Correlation and Application of Statistics to Problems of Heredity 57 



think also in terms of correlation. This has not only enormously widened 

 the field to which quantitative and therefore mathematical methods can be 

 applied, but it has at the same time modified our philosophy of science and 

 even of life itself. The words which I have cited at the beginning of this 

 chapter show that Galton, if he expressed himself modestly, still realised the 

 importance of his work. The root idea at the bottom of correlation must not 

 be treated as merely rebuilding on a securer mathematical basis statistical 

 science. It is a much greater innovation which touches in its philosophical 

 aspects the epistemology of all the sciences. 



I have already referred (Vol. u, pp. 380-386) to Galton's attempt to 

 introduce the conception of correlation* to anthropologists in 1889. It was 

 a hopeless task ! Most physical anthropologists in this country lack a 

 thorough academic training, and statistical methods will only penetrate here 

 after they have been adopted in Germany and France as they are being 

 adopted in Russia, Scandinavia and America. English intelligence is dis- 

 tributed according to a very skew curve, with an extremely low modal 

 value; we have produced great men, who have propounded novel ideas, but 

 our mediocrity fails to grasp them or is too inert to turn them to profit. 

 Years later these ideas come back to England, burnished and luring, through 

 foreign channels, and mediocrity knows nothing of their ancestry ! 



In 1889 Galton read at the British Association (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) 

 a note entitled : " Feasible Experiments on the Possibility of transmitting 

 Acquired Habits by means of Inheritance"; it is published in the B. A. 

 Report, p. 620, also in Nature, Vol. XL, p. 610, October, 1889. Galton 

 considers that creatures reared from eggs would be most satisfactory and 

 suggests fish, fowls and moths. He considers that fish may be taught to 

 adopt habits not conformable to their nature (Mobius' experiment with pike 

 and minnows). Fowls have an instinctive dread of certain insects, but might 

 be taught to eat mimetic and harmless insects. Larvae are fastidious in 

 their diet, but can be induced to take food which they naturally avoid, and 

 which is found perfectly wholesome. Would acquired habits of this kind be 

 in any case transmitted to their offspring ? 



I. Natural Inheritance. The ideas on heredity and correlation which 

 had been working in Galton's mind during the decade of the 'eighties found 

 final expression in his book entitled Natural Inheritance, published in 1889 

 when Galton was 67 years of age. It may be said that this publication created 

 Galton's school; it induced Weldon, Edgeworth and the present biographer 

 to study correlation and in doing so to see its immense importance for many 

 fields of inquiry. It is idle to overlook the haste with which it was prepared 

 and the many slips and positive errors to be found in its pages, but no one who 

 studied it on its appearance and had a receptive and sufficiently trained mathe- 

 matical mind could deny its great suggestiveness, or be other than grateful for 

 all the new ideas and possible problems which it provided. The methods of 



* Spelled thus in the Presidential Address of Jan. 2, 1889, and, I think, ever afterwards. 

 pgiii 8 



