INQUIRIES INTO HUMAN

FACULTY AND ITS

DEVELOPMENT

FRANCIS GALTON

Originally published in 1883 by Macmillan.

Second Edition, 1907 by J. M. Dent & Co. (Everyman)

First electronic edition, 2001.

Based on the text in the Everyman Second Edition (with all cuts
from the first edition restored).

Edited by Gavan Tredoux

This edition forms part of the online Galton archives at http://galton.org/

This is
the second corrected proof, 2018.

Please report any errors to the editor.

… a straightforward step-by-step inquiry did not seem to be the
most suitable course. I thought it safer to proceed like the surveyor of a new
country, and endeavour to fix in the first instance as truly as I could the
position of several cardinal points.

— from
the Preface.

The steady and
pitiless march of the hidden weaknesses in our constitutions, through illness
to death, is painfully revealed by these histories of twins. We are too apt to
look upon illness and death as capricious events, and there are some who
ascribe them to the direct effect of supernatural interference, whereas the
fact of the maladies of two twins being continually alike shows that illness
and death are necessary incidents in a regular sequence of constitutional
changes beginning at birth, and upon which external circumstances have, on the
whole, very small effect.

from The History of Twins.

Electronic Contents

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. viii

LIST OF WORKS. ix

LIST OF MEMOIRS. ix

MEMOIRS IN EUGENICS. x

CONTENTS. vii

PLATES  xv

INTRODUCTION. 1

VARIETY OF HUMAN NATURE. 2

FEATURES. 3

COMPOSITE
PORTRAITURE. 6

DESCRIPTION OF THE
COMPOSITES. 8

BODILY QUALITIES. 13

ENERGY. 17

SENSITIVITY. 19

SEQUENCE OF TEST
WEIGHTS. 23

WHISTLES FOR
AUDIBILITY OF SHRILL NOTES. 26

ANTHROPOMETRIC
REGISTERS. 28

UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF
PECULIARITIES. 31

STATISTICAL METHODS. 33

CHARACTER. 39

CRIMINALS AND THE
INSANE. 42

GREGARIOUS AND SLAVISH
INSTINCTS. 47

INTELLECTUAL
DIFFERENCES. 57

MENTAL IMAGERY. 57

VIVIDNESS OF MENTAL
IMAGERY. 61

COLOUR
REPRESENTATION. 65

NUMBER-FORMS. 79

COLOUR ASSOCIATIONS. 105

VISIONARIES. 112

NURTURE AND NATURE. 128

ASSOCIATIONS. 131

PSYCHOMETRIC
EXPERIMENTS. 133

ANTECHAMBER OF
CONSCIOUSNESS. 146

EARLY SENTIMENTS. 149

HISTORY OF TWINS. 155

DOMESTICATION OF
ANIMALS.[1] 173

THE OBSERVED ORDER OF
EVENTS. 194

SELECTION AND RACE. 198

INFLUENCE OF MAN UPON
RACE. 200

POPULATION. 207

EARLY AND LATE
MARRIAGES. 208

MARKS FOR FAMILY
MERIT. 211

ENDOWMENTS. 214

CONCLUSION. 216

APPENDIX   221

A.—COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE. 221

I. COMPOSITE PORTRAITS, MADE BY
COMBINING THOSE OF MANY DIFFERENT PERSONS INTO A SINGLE RESULTANT FIGURE. 221

II. GENERIC IMAGES. 229

III. COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE. 233

B.—THE RELATIVE SUPPLIES FROM TOWN AND COUNTRY
FAMILIES TO THE POPULATION OF FUTURE GENERATIONS. 241

C.—AN APPARATUS FOR TESTING THE DELICACY WITH WHICH
WEIGHTS CAN BE DISCRIMINATED BY HANDLING THEM. 248

D.—WHISTLES FOR TESTING THE UPPER LIMITS OF AUDIBLE
SOUND IN DIFFERENT INDIVIDUALS. 252

E.—QUESTIONS ON VISUALISING AND OTHER ALLIED
FACULTIES. 255

INDEX   257

ADDENDA: RESTORED SECTIONS  263

ENTHUSIASM    263

POSSIBILITIES OF THEOCRATIC INTERVENTION   265

Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer   268

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

AFTER some years had passed subsequent to the publication of this book in 1883, its publishers, Messrs. Macmillan,
informed me that the demand for it just, but only just warranted a revised issue.
I shrank from the great trouble of bringing it up to date because it, or rather
many of my memoirs out of which it was built up, had become starting-points for
elaborate investigations both in England and in America, to which it would be
