and we stand 

 only at its threshold as far as scientiHc — by which I understand quanti- 

 tative — .solution goes. Gal ton was, however, among the first, if not al>so- 

 lutely the first, in this country to insist that anthropometry cannot make 

 real progress without p.sychometric oljservation and experiment. He was 

 the fii-st to insist upon the importance of experimental psychology — and he 

 approachetl the suDJect from the standpoint of the anthropologist. It is 

 perfectly true that Germans were working at experimental psychology at 

 least >is early as Galton. Wundt reversed Galton's process and piutsetl with 



87—2 



