324 Life and Letters of Francis Qalton 



A profile therefore would be specified by four nunil>er8, each of which might 

 Ik* two figures, four nmgiiificiitions say each of two fij^ures, and three angles 

 say also given by two figures to nearest degree. In other words 22, say 30, 

 syndx»Ls m a telegram would suffice ; thus six words in code would convey a 

 creditable likeness of a man. Galton even supposed in his later days that 

 wireless could Ik' u.sed to comniunicjite to the captain of a liner the profile 

 of a person suspected to be on board, whom it might Ih> desii-able to keep a 

 watch u|>on. 



Drawings of profiles of men of different races, Copts, Arabs, Negroes, etc. 

 were taken as well as men of every grade of distinction in our own country ; 

 at least three or four artists were employed at different times in the prepara- 

 tion of these profiles. There are endless notebooks, measurements, materials 

 of all kinds, and drafts of papers, I believe, never completed and published. 

 I CAW trace no sign of discontent with the methods adopted, but it would 

 ap|)ear as if Galton was always seeking for something better. He had collected 

 data for a work which would certainly have eclipsed Lavater's, being 

 based on much more accurate methods ; there is material and suggestions 

 enough for a scientific treatise on physiognomy. Let us remember what 

 Galton had in view, for there is more than one strand in his researches : 



(i) He wanted to numeralise physiognomies; he dejilt chiefly with profiles, 

 but not wholly. For each profile he wanted a formula from which it could 

 be satisfactorily reproduced. Thus an individual could be identified by 80 

 words of 5 letters or figures each. This enabled a very sufficient likeness to 

 be telephoned, telegraphed or 'wirelessed.' 



(ii) He wanted to index portraits, in particular, profiles. This needed a 

 simplification of the individual formula, and in 1907 he reduced his formula for 

 the purpose of indexing to 4 or at most 6 stundard points. 



(iii) He wanted to obtain a quantitative measure of the degree of resem- 

 blance with three special aims : 



(a) for the purpose of measuring hereditary likenesses or differences, 



ib) for the purpose of mea-suring racial likenes.ses or differences, 

 c) for the purpose of ascertaining whether special types of physiognomy 

 were correlated with definite ment^d or moral characters. 

 He may be said to have solved (i) in a fairly sjitisfactory manner before 

 his lecture.s of 1888 and 1893. In 1907 he was satisfied with his method of 

 "lexiconising" or indexing profiles by standard points. In 1906 he was busy 

 with (iii), and he then apparently tiirew over any idea of measuring resem- 

 blance by likeness of formulae' and turned to optical methods, at first that of 

 distance and ultimately that of "blurring," to get a measure of "mistakability." 

 1 have a set of "blurrers" he presented to me shortly before his death, and 

 the method was at least ingenious, if not reducetl to a final scientific sUitement. 

 Not having completed his solution of (iii), he never lived to apply his methods 

 to the mass of material he had collected for the discussion of" (iii) («), (6), (c). 



' Tlie problem pmxenU exactly the same difficulticH a.s the discovery of a single coeflScient 

 to measure racial diflerenoea when 30 or 40 nieasuremniits Imvc been miule uii two serioH of 

 crania. 