difficult and very laborious to do justice in a brief compass. So the question
of a Second Edition was then entirely dropped. Since that time the book has by
no means ceased to live, for it continues to be quoted from and sought for, but
is obtainable only with difficulty, and at much more than its original cost, at
sales of second-hand books. Moreover, it became the starting-point of that
recent movement in favour of National Eugenics (see note p. 24 in first
edition) which is recognised by the University of London, and has its home in
University College.

Having
received a proposal to republish the book in its present convenient and
inexpensive form, I gladly accepted it, having first sought and received an
obliging assurance from Messrs. Macmillan that they would waive all their
claims to the contrary in my favour.

The
following small changes are made in this edition. The illustrations are for the
most part reduced in size to suit the smaller form of the volume, the lettering
of the composites is rearranged, and the coloured illustration is reproduced as
closely as circumstances permit. Two chapters are omitted, on “Theocratic
Intervention” and on the “Objective Efficacy of Prayer.” The
earlier part of the latter was too much abbreviated from the original memoir in
the Fortnightly Review, 1872, and gives, as
I now perceive, a somewhat inexact impression of its object, which was to
investigate certain views then thought orthodox, but which are growing
obsolete. I could not reinsert these omissions

vii

viii                      Bibliography

now with
advantage, unless considerable additions were made to the references, thus
giving more appearance of personal controversy to the memoirs than is
desirable. After all, the omission of these two chapters, in which I find
nothing to recant, improves, as I am told, the general balance of the book.
FRANCIS GALTON.

LIST
OF WORKS.

The Telotype: a printing Electric Telegraph, 1850; The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, 1853, in
“Minerva Library of Famous Books,” 1889; “Notes on Modern
Geography” (Cambridge Essays, 1855, etc.); Arts of Campaigning: an Inaugural Lecture delivered at Aldershot,
1855; The Art of Travel, or Shifts and
Contrivances available in Wild Countries, 1855, 1856, 1860 (1859); fourth
edition, recast and enlarged, 1867, 1872; Vacation
Tourists and Notes on Travel, 1861, 1862, 1864; Meteorographica, or Methods of Mapping the Weather, 1863; Hereditary Genius: an Enquiry into its Laws
and Consequences, 1869; English Men
of Science: their Nature and Nurture, 1874: Address to the Anthropological Departments of the British Association
(Plymouth, 1877); “Generic Images: with Autotype Illustrations”
(from the Proceedings of the Royal
Institution), 1879; Inquiries into
Human Faculty and its Development, 1883; Record of Family Faculties, 1884; Natural Inheritance, 1889; Finger-Prints,
1892; Decipherment of Blurred
Finger-Prints (supplementary chapters to former work), 1893; Finger-Print Directories, 1895;
Introduction to Life of W. Cotton Oswell,
1900; Index to Achievements of Near
Kinsfolk of some of the Fellows of the Royal Society, 1904; Eugenics: its Definition, Scope, and Aims
(Sociological Society Papers, vols. I. and IL), 1905; “Noteworthy
Families” (Modern Science); And
many papers in the Proceedings of the Royal
Society, Journals of the Geographical Society and the Anthropological Institute, the Reports of the British Association, the Philosophical Magazine, and Nature.

Galton also edited Hints to
Travellers, 1878; Life-History Album (British Medical Association), 1884,
second edition, 1902; Biometrika (edited in consultation with F. G. and W. F.
R. Weldon), 1901, etc.; and under his direction was designed a Descriptive List
of Anthropometric Apparatus, etc., 1887.

LIST
OF MEMOIRS.

