FRANCIS GALTON 23 



which had long interested" him "which clustered 

 round the central topics of heredity." This was 

 the charge with which the mine had been loaded — 

 the Origin was the fuse. 



When that book was pubhshed in 1859, nearly 

 everyone here to-night must have been too young 

 to know anything of the great change in the colour 

 of human thought which was ushered in. There 

 are more who may remember how twelve years 

 later, when the Descent of Man came out, there was 

 still plenty of clerical and other forms of foolish 

 bitterness. But a man needs to have been in the 

 full swing of mental activity in 1859 to perceive 

 the greatness of the change due to the Origin of 

 Species. 



His two papers in Macmillan's Magazine, 1865 

 (Vol. XII., pp. 157 and 318), seem to me very re- 

 markable, and, as I have said, they are passed over 

 too lightly by the author in his Memories (p. 310). 

 They contain a statistical proof of the inheritance 

 of intellectual and moral qualities.^ And those who 

 would allow the truth of this statement must further 

 agree that it is the first statistical demonstration of 

 this important fact that the world has seen. And 

 he insists that the whole spiritual nature of man 

 is heritable, so that in his opinion there are no 

 traces of that new element, " specially fashioned in 

 Heaven," which (he says) is commonly beheved to 

 be given to a baby at its birth. 



The paper contains a very interesting discussion 

 on the development of social virtues by natural 



^ In Memories, p. 310, he criticises the statistical methods of 

 this work. 



