The Social Direction of Evolution: An Outline of the Science of EugenicsKellicott, William E. (William Erskine)
Science
The Social Direction of Evolution: An Outline of the Science of Eugenics
Kellicott, William E. (William Erskine)
Eugenics
Turning now to the inheritance of mental traits and including, of
course, moral traits here as well, we find that we are almost entirely
limited to the statistical statement of results. Pearson found upon
examining data from a large number of school children, brothers and
sisters, that the coefficients of heredity between them were the same
as for their physical traits. His results are summarized in Figure 12.
The physical traits measured were, in the order plotted in the
figure--health, eye color, hair color, hair curliness, cephalic index
(ratio between breadth and length of cranium), head length, head
breadth, head height. These gave an average of .54 in brothers, .53 in
sisters, and .51 in brothers and sisters. The psychical traits in
order were--vivacity, assertiveness, introspection, popularity,
conscientiousness, temper, ability, handwriting. The corresponding
averages were .52, .51, .52.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Coefficients of heredity of physical
and psychical characters in school children. Characters
enumerated in text. (From Pearson.)]
Galton's pioneer works on "Hereditary Genius," "English Men of
Science," and "Natural Inheritance" showed with great clearness the
fact of mental and moral heredity. Wood's recent extensive study of
"Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty" shows the same thing, although
not all the results of these investigations are given in mathematical
form. Little can be said regarding Mendelian heredity of mental traits
because the psychologist has not yet told us how to analyze even the
common and simpler psychic characters into their fundamental units;
since we do not know what the mental hereditary units are, obviously
we cannot work with them. Much of our knowledge in this field does not
permit of very accurate summary, though pointing indisputably to the
fact of mental inheritance in spite of the very great influences of
training and education, environment and tradition, in moulding the
mental and moral characteristics--influences with much greater effect
here than in connection with physical characters.
Galton studied the parentage of 207 Fellows of the Royal Society, a
Fellowship which is a real mark of distinction. He assumed that one
per cent of the individuals represented by the class from which his
observations were drawn, that is the higher intellectual classes,
might be expected to be "noteworthy": among the general population the
average is really about one in 4,000 or one fortieth of one per cent.
On the one per cent basis Galton found that Fellows of the Royal
Society had noteworthy fathers with 24 times the frequency to be
expected in the absence of heredity; noteworthy brothers with 31 times
the expected frequency; noteworthy grandfathers 12 times; and so on
through various grades of relationship.
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