Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
The investigation of human eugenics--that is, of the conditions
under which men of a high type are produced--is at present extremely
hampered by the want of full family histories, both medical and
general, extending over three or four generations. There is no such
difficulty in investigating animal eugenics, because the generations
of horses, cattle, dogs, etc., are brief, and the breeder of any
such stock lives long enough to acquire a large amount of experience
from his own personal observation. A man, however, can rarely be
familiar with more than two or three generations of his
contemporaries before age has begun to check his powers; his working
experience must therefore be chiefly based upon records. Believing,
as I do, that human eugenics will become recognised before long as a
study of the highest practical importance, it seems to me that no
time ought to be lost in encouraging and directing a habit of
compiling personal and family histories. If the necessary materials
be brought into existence, it will require no more than zeal and
persuasiveness on the part of the future investigator to collect as
large a store of them as he may require.
UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF PECULIARITIES.
The importance of submitting our faculties to measurement lies in
the curious unconsciousness in which we are apt to live of our
personal peculiarities, and which our intimate friends often fail to
remark. I have spoken of the ignorance of elderly persons of their
deafness to high notes, but even the existence of such a peculiarity
as colour blindness was not suspected until the memoir of Dalton in
1794. That one person out of twenty-nine or thereabouts should be
unable to distinguish a red from a green, without knowing that he
had any deficiency of colour sense, and without betraying his
deficiency to his friends, seems perfectly incredible to the other
twenty-eight; yet as a matter of fact he rarely does either the one
or the other. It is hard to convince the colour-blind of their own
infirmity. I have seen curious instances of this: one was that of a
person by no means unpractised in physical research, who had been
himself tested in matching colours. He gave me his own version of
the result, to the effect that though he might perhaps have fallen a
little short of perfection as judged by over-refined tests, his
colour sense was for all practical purposes quite good. On the other
hand, the operator assured me that when he had toned the intensities
of a pure red and a pure green in a certain proportion, the person
ceased to be able to distinguish between them! Colour blindness is
often very difficult to detect, because the test hues and tints may
be discriminated by other means than by the normal colour sense.
Ordinary pigments are never pure, and the test colours may be
distinguished by those of their adventitious hues to which the
partly colour-blind man may be sensitive. We do not suspect
ourselves to be yellow-blind by candle light, because we enjoy
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