2i>4 Life aiul Letters of Francii Oalton 



As I have remai-ked, Galton describes and figures only a small part of his 



material, but enougli to succeed 



"in leaving a just impression of the vast variety of mental coiiBtitution that exists in the 

 world, and how iinpossihle it is for one man to lay his mind ntrictly alongside that of another, 

 axc«pt in the rare instanct-s of close herctlitary rt'-semblance." (p. 154.) 



The next section of the work is entitled Visionanvs, and consists sub- 

 stantially of the material we have discussed in our n'smiu' of the "Visions 

 of Sane Persons" (see our j))). '243-45). The essential point is the fretpiency 

 with which the automatic construction of fantastic figures takes place, and 

 their continued sequence without control of the volition. The transition of 

 such visions to hallucinations was regarded by Galton :us only a matter of 

 the intensity of nerve excitement, which might be produced by ill-health, 

 bi-ain-stornis or drugs. The following section of the book under discussion is 

 termed "Nurture and Nature." 



"Man," writ«N our author, "is so educable an animal that it is difficult to distinguish 

 between that part of his chanict«r which has lxx.-u acquired through educiition and circum- 

 stance and that which was in the original grain of his constitution." (p. 177.) 



Galton considers that the character of a nation may not change, but a dif- 

 ferent phase or moot! of it may Ijeconie dominant owing to some accident 

 causing the special representatives of that phase to be for a time national 

 leaders. 



"The love of art, gaiety, adventure, science, religion may be severally paramount at 

 different times." (p. 1 78.) 



Now follows a passage which I think must be cited as a whole, for it 

 needs some consideration : 



"One of the most notable changes that can conio over a nation is from a state corre- 

 sponding to that of our past dark ages into one like that of the Renaissance In the first case 

 the minds of men are wholly taken up with routine work, and in copying what their pre- 

 deoessors have done; they degrade into servile imitators and sulmiissive slaves to the past. In 

 the aeoond case some circumstance or idea has finally di.scre«lited the authorities that imf>oded 

 intellectual growth, and has unexjiectedly reviialed new possibilities. Then the mind of the 

 nation is set free, a direction of research is given to it, and all the exploratory and hunting 

 instincts are awakened. These sudden eras of gi-cat intellectual progress cannot be due U> any 

 alteration in the natural faculties of the race, because there has not been time for that, but 

 to their being directeil to productive channels. Most of the leisure of the men of every nation 

 is spent in a round of reiterated actions; if it could be spent in continuous advance along new 

 lines of research in unexplored regions, vast progress would he sure to he mode. It has been 

 the privilege of this generation to have had fresh fields of research pointed out to them by 

 Darwin, and to have undergone a new intellectual birth under the inspiration of his fertile 

 genius." (pp. 178-9.) 



The comparison of the Darwinian movement with that of the Renaissance 

 is a very apt one. But in neither case was it the "mind of the nation" 

 which was set free. The movement in Germany, for instance, n)erely trans- 

 ferred the niiisses of the people physically and mentally from one bondage to 

 a second, and where the new ideas did reach them they Ijecame symlwls of an 

 economic revolt, as in the Peasants' llebellion, rather tlian marks of great 

 intellectual progress. So it has Ixjen with the Darwinian doctrines, they 

 did just reach atid interest the more thinking working men in the seventies, 



