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Pyehological Investigations- 255 but they have ceased to have any meaning for the bulk of the population to-day; its problems are essentially economic, and it will accept as an in

tellectual faith any doctrine which apparently offers better economic conditions'. The error is that we assume great progress in the intellectual views of the leaders of thought in a nation always corresponds to some mental development, or to some change in the culture of the mass of the people.

Galton concludes this section (p. 182) by stating that while we know "that the bulk of the respective provinces of nature and of nurture are totally different, and although the frontier between them may be uncertain," yet "we are perfectly justified in attempting, to appraise their relative importance."

Our author now turns to Associations.- He writes:

"The furniture of a man's mind chiefly- consists of his recollections and the bonds that

unite them. As all this is the fruit of experience, it must differ greatly in different minds according to their individual experiences. I have endeavoured to take stock of my own mental furniture in the way described in the next chapter, in which it will be seen how large a part consists of childish recollections, testifying to the permanent effect of many of the results of early education." (p. 182)   "The character of our abstract ideas, therefore, depends to a

considerable degree on our nurture." (p. 183.)

I think in these remarks Galton does not allow adequately for the difference in receptivity in the material educated. Galton and his brothers, Darwin and Erasmus, had very similar early nurtures, but what made the elder brothers merely country gentlemen in ideas and habits, and the younger brother a foremost man of science of his day? Surely it was a differentiated receptivity, which caused Francis to store his mind-from practically the same environment-in a wholly different way; and there can be little doubt that thiss receptivity, which stored experiences wholly otherwise than his brothers did, was- an innate faculty, a result of nature not of nurture. Again, many lads had the training of a classical school and of a university, precisely as Charles Darwin had, but their receptivity was very different in its selection from his, and the result left them largely mediocrities. That basal distinction was one of nature. Again, it is not only, the selective action in storing experiences, but the manner in which the brain associates them, which is important. I cannot think, therefore, that because Galton in his Psychometric Experiments2 found many of his associations were from early childhood that this denotes a large part played by nurture in mental efficiency. I think the effectiveness of the brain in summoning fitting associations, is recognised by Galton in the following section of his book entitled Antechamber of Consciousness. Here he writes:

1 A recent talk with a. Russian Soviet professor from Moscow threw some light on the

idealist views of the Soviet leaders. The results of modern science were to be broadcasted among, the people, and- the ecclesiastics who opposed this were to be removed; it was to be science for the people as against theological bondage, but the new scientific faith was to be associated with an economic revolution, which would benefit the masses. There certainly is a philosophic reading of history-what we might term an anthropological sense-in this com= bination. And I await with greater interest and more understanding the outcome of these idealistic scientists and politicians!

2 He reproduces largely his papers on this subject (see our pp. 233-36) in pp. 185-203 of the Inquiries.