44 DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 



of their parents, but spend all their earliest 

 years with their parents. Even where a parent 

 is dead, the child is told of his or her habits 

 and ways of thought, and unconscious imitation 

 of a father or mother, whose memory is re- 

 garded as something- sacred, may account for 

 a great deal. Mr. Galton, in his work on 

 Hereditary Genius, admits that his investiga- 

 tions altogether suffer from the defect that 

 there is so great a "lack of reliable informa- 

 tion " about the peculiarities of females (p. 6$). 

 We shall have to wait till public careers are 

 more abundantly open to women before much 

 can be learnt from family pedigrees. It 

 is certainly striking that, in the two sets of 

 cases where Mr. Galton considers the maternal 

 influence to be strong, viz., in the case of scien- 

 tific men and in the case of pious divines (pp. 

 196, 276), his own explanation turns upon in- 

 fluence in early years and not upon mere birth. 

 The clever mother encourages and does not 

 discourage the inquiring child; the pious mother, 

 if she manages to influence her son at all, 

 directs all his thoughts and emotions into one 

 channel. It seems very doubtful whether, 

 except in fairy tales or romances, the child 



