Inquiries into human faculty and its development — John Shaqi
Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
The recommendation I would venture to make to my readers is to
obtain photographs and ordinary measurements periodically of
themselves and their children, making it a family custom to do so,
because, unless driven by some custom, the act will be postponed
until the opportunity is lost. Let those periodical photographs be
full and side views of the face on an adequate scale, adding any
others that may be wished, but not omitting these. As the portraits
accumulate have collections of them autotyped. Keep the prints
methodically in a family register, writing by their side careful
chronicles of illness and all such events as used to find a place on
the fly-leaf of the Bible of former generations, and inserting other
interesting personal facts and whatever anthropometric data can be
collected.
Those who care to initiate and carry on a family chronicle
illustrated by abundant photographic portraiture, will produce a
work that they and their children and their descendants in more
remote generations will assuredly be grateful for. The family tie
has a real as well as a traditional significance. The world is
beginning to awaken to the fact that the life of the individual is
in some real sense a prolongation of those of his ancestry. His
vigour, his character, and his diseases are principally derived from
theirs; sometimes his faculties are blends of ancestral qualities;
but more frequently they are mosaics, patches of resemblance to one
or other of them showing now here and now there. The life-histories
of our relatives are prophetic of our own futures; they are far more
instructive to us than those of strangers, far more fitted to
encourage and to forewarn us. If there be such a thing as a natural
birthright, I can conceive of none superior to the right of the
child to be informed, at first by proxy through his guardians, and
afterwards personally, of the life-history, medical and other, of
his ancestry. The child is thrust into existence without his having
any voice at all in the matter, and the smallest amend that those
who brought him here can make, is to furnish him with all the
guidance they can, including the complete life-histories of his near
progenitors.
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