NEO-DARWINIAN SOCIOLOGISTS 93 



looking, therefore, at the range of qualities fixed by selection and 

 transmitted by heredity." 1 



In Hereditary Genius Galton endeavored to trace the in- 

 fluence of heredity in the transmission of high mental ability, but 

 succeeded in showing only a correlation without separating the 

 factors of " nature " and " nurture "; yet in his discussion of 

 Influences that Affect the Natural Ability of Nations, he assumes 

 that he has shown that the qualities are hereditary rather than 

 due to environment. " I shall have occasion to show," he says, 

 " that certain influences retard the average age of marriage, while 

 others hasten it; . . . that an enormous effect upon the average 

 natural ability of a race may be produced by means of those 

 influences. I shall argue that the wisest policy is that which 

 results in retarding the average age of marriage among the weak 

 and in hastening it among the vigorous classes; whereas, most 

 unhappily for us, the influence of numerous social agencies has 

 been strongly and banefully exerted in precisely the opposite 

 direction." 2 He discusses not only the effect of the age of 

 marriage, but also of religious persecution and celibacy both of 

 the priesthood and of a type of scholastics, 3 and bases his con- 

 clusion on the innate differences between the various classes in 

 English society and their value to the race-stock. Now he has 

 not proven that the lower economic classes or those who by 

 intellectual tests stand lowest are innately inferior to the higher, 

 yet the whole value of his argument rests on this and on the 

 correlation between physical vigor and the possession of those 

 qualities which make for national strength. In truth, in his 

 prefatory chapter to the edition of 1892 where he takes his stand 

 on Weismannism, he confuses those qualities of mind and char- 

 acter which may be purely psycho-social, as in the illustration 

 given from the French Huguenots, and those that pertain to the 

 germ plasm. 4 The same confusion is to be noted in his discussion 

 of The Comparative Worth of Different Races. He holds that the 



1 Laboratory Lecture Series, no. vii, pp. 4 f. 



2 Hereditary Genius, p. 339 (italics ours). 



3 Ibid., pp. 343 f . Yet he admits that celibacy is favorable to eminence, hence to 

 the production of those utilities which make for national strength, ibid., p. 320. 



4 Ibid., p. xxiii. 



