Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
Whenever a low race is preserved under conditions of life that exact
a high level of efficiency, it must be subjected to rigorous
selection. The few best specimens of that race can alone be allowed
to become parents, and not many of their descendants can be allowed
to live. On the other hand, if a higher race be substituted for the
low one, all this terrible misery disappears. The most merciful form
of what I ventured to call "eugenics" would consist in watching for
the indications of superior strains or races, and in so favouring
them that their progeny shall outnumber and gradually replace that
of the old one. Such strains are of no infrequent occurrence. It is
easy to specify families who are characterised by strong resemblances,
and whose features and character are usually prepotent over those of
their wives or husbands in their joint offspring, and who are at the
same time as prolific as the average of their class. These strains
can be conveniently studied in the families of exiles, which, for
obvious reasons, are easy to trace in their various branches.
The debt that most countries owe to the race of men whom they
received from one another as immigrants, whether leaving their
native country of their own free will, or as exiles on political or
religious grounds, has been often pointed out, and may, I think, be
accounted for as follows:--The fact of a man leaving his compatriots,
or so irritating them that they compel him to go, is fair evidence
that either he or they, or both, feel that his character is alien to
theirs. Exiles are also on the whole men of considerable force of
character; a quiet man would endure and succumb, he would not have
energy to transplant himself or to become so conspicuous as to be an
object of general attack. We may justly infer from this, that exiles
are on the whole men of exceptional and energetic natures, and it is
especially from such men as these that new strains of race are likely
to proceed.
INFLUENCE OF MAN UPON RACE.
The influence of man upon the nature of his own race has already
been very large, but it has not been intelligently directed, and has
in many instances done great harm. Its action has been by invasions
and migration of races, by war and massacre, by wholesale
deportation of population, by emigration, and by many social customs
which have a silent but widespread effect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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