an actual incident that occurred in the life of one of the great 
masters:— 
“Professor Werner of Leipzig, the founder of geology, was 
a man pre-occupied with the consideration of maintaining his 
reputation as ‘an authority’ rather than with the despair of dif¬ 
fusing knowledge. He obtained a promise from his scholar 
Leopold von Buch, that the latter should not publish his con¬ 
vincing basalt-theory (in opposition to Werner’s theory), until 
after Werner’s death. His reason for demanding this sacrifice 
was that he could not bear to forfeit his ‘reputation.’ Leopold 
von Buch gave the promise and kept his word. (See Hensel’s 
Life, page 74). 
“How long did Galton’s theory, or the theoretic laws ad¬ 
vanced concerning atavism and ancestral heredity, form the basis 
of the entire field of biology?—Even today there are as many 
who worship at his shrine, though Galton is dead and scholars 
such as Johannsen, Bateson and others, myself included, have 
proved his ideas untenable. 
“Concerning my own criticism of Galton’s Laws, I may men¬ 
tion that in my study of the great teaching of. the “Hereditary 
Transmission of Genius and Character,’ I was constrained to 
follow other courses than those suggested by Galton, and for 
this reason: He asserted that the first-born children are al¬ 
ways the ‘most inferior in mental capacity,’ and cites the names 
of those men to whom his theory applied. I could not agree 
with him in this, since it was opposed to my study and exper¬ 
ience and, morever, incidentally, was disproved by my own family 
history. I cannot agree with Galton’s theories,—but I am in a 
position to prove, scientifically and practically, under what con¬ 
ditions the first-born and under what the last-born will be the 
one to manifest genial characteristics. However, this is a sub¬ 
ject which must be reserved for another occasion. 
“With the discovery of the erroneous nature of Galton’s 
Laws, the entire colossal structure of so-called ‘biometry’ (up¬ 
held, as its chief exponents, by Pearson and Weldon), which has 
for so many years acted as a check upon the progress of the en¬ 
tire world of scholars, crumbles to the dust. 
28 
