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OCR Rendition - approximate
302 Life and Letters of Francis Galton Thank you very much for your very judicious suggestions about the Codicil, I will go carefully again through it and hope to send it off to-night to Hartog. University College charges no rent for the rooms occupied by the Office, but pray, as you kindly propose, talk over the matter for the future with the Provost.. Will you then, please, provide work after February and see to carrying on the Office? I simply feel myself powerless, as I said before, and have no wish to meddle in and to mar whatever you may do for me. I leave it quite to you to arrange with Hartog and the University, about selecting Schuster's successor or successors and giving them w6rk. Your news about the inheritance of the tuberculous diathesis is good and very important. I am grieved to bear of the pain and anxiety you have gone through about Helga. Turner writes to me saying that my letter to him about B. was just what he wanted-I am glad. Ever affectionately yours, FRANCIS GALTON. 7, WINDSOR TERRACE, THE HOE, PLYMOUTH. Dec. 12, 1906. MY DEAR KARL PEARSON, Excuse delay in reply, my bronchitis has been troublesome but the attack is now passed. What wonderful papers yours are, and how conspicuously they show the need of high mathematics in order to deal rigorously with apparently simple questions. I have now read your "Relationship to Intelligence of ...&c." not once only, but more or less minutely more than three times (I am so slow, now!), but as to the "Random Migration" I have only read the conclusions and am awe-struck at the mathematics. It is delightful to hear that you are already well enough to take part in the quartet dinner of successive occupants of the same chambers*. You ought to be proud of one another. The daydreams of boyhood and youth are never fulfilled, or overpassed. Napoleon was no exception. You had better I think tear up that centile paper I sent, which cannot be amended sufficiently for publication in any form. The diagram ought to be changed considerably. I have been improving on it and think I may make a little paper, suitable to some minor publication, that would be useful as a first step, and that would give the results of the kind in question with much ease, though only roughly. But I won't bother you with this now. How well you have arranged the Title, etc. on the cover of Biometrika. I am very glad that you retain Weldon's name as you do. It is good news about Hope Pinker. The Codicil after final revision by Hartog and Sir E. Busk has now been executed. I posted it yesterday to my lawyers. The weather to-day is about as vile, with squalls and driving rain, as weather can be! Ever affectionately yours, FRANCIS GALTON. 7, WINDSOR TERRACE, THE HOE, PLYMOUTH. Dec. 14, 1906. MY DEAR KARL PEARSON, You really misreadd my "hearts of hearts" re mathematics. I worship and reverence them', though in their application I have a tendency towards economy in their * The men who in succession shared my chambers in Harcourt Buildings in the Temple were W. M. Conway, afterwards Sir W. M. Conway, art critic and M.P., Robert J. Parker, afterwards Lord Parker of Waddington, and E. C. Perry, afterwards Sir E. Cooper Perry, Principal Officer of the University of London. t It was difficult to convince Galton that any higher mathematics were needful for statistical work than the percentile method of treating the normal curve and the linear regression graph. Perhaps the following sentences extracted from a letter to his sister Bessie (Mrs Wheler) concerning the education of her son Edward may be fitly quoted here. They are dated Feb. 6, 1866 and show the value Galton set on some mathematics : f "The value of a solid substratum of elementary mathematics is I can assure you of an importance almost equal to that of a new power in every profession in life. I see it at every step. Ingenious men without the thoroughness and precision, which mathematics alone are sure to give, sink below their natural level when competing in life with those that have it." Tests for the significance or non-significance of the differences between samples of populations, which essentially require higher mathematics, he had not been forced to consider in his pioneer work.
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