I'sj/r/iolotjical Inretttigattons 269 



Galton next gives his reasons for believing that character and tempera- 

 ment are {jersistent. These are summed up in: 



(a) Heredity. A son who inherits somewhat exchisively the (juahtieH of 

 his father, "fails with his failures, sins with his sins, sunxiounts with his 

 virtues." His coui-se of life has been predetermined by his inborn faculties. 



(h) The life-historifs of like twins, who behave like one person. "What- 

 ever spontaneous ft'elin<^ the one twin may have had, tlie otiier twin at the 

 very mime moment must have had a spontaneous feeling of exactly the same 

 kind." If we had in our keeping the twin of a man, who was his "double," 

 we could obUiin a trustworthy forecast of what the man would do under 

 any new conditions by submitting the twin to those conditions and watching 

 his conduct, (pp. 180-1.) 



((•) The result of Galton's own inquiry into Free-will ^see our n. 245), 

 which indicated how small seems the room left for a possible residuum of 

 free-will. 



Galton concluded on the basis of these three researches that the character 

 which shapes our conduct is 



"a (lefinite and durable 'something,' and that therefore it is reasonable to attempt to mea.sure 

 it." (p. 181.) 



Now-a-days one might think that the statistical material on which Galton 

 based his conclusions was rather meagre, but most of his results have been 

 confirmed by more extensive researches'. He appeal's to have considered 

 that 'character' was in some way a unit entity: 



"Wo must guard ourselvtis against supposing that the moral faculties which we distinguish 

 l)y difreitnit names, as courage, sociability, niggardness, arc separate entities. On the contrary, 

 they are so intermixed that they are never singly in action. I tried to gain an idea of the 

 number of the more conspicuous aspects of tlie character by counting in an appropriate 

 dictionary the wonls used to express them, lloget's Thesaurus wa,s selected for the purpose, 

 and I examined many pages of its index here and there as sjimples of the whole, and estimated 

 that it contained fully one thousand wortls expressive of character, each of which had a sepa- 

 rat«i shade of meaning, while each simivs a large part of its meaning with some of the rest." 

 (p. 181.) 



From the mure niodcru standpoint it would seem that the direct course 

 would he to meiisure various factors of character in individuals and to study 

 the extent of the inter-correlations of these factors. At any rate in children 

 it may be doubted whether such factors an shyness, conscientiousness, self- 

 consciousness, temper, etc., are cenj hiyhly correlated together. One would 

 rather anticipate that character was a hotch-potch of factors mixed in 

 different proportions for each individual. 



However, (4alton starts with 'character' as an entity like intellectual 

 capacity and suggests that as the latter may be sounded by definite tests 

 at individual points, so in character definite acts in definite emergencies may 

 be noted. 



' For example, that the factors of character are inheritetl, see Hionietrika, Vo\. ni, pp. 131- 

 190; that growth and education have little intluenoc on character, see Drapers' Research 

 Memoirs, Biometric Series, No. 4. 