The
following Memoirs by the author have been freely made use of in the following
pages

1863: The First Steps towards the Domestication of Animals (Journal of Ethnological Society); 1871 :
Gregariousness in Cattle and in Men (Macmillan’s
Magazine); 1872: Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer (Fortnightly Review); 1873: Relative
Supplies from Town and Country Families to the Population of

List of Memoirs                        ix

Future Generations (Journal of
Statistical Society); Hereditary Improvement (Fraser’s Magazine); Africa for the Chinese (Times, June 5); 1875: Statistics by
Intercomparison (Philosophical Magazine);
Twins, as a Criterion of the Relative Power of Nature and Nurture (Fraser’s Magazine, and Journal of Anthropological Institute); 1876:
Whistles for Determining the Upper Limits of Audible Sound (S. Kensington Conferences, in connection with the Loan Exhibition
of Scientific Instruments, p. 61); 1877: Presidential Address to the
Anthropological Department of the British Association at Plymouth (Report of British Association); 1878:
Composite Portraits (Nature, May 23, and Journal of Anthropological Institute); 1879:
Psychometric Experiments (Nineteenth
Century, and Brain, part vi.);
Generic Images (Nineteenth Century;
Proceedings of Royal Institution, with plates); Geometric Mean in Vital and
Social Statistics (Proceedings of Royal
Society); 1880: Visualised Numerals (Nature,
Jan. 15 and March 25, and Journal of
Anthropological Institute); Mental Imagery (Fortnightly Review; Mind); 1881: Visions of Sane Persons (Fortnightly Review, and Proceedings of Royal Institution); Composite
Portraiture (Journal of Photographical
Society of Great Britain, June 24); 1882: Physiognomy of Phthisis (Guy’s Hospital Reports, vol.
xxv.); Photographic Chronicles from Childhood to Age (Fortnightly Review); The Anthropometric Laboratory (Fortnightly Review); 1883: Some Apparatus for Testing the Delicacy of the Muscular and
other Senses (Journal of Anthropological
Institute, 1883, etc.).

MEMOIRS
IN EUGENICS.

1901: Huxley Lecture, Anthropological Institute (Nature, Nov. 1901); Smithsonian Report for 1901 (Washington, p.
523); 1904: Eugenics, its Definition, Scope and Aims (Sociological Papers, vol.
I, Sociological Institute); 1905: Restrictions in Marriage, Studies in National
Eugenics, Eugenics as a Factor in Religion (Sociological Papers, vol. II);
1907: Herbert Spencer Lecture, University
of Oxford, on Probability
the Foundation of Eugenics.

The
following books by the author have been referred or alluded to in the following
pages

1853: Narrative of an Explorer in
Tropical South-Western Africa (Murray); 1854: Art of Travel (several subsequent
editions, the last in 1872, Murray);
1869: Hereditary Genius, its Laws and
Consequences (Macmillan); 1874: English
Men of Science, their Nature and their Nurture (Macmillan).

[left blank]

CONTENTS.

PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION VII

INTRODUCTION
1

Origin
and object of book.

VARIETY
OF HUMAN NATURE 2

Many
varieties may each be good of its kind; advantage of variety; some
peculiarities are, however, harmful.

FEATURES
3

Large
number of elements in the human expression; of touches in a portrait; difficulty
of measuring the separate features; or of selecting typical individuals; the
typical English face; its change at different historical periods colour of hair
of modern English; caricatures.

COMPOSITE
PORTRAITURE 6

(See
Appendix for three Memoirs
describing successive stages of the method).—Object and principle of the
process; description of the plate—composites of medals; of family
portraits; of the two sexes and of various ages; of Royal Engineers; the latter
gives a clue to one direction in which the English race might be improved; of
criminals; of the consumptive; ethnological application of the process.

BODILY
QUALITIES 13

Anthropometric
Committee; statistical anomalies in stature as dependent on age; town and rural
population; athletic feats now and formerly; increase of stature of middle
classes; large number of weakly persons; some appearances of weakness may be
fallacious; a barrel and a wheel; definition of word “eugenic.”

