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256   Life and Letters of Francis Galton


"When I am engaged in trying to think anything out, the process of doing so appears to me to be this: the ideas that lie at any moment within my full consciousness seem to attract of their own accord the most appropriate out of a number of other ideas which are lying close at hand, but imperfectly within the range of my consciousness. There seems to be a presencechamber in my mind where full consciousness holds court, and where two or three ideas are at the same time in audience, and an antechamber full of more or less allied ideas, which is situated just beyond the full ken of consciousness. Out of this antechamber the ideas most nearly allied to those in the presence-chamber appear to be summoned in a mechapically logical way, and to have their turn of audience. The successful progress of thought appears to depend-first, on a large attendance in the antechamber; secondly, on the presence there of no ideas except such as are strictly germane to the topic under consideration; thirdly, on the justness of the logical mechanism that issues the summons. The thronging of the antechamber is, I am convinced, altogether beyond my control; if the ideas do not appear, I cannot create them, nor compel them to come. The exclusion of alien ideas is accompanied by a sense of mental effort and volition; whenever the topic under consideration is unattractive, otherwise it proceeds automatically, for if an intruding idea find nothing to cling to, it is unable to hold its place in the antechamber and slides back again." (pp. 203-4.)

Galton's analysis suggests the importance of (i) the selective action of the brain in storing ideas drawn from experiences, and of (ii) its efficiency in associating these ideas. In both these faculties it seems to me that we are dealing with an innate quality of the brain, which distinguishes two brothers reared under the same environment, or two youths educated in the same way in the same school and the same university. It is impossible to reproduce here the whole of Galton's suggestive thought in this section of his work on the Antechamber of Consciousness; we must refer the reader to the work itself. One further citation of a characteristic kind may be .given

"Extreme fluency and a vivid and rapid imagination are gifts naturally and healthfully possessed by those who rise to be great orators or literary men, for they could not have become successful in those careers without them. The curious fact already alluded to of five editors of newspapers being known to me as having phantasmagoria, points to a connection between two forms of fluency, the literary and the visual. Fluency may be also a morbid faculty, being markedly increased by alcohol (as poets are never tired of telling us), and by various drugs, and it exists in delirium, insanity, and states of high emotion. The fluency of a vulgar scold is extraordinary." (pp. 205-6.)

Galton's next section is entitled "Early Sentiments" (pp. 208-16), and in it he endeavours to show that.

"the power of nurture is very great in implanting sentiments of a religious nature, of terror and of aversion, and of giving a fallacious sense of their being natural instincts." (p. 216.)

He states that

"The models upon whom the child or boy forms himself are the boys or men whom he has been thrown amongst, and whom from some incidental cause he may have learnt to love and respect. The every-day utterances, the likes and dislikes of his parents, their social and caste feelings, their religious persuasions are absorbed by him; their views or those of his teachers become assimilated and made his own."... "He is born prepared to attach himself as a climbing plant is naturally disposed to climb, the kind of stick being of little importance." (p. 208.)

It seems to me that Galton overlooks here the fact that "slavish acceptance" is very frequently an inherited character. The child accepts the first thing placed before it, not necessarily because it is the first thing or comes from its parents, but because it lacks desire- to inquire for itself. Galton asserts that mere chance of birthplace makes religion a matter of accident,