Recognized HTML document

212   Life and Letters of Francis Galton

doubtful success from psychology to anthropology. But it seems to me that the work of the two men was wholly independent and that Galton was the pioneer of experimental psychology in this country. Indeed very little real progress was possible in this new science without the aid of Galton's correlational calculus, and psychologists not only owe Galton a great debt for his suggestive experiments and actual apparatus, but also for those mathematical methods which are now the commonplace tools of psychological investigation.

I do not speak without careful examination of the facts, when I claim for Galton a pioneer position in experimental psychology in Great Britain. His Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development appeared in 1883, but it was a resume of work which had occupied Galton for at least seven years previously, and if we include folk psychology, for twelve years'. Galton's notebooks and queries to himself and friends begin as early as 1876, and one docket is inscribed by himself "Psychometric Inquiries 1876."

In March, 1883, Galton printed and issued a four-page pamphlet in the preparation of which he had the aid of the late Professor G. Croom-Robertson g. Galton opens with the statement that:

"I am endeavouring to compile a list of instruments suitable for the outfit of an Anthropometric Laboratory, especially those for testing and measuring the efficiency of the various mental and bodily powers. The simplest instruments and methods for adequately determining

the delicacy of the several senses are now under discussion. After these shall have been disposed of, the next step will be to consider the methods of measuring the quickness and the accuracy of the Higher Mental Processes. Any information you can give, or suggestions that

you can make, will be thankfully accepted."

The remainder of the pamphlet deals with the measurement of sensitivity, giving an analysis of the facts of sensation, and a programme of what has to be measured in (I) Skin-sensation, (a) Temperature, and (b) Touch, (II) Sight, (III) Hearing, (IV) Smell, (V) Taste, and (VI) the so-called muscular sense. Much of this is of course very familiar now. But it led Galton himself to devise various instruments for testing skin-sensation, hearing, smell, etc. As the pamphlet. states, having the facts clearly before us, we must next "proceed to consider the most suitable apparatus to afford the measurements (or other tests) suggested by the several paragraphs." This pamphlet was followed by a proposal to hold an exhibition of psycho

1 Compare the great difference in value between Wundt's Psychologische Studien and his Vdlkerpsychologie.

2 As evidenced by correspondence in the Galton Laboratory. The first published paper was that on the Whistles of 1877, and the Composite Portraits and Generic Images followed in 1878 and 1879 respectively.

a Galton's friendship with Croom-Robertson began in 1876, when the latter was just starting Mind. Galton had sent him two of his papers on Heredity, and Croom-Robertson said they should not be overlooked in the second issue of that Journal. He also asked Galton for psychological contributions. "There was no one to whose intelligent cooperation I then owed more than Professor Croom-Robertson (1842-1892) of University College. His genius and temperament were of the most attractive Scottish type-exact, sane and very genial.... He was a thorough friend whose death left a void in my own life that has never been wholly filled." Memories, p. 267.