ENERGY
17

It
is the attribute of high races; useful stimuli to activity; fleas, etc.; the
preservation of the weakly as exercises for pity; that of foxes for sport.

SENSITIVITY
19

Sensation
and pain; range and grades of sensation; idiots; men and women; the blind;
reading by touch; sailors; paucity of words to express gradation.

xi

xii                          Contents

SEQUENCE
OF TEST WEIGHTS 23

(See
also Appendix, p.
248). —Geometric series of weights; method of using them; the same
principle is applicable to other senses; the tests only measure the state of
faculties at time of trial; cautions in constructing the test weights;
multiplicity of the usual perceptions.

WHISTLES
FOR AUDIBILITY OF SHRILL NOTES 26

(See also Appendix, p. 252).

Construction
of them; loss of power of hearing high notes as age advances; trials upon
animals; sensitivity of cats to high notes; of small dogs and ponies.

ANTHROPOMETRIC
REGISTERS 28

Want
of anthropometric laboratories; of family records; opportunities in schools;
Admiralty records of life of each seaman; family registers (see also 220);
autotypes; medical value of ancestral life-histories (see also 220); of their
importance to human eugenics.

UNCONSCIOUSNESS
OF PECULIARITIES 31

Colour
blindness usually unsuspected; unconsciousness of high intellectual gifts; of
peculiarities of mental imagery; heredity of colour blindness in Quakers; Young
and Dalton.

STATISTICAL
METHODS 33

Objects
of statistical science; constancy and continuity of statistical results; groups
and sub-groups; augival or ogival curves; wide application of the ogival;
method; example; first method of comparing two ogival groups; centesimal
grades; example; second method of comparing ogival groups; statistical records
easily made with a pricker.

CHARACTER
39

Caprice
and coyness of females; its cause; observations of character at schools;
varieties of likings and antipathies; horror of snakes is by no means
universal; the horror of blood among cattle is variable.

CRIMINALS
AND THE INSANE 42

Peculiarities
of criminal character; some of them are normal and not morbid; their
inheritance as in the Jukes family; epileptics and their nervous instability;
insanity; religious rapture; strange views of the insane on individuality; their
moody segregation; the religious discipline of celibacy, fasting and solitude
(see also 125); large field of study among the insane and idiotic.

Contents                           xiii

GREGARIOUS
AND SLAVISH INSTINCTS 47

Most
men shrink from responsibility; study of gregarious animals: especially of the
cattle of the Damaras; fore-oxen to waggon teams; conditions of safety of
herds; cow and young calf when approached by lions; the most effective size of
herd; corresponding production of leaders; similarly as regards barbarian
tribes and their leaders; power of tyranny vested in chiefs; political and
religious persecutions; hence human servility; but society may flourish without
servility; its corporate actions would then have statistical constancy; nations
who are guided by successive orators, etc., must be inconstant; the romantic
side of servility; free political life.

INTELLECTUAL
DIFFERENCES 57

Reference
to Hereditary Genius.

MENTAL
IMAGERY 57

Purport
of inquiry; circular of questions (see Appendix for this, p.
255); the first answers were from scientific men, and were negative; those from
persons in general society were quite the reverse; sources of my materials;
they are mutually corroborative; analysis of returns from 100 persons mostly of
some eminence; extracts from replies of those in whom the visualising faculty
is highest; those in whom it is mediocre; lowest; conformity between these and
other sets of haphazard returns; octile, median, etc., values; visualisation of
colour; some liability to exaggeration; blindfold chess-players; remarkable
instances of visualisation; the faculty is not necessarily connected with keen
sight or tendency to dream; comprehensive imagery; the faculty in different
sexes and ages; is strongly hereditary; seems notable among the French;
Bushmen; Eskimo; prehistoric men; admits of being educated; imagery usually
fails in flexibility; special and generic images (see also Appendix, p. 229); use of the faculty.

