18 galton.org
18
Inquiries into Human Faculty
inherited the gift of it from their parents and grandparents. I have since
found the same to be the case in other careers.
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.
The stimuli may be of any description: the only important matter is
that all the faculties should be kept working to prevent their perishing by
disuse. If the faculties are few, very simple stimuli will suffice. Even that
of fleas will go a long way. A dog is continually scratching himself, and a
bird pluming itself, whenever they are not occupied with food, hunting,
fighting, or love. In those blank times there is very little for them to attend
to besides their varied cutaneous irritations. It is a matter of observation
that well washed and combed domestic pets grow dull; they miss the
stimulus of fleas. If animals did not prosper through the agency of their
insect plagues, it seems probable that their races would long since have
been so modified that their bodies should have ceased to afford a pasture-
ground for parasites.
It does not seem to follow that because men are capable of doing hard
work they like it. Some, indeed, fidget and fret if they cannot otherwise
work off their superfluous steam; but on the other hand there are many big
lazy fellows who will not get up their steam to full pressure except under
compulsion. Again, the character of the stimulus that induces hard work
differs greatly in different persons; it may be wealth, ambition, or other
object of passion. The solitary hard workers, under no encouragement or
compulsion except their sense of duty to their generation, are
unfortunately still rare among us.
It may be objected that if the race were too healthy and energetic there
would be insufficient call for the exercise of the pitying and self-denying
virtues, and the character of men would grow harder in consequence. But
it does not seem reasonable to preserve sickly breeds for the sole purpose
of tending them, as the breed of foxes is preserved
