425 



I 



Note illustrating Francis Galton'a Viewn on lieligion. 



I found the following remarks in Francis Galton's handwriting among 

 material collected for a new edition of Imiuiriex into Human Faculty. It« 

 bearing on what has l)een said on pj*. 257, *J82,and in the footnote, p. 102 will 

 be obvious. The date of the manuscript must Ix* alxiut IH'J'J. 



Probably every one lia« at some time ha<l the feeling that if a dearly loved parent were taken 

 fmiii liiiii, the jjrirf and lonuliness after the l<xs.s would Im- iiisujipurtable; yet parents die, and 

 their children, after a burst of poignant grief, recover tlieiiiselves and survive, and numt jRTSons 

 of middle age an? orphanit, leading happy lives full of int*rre«t«, and niellowetl rather than 

 sadileiu^l by recollections of the past. The early loves of men and women are intense ; they are 

 wholly bound up in one tmother and the word.s 'for ever' and the like are the stock expressions 

 of their phra.seology, but how transient in many cases are these di.spositions. The mind is not 

 wholly depentlent on it^ anchorage to any one given sentiment; if it l)e cut adrift, at leaat in 

 early life, after a short while new interests will arise, to which it will nxwr itself as securely as 

 before. 'I'he sense of necessary dep-ndence on any given sentiment iniiy be very strong, but its 

 reality is belied by the experience of what daily occurs around us. Thus if a suspicion were 

 lodged in the mind of a fervent Roman Catholic that the Virgin Mary exercised no protective 

 power over him, the dreiul lest that suspicion should grow into a conviction woidd l)e a far worse 

 terror to him than the anticipation of any earthly orphanage ; yet Protestants holding that view 

 lead lives as calm as those of the Catholics. Similarly, the thought to the Christian of being 

 orphaned of Christ is no less horrible; but Jews and Unitarian.s some of high position in s<K'iety, 

 and others, philosophers and men of letters, having no Intlief in the incarnation and interce^isory 

 [lowers of Christ, live and die as contentedly as Christians. So again, the thought of Ijeing 

 orphaned of the paternal guidaiico of a being having the peculiar attributes of the Jewish 

 Jehovah, would give a terrible shock to many, yet it is notorious that the majority of thoughtful 

 Germans and numerous English Agnostics, whose views on other subjects are treatiti with 

 general respect and who lead well balanced and contented lives, do not entertain that l>elief. 

 It is astonishing how devoid of sympathetic intelligence most men are. They are afraid to face 

 the fact that ginxl and able men disjigree fundamentally on the elements of religious doctrine, 

 and that therefori! no certainty can be claimwl for a?iy one of these doctrines. At the best they 

 are only persuasions. 