NUMBER-FORMS
79

General
account of the peculiarity; mutually corroborative statements; personal
evidence given at the Anthropological Institute; specimens of a few
descriptions and illustrative woodcuts; great variety in the Forms; their early
origin; directions in which they run; bold conceptions of children concerning
height and depth; historical dates, months, etc.; alphabet; derivation of the
Forms from the spoken names of numerals; fixity of the Form compared to that of
the handwriting; of animals working in constant patterns; of track of eye when
searching for lost objects; occasional origin from figures on clock; from

xiv                          Contents

various
other sources; the non-decimal nomenclature of numerals; perplexity caused by
it; Description of figures in Plate I, Plate
II, Plate III, Plate IV; Colours assigned to numerals (see 105); personal characters; sex; frequency
with which the various numerals are used in the Talmud.

COLOUR
ASSOCIATIONS 105

(Description of Plate IV
continued) Associations with numerals; with words and letters; illustrations by
Dr. J. Key; the scheme of one seer unintelligible to other seers; mental music,
etc.

VISIONARIES
112

Sane persons often see visions; the simpler kinds of
visions; unconsciousness of seers, at first, of their peculiarity; subsequent
dislike to speak about it; imagery connected with words; that of Mrs. Haweis;
automatic changes in dark field of eye; my own experiences; those of Rev. G.
Hen slow; visions frequently unlike vivid visualisations; phantasmagoria;
hallucinations; simile of a seal in a pond; dreams and partial sensitiveness of
brain; hallucinations and illusions, their causes; “faces in the
fire,” etc.; sub-conscious picture-drawing; visions based on patched
recollections; on blended recollections; hereditary seership; visions caused by
fasting, etc.; by spiritual discipline (see also 47); star of Napoleon
I; hallucinations of great men; seers commoner at some periods than at others;
reasons why.

NURTURE
AND NATURE 128

Their
effects are difficult to separate; the same character has many phases;
Renaissance; changes owing merely to love of change; feminine fashions;
periodical sequences of changed character in birds; the interaction of nurture
and nature.

ASSOCIATIONS
131

Derived
from experience; especially from childish recollections (see 141); abstract
ideas; cumulative ideas, like composite portraits (see also Appendix, “Generic Images,” p.
229); their resemblance even in details.

PSYCHOMETRIC
EXPERIMENTS 133

Difficulty
of watching the mind in operation; how it may be overcome; irksomeness of the
process; tentative experiments; method used subsequently; the number of
recurrent associations; memory; ages at which associations are

Contents                             xv

formed; similarity of the associations in persons of
the same country and class of society; different descriptions of associations,
classified; their relative frequency; abstract ideas are slowly formed;
multifariousness of sub-conscious operations.

ANTECHAMBER
OF CONSCIOUSNESS 146

Act
of thinking analysed; automatic mental work; fluency of words and of imagery;
processes of literary composition; fluency of spiritual ideas; visionary races
of men; morbid ideas of inspiration (see Enthusiasm,
148).

EARLY
SENTIMENTS 149

Accidents
of education, religion, country, etc.; deaf-mutes and religious ritual;
religion in its essentials; all religious teachers preach faith and instil
prejudices; origin of the faculty of conscience; evolution is always
behindhand; good men of various faiths; the fear of death; terror is easily
taught; gregarious animals (see
also 47); suspiciousness in the children of criminals; Dante and
contemporary artists on the terrors of hell; aversion is easily taught, Eastern
ideas of clean and unclean acts; the foregoing influences affect entire
classes.

HISTORY
OF TWINS 155

It
supplies means of comparing the effects of nurture and nature; physiological
signification of twinship; replies to a circular of inquiries; eighty cases of
close resemblance between twins; the points in which their resemblance was
closest; extracts from the replies; interchangeableness of likeness; cases of
similar forms of insanity in both twins; their tastes and dispositions; causes
of growing dissimilarity mainly referred to illness; partly to gradual
development of latent elements of dissimilarity; effect of childish illnesses
in permanently checking growth of head; parallel lives and deaths among twins;
necessitarianism; twenty cases of great dissimilarity; extracts from the
replies; evidence of slight exaggeration; education is almost powerless to
diminish natural difference of character; simile of sticks floating down a brook;
depth of impressions made in childhood; they are partly due to the ease with
which parents and children understand one another; cuckoos forget the teachings
of their foster-mothers.

