K. Pearson 
153 
(Q) Handwriting. — Some persons may be inclined to question whether this 
character is properly placed in the psychical class. Is it really a largely muscular 
characteristic ? Personally I do not think it desirable to draw very rigid lines 
between the physical and psychical, and the present inquiry has much strengthened 
that opinion. But we have gone far further with handwriting than is obvious on 
the face of this paper, which is confined to inheritance ; and, without anticipating 
results yet to be published, I would say that, quite contrary to my expectation, 
very sensible correlations exist between the psychical characters and the hand- 
writing, which on the other hand has only very moderate or zero correlations 
with the physical characters. In school children at any rate, temper, probity and 
assertiveness are all correlated with the character of the handwriting, and I have 
little hesitation myself therefore in including it with the psychical rather than the 
physical group. 
These remarks on the individual characters dealt with may enable the reader 
to understand something of the method adopted in analysing our material. They 
will at any rate suggest that many points have been considered and investigated 
which cannot be even touched upon here, but which have aided us in our 
classifications and general treatment*. 
(iv) Comparison of the Values found for the Inheritance of the Physical and 
Psychical Characters in Man. 
Thus far my whole object has been to describe the sources of my material, 
and to throw some light, perchance, on the new methods we have adopted in 
classification and computation. I have spent a considerable time over this latter 
topic, because to the anthropologist of the older school, the biometrician too 
often appears as a juggler in figures. It is impossible, perhaps, to help this at 
present, when the biometrician is introducing a new calculus, which cannot be 
learnt without hard work, and which cannot be handled without training. We 
are not endeavouring to discredit anthropology, but to furnish such branches of it 
as anthropometry and craniology with new tools — a little sharp-edged to the 
uninitiated who handle them incautiously — but which will raise anthropometry and 
craniology in the future into the category of the more exact sciences. Such must 
be my excuse for describing so fully, and yet, I fear, so ineffectually, the processes we 
have adopted. It is another point to ask you to admit that I came to this inquiry 
without prejudice. I expected a priori to find the home environment largely 
affecting the resemblance in moral qualities of brothers and sisters. I expected to 
find a spurious emphasis of the inheritance of the moral qualities owing to this 
environment. Putting any thought of prejudice on one side, accept for a moment 
the methods adopted, and listen — regardless of the drummers — to the broad results 
* For example upwards of 120 correlations between physical characters, between psychical characters 
and between physical and psychical characters have been worked out, tending to throw light on 
the interrelationships of these supposed widely differentiated sides of the human character. 
]Biometril£a iii 
20 
