EUGENICS 129 



good opportunity — each of the sort fitted to his capacities — as Charles 

 Darwin had, the gain for human welfare would probably have been 

 great ; but if every boy then could have had as good inborn capacity for 

 science, art, invention, the management of men — or whatever his 

 strongest capacity was — as Charles Darwin had for science, the gain for 

 welfare would certainly have been enormous. 



The original differences in intellect, character, and skill which 

 characterize men are related to the families and races whence the indi- 

 viduals spring. Each man's original mental constitution, which so 

 largely determines how much more or less he will do for the world's 

 good than the average man of his generation, is the product of no 

 fortuity, but of the germs of his parents and the forces which modify 

 the body into which they grow — is the product, as we are accustomed 

 to say, of heredity and variation. The variation within the group of 

 offspring of the same parents is large — a very gifted thinker may have 

 an almost feeble-minded brother — but the variation between families 

 is real. A feeble-minded person's brothers will be feeble-minded hun- 

 dreds of times as often. 



The general average tendency of the original intellectual and moral 

 natures of children to be like the original natures of their ancestry is 

 guaranteed beforehand by the accepted principles of biology. Direct 

 evidence of it is also furnished by investigations of the combination of 

 original and acquired differences which human achievements, as they 

 stand, display. The same studies which find differences of nurture hope- 

 lessly inadequate to account for differences of ability and achievement, 

 find that original capacities and interests must be invoked precisely 

 because achievement runs in families, and in a manner or degree which 

 likeness in home training can not explain. Galton found that the real 

 sons of eminent men had a thousand times the ordinary man's chance 

 of eminence and far excelled the adopted sons of men of equal eminence. 

 Woods has shown that, when each individual is rated for intellect or 

 morals, the achievements of those sons of royal families who succeeded 

 to the throne by paternal death and thus had the special attention given 

 to crown princes and the special unearned opportunities of succession, 

 have, in the estimation of historians, been no greater than those of their 

 younger brothers. 



Children of the same parents resemble one another in every mental 

 trait where the issue has been tested, and resemble one another nearly or 

 quite as much in such tests as quickness in marking the A's on a sheet 

 of printed capitals or giving the opposites of words, to which home 

 trai n ing has never paid any special attention, as they do in adding or 

 multiplying, where parental ambitions, advice and rewards would be 

 expected to have much more effect, if they have any anywhere. 



Mr. Courtis, who has been assiduously studying the details of ability 