DOMESTICATION
OF ANIMALS 173

Alternative
hypotheses of the prehistoric process of domestication; savages rear captive
animals; instances in North America; South America; North Africa; Equatorial
Africa; South Africa; Australia; New Guinea Group;

xvi                          Contents

Polynesia;
ancient Syria.
Sacred animals; menageries and shows in amphitheatres; instances in ancient Egypt; Assyria; Rome;
Mexico;
Peru;
Syria
and Greece.
Domestication is only possible when the species has certain natural faculties,
viz.—great hardiness; fondness for man; desire of comfort; usefulness to
man; fertility; being easy to tend. Habitual selection of the tamest to breed
from. Exceptions; summary.

THE
OBSERVED ORDER OF EVENTS 194

Steady
improvement in the birthright of successive generations; our Ignorance of the
origin and purport of all existence; of the outcome of life on this earth; of
the conditions of consciousness; slow progress of evolution and its system of
ruthless routine; man is the heir of long bygone ages; has great power in
expediting the course of evolution; he might render its progress slow and
painful; does not yet understand that it may be his part to do so.

SELECTION
AND RACE 198

Difference
between the best specimens of a poor race and the mediocre ones of a high race;
typical centres to which races tend to revert; delicacy of highly-bred animals;
their diminished fertility; the misery of rigorous selection; it is preferable
to replace poor races by better ones; strains of emigrant blood; of exiles.

INFLUENCE
OF MAN UPON RACE 200

Conquest,
migrations, etc; sentiment against extinguishing races; is partly unreasonable;
the so-called “aborigines”; on the variety and number of different
races inhabiting the same country; as in Spain; history of the Moors; Gypsies;
the races in Damara Land; their recent changes; races in Siberia; Africa;
America; West Indies; Australia and New Zealand; wide diffusion of Arabs and
Chinese; power of man to shape future humanity.

POPULATION
207

Over-population;
Malthus—the danger of applying his prudential check; his originality; his
phrase of misery check is in many cases too severe; decaying races and the
cause of decay.

EARLY
AND LATE MARRIAGES 208

Estimate
of their relative effects on a population in a few generations; example.

Contents                          xvii

MARKS
FOR FAMILY MERIT 211

On
the demand for definite proposals how to improve race; the demand is not quite
fair, and the reasons why; nevertheless attempt is made to suggest the outline
of one; on the signs of superior race; importance of giving weight to them when
making selections from candidates who are personally equal; on families that
have thriven; that are healthy and long-lived; present rarity of our knowledge
concerning family antecedents; Mr. F. M. Holland on the superior morality of
members of large families; Sir William Gull on their superior vigour; claim for
importance of further inquiries into the family antecedents of those who
succeed in after life; probable large effect of any system by which marks might
be conferred on the ground of family merit.

ENDOWMENTS
214

These
have frequently been made in order to furnish marriage portions; they, as well
as the adoption of gifted children of gifted families, may hereafter become
common; college statutes enjoining celibacy on Fellows; reverse effect to that
for which prizes at races were established; the recent reform of those statutes
and numerous marriages in consequence; the English race has yet to be explored
for its natural wealth; those who are naturally gifted would be disinclined to
squander their patrimony; social consideration; honest pride in goodness of
race.

CONCLUSION
216

Epitome
of data; the apparent place of man in nature; he should look upon himself as a
freeman; he should assist in furthering evolution; his present ability to do
so; the certainty that his ability of doing so will increase; importance of
life-histories; brief summary.

APPENDIX

A. COMPOSITE
PORTRAITURE 221

I.
Extract of Memoir read in 1878 before the Anthropological Institute; II.
Generic Images, extract from Lecture in 1879 to Royal Institution; III. Memoir
read in 1881 before the Photographic Society.

