F, Galton—Address before the British Association. 265 
“Art. XXXV.—Adiress before the Department of Anthropology 
of the British Association, at Plymouth ; by FRANCIS GALTON, 
E.R.S. 
Under these circumstances I thought it best to depart some- 
what from the usual form of addresses, and to confine myself to 
certain topics with which I happen to have been recently en- 
gaged, even at the risk of incurring the charge of submitting to 
you a memoir rather than an address. 
I propose to speak of the study of those groups of men who 
are sufficiently similar in their mental characters or in their 
physiognomy, or in both, to admit of classification ; and I espe- 
cially desire to show that many methods exist of pursuing the 
Inquiry in a strictly scientific manner, although it has hitherto 
been too often conducted with extreme laxity. 
The types of character of which I speak are such as those 
described by Theophrastus, La Bruyére, and others, or such as 
may be read of in ordinary literature and are universally recog- 
nized as being exceedingly true to nature. There are no wor- 
thier professors of this branch of anthropology than the writers 
of the higher works of fiction, who are ever on the watch to 
discriminate varieties of character, and who have the art of de- 
scribing them. It would, I think, be a valuable service to an- 
thropology if some person well versed in literature were to com- 
pile a volume of extracts from novels and plays that should 
illustrate the prevalent types of human character and tempera- 
ment. What, however, I especially wish to point out is, that 
it has of late years become possible to pursue an inquiry into 
certain fundamental qualities of the mind by the aid of exact 
