358 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



opinion only had hitherto held sway. It relievetl us from the old superstition 

 that where causjil relationships could not be traced, there exact or niathenia- 

 tical inquiry was impossible. We saw the field of scientific, of quantitative, 

 study carried into orj^nic phenomena and embracing all tiie things of the 

 ininil. It was for us the dawn of a new day, and we smiled indeed over the 

 attempts of the Spectator to obscure such a daybreak by looking westward 

 and asserting it was and must remain night. 



To those who realise what Galton's work meant for some of us in the 

 'eighties, when fresh from Cambridge we encountered his pajiere, there is some- 

 thing of supreme interest in the path by which he readied his conceptions, 

 his long failure to collect data and its final solution in the Anthropometric 

 Laboratory. 



The growth of Galton's plan for creatiiig an Anthropometric Laboratory 

 is fairly well exhibited in his papei-s. We have first the idea of very simple 

 statistics being collected in schools, then the plan of a somewhat more ex- 

 tended school lalxjratory and in 1882 a paper in the Fortnightly Review', 

 "The Anthropometric Laboratory." The points of present day importance in 

 this paper are the following: 



(a) Galton propounds the need of an institute where a man may from 

 time to time get his family and himself measured physically and mentally 

 and photographed according to a standardised method. 



(o) He reasserts his conclusion that circumstances and education have 

 very little to do with an individual's capacities. These are provided by his 

 heredity, they form his stock-in-tmde, the amount of which atlmits of defini- 

 tion, and by means of which he has to earn his living and play his part as a 

 citizen. Just as far as we succeed in measuring them, so far we shall be able 

 to forecast what a man is fit for, and what he may undertake with the least 

 risk of disapjx>intment. In other words we have the first foreshadowing of 

 industrial or occupational anthropometry. 



(c) He then proceeds to speak very briefly of the old type of anthro- 

 pometric records (chiefly statical), height, weight, vital capacity, grip', pigmen- 

 tation, etc. 



He next turns to Energy and Endui-ance. He considers that the true 

 tests would be physiological and very delicate, measuring excess of waste over 

 repair. Just as a clothdealer tests a piece of cloth by mo<ierate tension 

 without tearing it, so the balance of the living system might be artificially 

 disturbed by a definite small force and its stability under the influence ol' 

 greater forces be thereby inferred. He admits that at present tests of a 

 person's endurance under sustained bodily or mental work have not been 

 adequately developed. But he recognises that dynamic tests — the functioning 

 of tne body — are far more important than static tests. He would havf 

 agility tested by gynmjisium or atliletic sports tests. Co-ordination of muscles 

 and eye by measured skill in well-known games from racquets to billiards'. 



' N.8. Vol. XXXI, pp. 332-8, 



' VitAl capiicity and Huslainol grip bt'loiig ralhnr to tlie (lyiiaiiiic clmmcters. 



' Siiic« lH»t luilHiK'ing (a slender culumu on a flat Iwanl niist'd from hip to shoulder), inozf 