B. THE RELATIVE SUPPLIES FROM TOWN AND COUNTRY

FAMILIES TO THE POPULATION OF FUTURE

GENERATIONS 241

Memoir
read in 1873 before the Statistical Society.

xix[1]                        Contents

C. AN APPARATUS FOR TESTING THE DELICACY WITH

WHICH WEIGHTS CAN BE DISCRIMINATED BY

HANDLING THEM 248

Memoir
read in 1882 before the Anthropological Institute.

D. WHISTLES FOR TESTING THE UPPER LIMITS OF

AUDIBLE SOUND IN DIFFERENT
INDIVIDUALS 252

Read
in 1876 at the South Kensington Conferences in connection with the Loan
Exhibition of Scientific Instruments.

E. QUESTIONS ON
VISUALISING AND OTHER ALLIED

FACULTIES  255

Circulated
in 1880

PLATES

SPECIMENS
OF COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE  To
face page 8

EXAMPLES
OF NUMBER-FORMS 91

[EXAMPLES
OF NUMBER FORMS] 97

[EXAMPLES
OF NUMBER FORMS]  HEREDITARY 101

COLOUR
ASSOCIATIONS AND MENTAL IMAGERY
To face  page 106

[left blank]

INQUIRIES
INTO

HUMAN FACULTY

INTRODUCTION.

SINCE the publication of my work on Hereditary
Genius in 1869, I have written numerous memoirs, of which a list is given
in an earlier page, and which are scattered in various publications. They may
have appeared desultory when read in the order in which they appeared, but as
they had an underlying connection it seems worth while to bring their substance
together in logical sequence into a single volume. I have revised, condensed,
largely re-written, transposed old matter, and interpolated much that is new;
but traces of the fragmentary origin of the work still remain, and I do not
regret them. They serve to show that the book is intended to be suggestive, and
renounces all claim to be encyclopedic. I have indeed, with that object,
avoided going into details in not a few cases where I should otherwise have
written with fulness, especially in the Anthropometric part. My general object
has been to take note of the varied hereditary faculties of different men, and
of the great differences in different families and races, to learn how far
history may have shown the practicability of supplanting inefficient human
stock by better strains, and to consider whether it might not be our duty to do
so by such efforts as may be reasonable, thus exerting ourselves to further the
ends of evolution more rapidly and with less distress than if events were left
to their own course. The subject is, however, so entangled with collateral
considerations that a straightforward step-by-step inquiry did not seem to be
the most suitable course. I thought it safer to proceed like the surveyor of a
new country, and endeavour to fix in the first instance as truly as I could the
position of several cardinal points. The general outline of the results to
which I finally arrived became more coherent and clear as this process went on;
they are briefly summarised in the concluding chapter.

2            Inquiries
into Human Faculty

VARIETY OF HUMAN NATURE.

We must free our minds of a great deal of prejudice before we can rightly
judge of the direction in which different races need to be improved. We must be
on our guard against taking our own instincts of what is best and most seemly,
as a criterion for the rest of mankind. The instincts and faculties of
different men and races differ in a variety of ways almost as profoundly as
those of animals in different cages of the Zoological Gardens; and however
diverse and antagonistic they are, each may be good of its kind. It is
obviously so in brutes; the monkey may have a horror at the sight of a snake,
and a repugnance to its ways, but a snake is just as perfect an animal as a
monkey. The living world does not consist of a repetition of similar elements,
but of an endless variety of them, that have grown, body and soul, through
selective influences into close adaptation to their contemporaries, and to the
physical circumstances of the localities they inhabit. The moral and
intellectual wealth of a nation largely consists in the multifarious variety of
the gifts of the men who compose it, and it would be the very reverse of
improvement to make all its members assimilate to a common type. However, in
every race of domesticated animals, and especially in the rapidly-changing race
of man, there are elements, some ancestral and others the result of
degeneration, that are of little or no value, or are positively harmful. We
may, of course, be mistaken about some few of these, and shall find in our
fuller knowledge that they subserve the public good in some indirect manner;
but, notwithstanding this possibility, we are justified in roundly asserting
that the natural characteristics of every human race admit of large improvement
in many directions easy to specify.

