120 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



From this table we see how degree of noteworthiness diminishes as we 

 pass from the near relatives of the noteworthy to more distant kinsmen. If 

 we accept Galton's two hypotheses : (i) that only one relative in each class 

 can on the average be considered as having lived and been mature enough 

 to have had the opportunity of reaching noteworthiness (see our p. 116) and 

 (ii) that one person in a hundred of the generality is noteworthy, then the 

 above percentages express the numbers of times the F.R.S.'s have more note- 

 worthy kinsmen than the generality of men*. It will be seen that the 

 kinsmen with surnames different from those of the F.R.S.'s fathers and 

 mothers have even a lesser percentage of distinction than the generality 

 of men ! Allowing that this may be to some extent due to ignorance of the 

 names, and so of the achievements of these relatives, are we justified in 

 holding that the percentage of noteworthiness in the generality is as high 

 as 1 Y ? Galton himself says : 



"The reader may work out results for himself on other hypotheses as to the percentage of 

 noteworthiness among the generality. A considerably larger proportion would be noteworthy 

 in the higher classes of society, but a far smaller one in the lower; it is to the bulk, say three- 

 quarters of them, that the 1 per cent, estimate applies, the extreme variations from it tending 

 to balance one another. 



"The figures on which the above calculations depend may each or all of them be changed to 

 any reasonable amount, without shaking the truth of the great fact upon which Eugenics is 

 based, that able fathers produce able children in a much larger proportion than the generality." 



(p. xli.) 



Finally Galton refers to the fact that while there was a general high level 

 of ability in the families of F.R.S.'s, some parents were in no way remarkable, 

 so that the "Fellow" was simply a "sport," in respect of his taste and 

 ability. "It is," he remarks, "to be remembered that 'sports' are trans- 

 missible by heredity, and have been, through careful selection, the origin of 

 most of the valuable varieties of domesticated plants and animals. Sports 

 have been conspicuous in the human race, especially in some individuals of 

 the highest eminence in music, painting and in art generally, but this is not 

 the place to enter further into so large a subject." Galton cited Bateson, 

 De Vries and his own earlier writings (see our pp. 79 et seq.) for the treatment 

 of this topic. 



I find it very difficult to accept the view that a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society, whose parents or even the whole of whose known kindred fail to 

 be remarkable, or rather to have been recorded as remarkable, is a sport. In 

 the first place when a pedigree like that of the musician Bach is fully 

 worked out, he is seen to be very far from a sport; he is only the ablest 

 member of a very able musical stirp. And in the next place, if we take a 

 family every member of which for indefinite generations has been mediocre 

 for any given character, we find the variability of an array of offspring is 

 some 70 °/ o of the variability of the population at large, which contains among 

 its members the specially able. Hence although the specially able will not 



* We might divide these numbers by two, if we assume that in collateral kinship, there will 

 be two on the average who will reach an age when to be noteworthy is possible. 



