Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
I do not propose to enter further into the anthropometric
differences of race, for the subject is a very large one, and this
book does not profess to go into detail. Its intention is to touch
on various topics more or less connected with that of the
cultivation of race, or, as we might call it, with "eugenic" [1]
questions, and to present the results of several of my own separate
investigations.
ENERGY.
Energy is the capacity for labour. It is consistent with all the
robust virtues, and makes a large practice of them possible. It is
the measure of fulness of life; the more energy the more abundance
of it; no energy at all is death; idiots are feeble and listless. In
the inquiries I made on the antecedents of men of science no points
came out more strongly than that the leaders of scientific thought
were generally gifted with remarkable energy, and that they had
[2] inherited the gift of it from their parents and grandparents. I
have since found the same to be the case in other careers.
[Footnote 2: That is, with questions bearing on what is termed in
Greek, _eugenes_, namely, good in stock, hereditarily endowed with
noble qualities. This, and the allied words, _eugeneia_, etc., are
equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a
brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no
means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which,
especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences
that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable
races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily
over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word
_eugenics_ would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a
neater word and a more generalised one than _viriculture_, which I
once ventured to use.]
Energy is an attribute of the higher races, being favoured beyond
all other qualities by natural selection. We are goaded into
activity by the conditions and struggles of life. They afford
stimuli that oppress and worry the weakly, who complain and bewail,
and it may be succumb to them, but which the energetic man welcomes
with a good-humoured shrug, and is the better for in the end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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