Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
The composites now to be exhibited are made from coins or medals,
and in most instances the aim has been to obtain the best likeness
attainable of historical personages, by combining various portraits
of them taken at different periods of their lives, and so to elicit
the traits that are common to each series. A few of the individual
portraits are placed in the same slide with each composite to give a
better idea of the character of these blended representatives. Those
that are shown are (1) Alexander the Great, from six components;
(2) Antiochus, King of Syria, from six; (3) Demetrius Poliorcetes,
from six; (4) Cleopatra, from five. Here the composite is as usual
better looking than any of the components, none of which, however,
give any indication of her reputed beauty; in fact, her features are
not only plain, but to an ordinary English taste are simply hideous.
(5) Nero, from eleven; (6) A combination of five different Greek
female faces; and (7) A singularly beautiful combination of the
faces of six different Roman ladies, forming a charming ideal profile.
My cordial acknowledgment is due to Mr. R. Stuart Poole, the learned
curator of the coins and gems in the British Museum, for his kind
selection of the most suitable medals, and for procuring casts of
them for me for the present purpose. These casts were, with one
exception, all photographed to a uniform size of four-tenths of an
inch between the pupils of the eyes and the division between the lips,
which experience shows to be the most convenient size on the whole
to work with, regard being paid to many considerations not worth
while to specify in detail. When it was necessary the photograph was
reversed. These photographs were made by Mr. H. Reynolds; I then
adjusted and prepared them for taking the photographic composite.
The next series to be exhibited consists of composites taken from
the portraits of criminals convicted of murder, manslaughter, or
crimes accompanied by violence. There is much interest in the fact
that two types of features are found much more frequently among
these than among the population at large. In one, the features are
broad and massive, like those of Henry VIII., but with a much
smaller brain. The other, of which five composites are exhibited,
each deduced from a number of different individuals, varying four to
nine, is a face that is weak and certainly not a common English face.
Three of these composites, though taken from entirely different sets
of individuals, are as alike as brothers, and it is found on
optically combining any three out of the five composites, that is on
combining almost any considerable number of the individuals, the
result is closely the same. The combination of the three composites
just alluded to will now be effected by means of the three
converging magic-lanterns, and the result may be accepted as generic
in respect of this particular type of criminals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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