418 Life and Letters of Fmncix Gallon 



of Ckbinei MiniBtore, of the Army, of the Executive, of both Houson of Parliament have receive*! 

 a university education, what has that university education taught them (if tlie priicticwl a|>plica- 

 tion of HtatiNticHt Many of the Government Olhce.s have Nplen<iid statistics. Wliut use do they 

 make of thenit One of tlie liust words Dr Farr of the General llegister Office sjiid to me was: 

 "Yes, you must get an Oxford Professorship; don't let it drop." 



M. Quetelet gave me his I'hi/»iquf Socia/e and his Anthro/wmftris. He aaid almost like 

 Sir Isaac Newton: "These are only a few pebbles picked up on the vast seashore of the ocean 

 to be explored. Let the explorations be carried out" 



You know how Quetelet rt-iluced the most appan'ntly accidental carelessness to ever recurring 

 fkcis, so that as long as the same conditions exist, the same "accidents" will recur with abso- 

 lutely unfailing regularity'. 



You n-member what Quetelet wrote — and Sir J. Herschel enforced the advice — "Put down 



what you expect from such and such legislation; after yeai-s, see where it has given you 



what you expected, and where it has failed. But you change your laws and your administering 

 of them so fast, and without inquiry after results past or present, that it is all experiment, 

 aee-saw, doctrinaire, a shuttlecock In-tween two battlcdore.s." 



Might I a-sk from your kindne.ss^ — if not deterred by this long scrawl — for your answer in 

 writing as to hea<is of subjects for the scheme? Then to give mo some little time, and that you 

 would then make an appointment some afternoon, as you kindly proposed, to tidk it over, to 

 tea«h, and to advise mel Pi-ay believe me, Yours most faithfully, Flobence Niohtingale. 



I confess — but then I am a prejudiced person, for the prophetess was 

 proclaiming my own creed — that this letter appears to me one of the finest 

 that Florence Nightingale ever wi-ote. What is more it is almost as true 

 to-day as it was thirty years ago. We are only just beginning to study 

 social problems — medical, educational, commercial — by adequate statistical 

 methoas, and that study has at present done very little to influence legislation. 

 What is more the re^juisite statistical teaching on which real knowledge 

 must be based luis hardly yet spread throughout our universities. The time 

 has yet to come, when the want of a chair of statistical theory and practice 

 iu any great tiniversity will be considered jik much an anomaly as the absence 

 of a chair of mathematics. The logic of the former is as fundamental in all 

 branches of scientific inquiry as the symbolic analysis of the latter. 



To many it may seem as if we had here a proposal which Galton would 

 welcome at once, none would doubt that he would give the closest con- 

 sideration to it. But to those who knew Galton well three points of hesitation 

 would suggest themselves : (i) He had no faith in a man simply because he 

 was a [irofessor; the men who in his day had made the most important 

 contributions to science — Darwin, Wallace, Lubbock — and such personal 

 friends as Spencer and Groves — were not professors (ii) He did not till long 

 after this lose his faith in working by connnittees, or in some form of co- 

 operative work '. (iii) He Ijelieved that small monetary prizes would pnxluce 

 excellent research work by able young men, and overlooked the fact that a 

 stifi" preliminary training is needful (then wholly lacking in statistics) if 



' Footnote. I prettumo that no one now but understands, however vaguely, that if we 

 change the conditions for the l»etter, the evils will diminish accordingly. 



' He had experienced the great value of the Meteorological Council and the Kew Observa- 

 tory Committee, but thew were largely homogeneous groups of highly traine<l men. Rome of 

 Galton 's later committees, H«>lecte«l with the most catholic spirit, were such heterogeneous teams 

 that he might as well have harnea-sed a thoroughbred, a mule, an ass and a camel to his wain, 

 mad have hoped for reasonable progress! 