I do not, however, offer a list of these, but shall confine myself to
directing attention to a very few hereditary characteristics of a marked kind, some
of which are most desirable and others greatly the reverse; I shall also
describe new methods of appraising and defining them. Later on in the book I
shall endeavour to define the place and duty of man in the furtherance of the
great scheme of evolution, and

Features                               3

I shall
show that he has already not only adapted circumstance to race, but also, in
some degree and often unconsciously race to circumstance; and that his unused
powers in the latter direction are more considerable than might have been
thought.

It is with the innate moral and intellectual faculties that the book is
chiefly concerned, but they are so closely bound up with the physical ones that
these must be considered as well. It is, moreover, convenient to take them the
first, so I will begin with the features.

FEATURES.

The differences in human features must be reckoned great, inasmuch as
they enable us to distinguish a single known face among those of thousands of
strangers, though they are mostly too minute for measurement. At the same time,
they are exceedingly numerous. The general expression of a face is the sum of a
multitude of small details, which are viewed in such rapid succession that we
seem to perceive them all at a single glance. If any one of them disagrees with
the recollected traits of a known face, the eye is quick at observing it, and
it dwells upon the difference. One small discordance overweighs a multitude of
similarities and suggests a general unlikeness; just as a single syllable in a
sentence pronounced with a foreign accent makes one cease to look upon the
speaker as a countryman. If the first rough sketch of a portrait be correct so
far as it goes, it may be pronounced an excellent likeness; but a rough sketch
does not go far; it contains but few traits for comparison with the original.
It is a suggestion, not a likeness; it must be coloured and shaded with many
touches before it can really resemble the face, and whilst this is being done
the maintenance of the likeness is imperilled at every step. I lately watched
an able artist painting a portrait, and endeavoured to estimate the number of
strokes with his brush, every one of which was thoughtfully and firmly given.
During fifteen sittings of three working hours each — that is to say,
during forty-five hours, or two thousand four hundred minutes — he worked
at the average rate of ten strokes of the

4            Inquiries
into Human Faculty

brush per
minute. There were, therefore, twenty-four thousand separate traits in the
completed portrait, and in his opinion some, I do not say equal, but comparably
large number of units of resemblance with the original.

The physiognomical difference between different men being so numerous and
small, it is impossible to measure and compare them each to each, and to
discover by ordinary statistical methods the true physiognomy of a race. The
usual way is to select individuals who are judged to be representatives of the
prevalent type, and to photograph them; but this method is not trustworthy,
because the judgment itself is fallacious. It is swayed by exceptional and
grotesque features more than by ordinary ones, and the portraits supposed to be
typical are likely to be caricatures. One fine Sunday afternoon I sat with a
friend by the walk in Kensington
Gardens that leads to the
bridge, and which on such occasions is thronged by promenaders. It was agreed
between us that whichever first caught sight of a typical John Bull should call
the attention of the other. We sat and watched keenly for many minutes, but
neither of us found occasion to utter a word.

The prevalent type of English face has greatly changed at different
periods, for after making large allowance for the fashion in portrait painting
of the day, there remains a great difference between the proportion in which
certain casts of features are to be met with at different dates. I have spent
some time in studying the photographs of the various portraits of English
worthies that have been exhibited at successive loan collections, or which are
now in the National Portrait Gallery, and have traced what appear to be
indisputable signs of one predominant type of face supplanting another. For
instance, the features of the men painted by and about the time of Holbein have
usually high cheekbones, long upper lips, thin eyebrows, and lank dark hair. It
would be impossible, I think, for the majority of modern Englishmen so to dress
themselves and clip and arrange their hair, as to look like the majority of
these portraits.

Englishmen are now a fair and reddish race, as may be seen from the Diagram,
taken from the Report of the Anthropometric Committee to the British
Association in 1880 and which gives the proportion in which the

Features                               5

various
colours of hair are found among our professional classes.

I take
the professional classes because they correspond with the class of English
worthies better than any of the others from which returns have been collected.
The Diagram, however, gives a fair representation of other classes of the
community. For instance, I have analysed the official records of the very
carefully-selected crews of H. M. S. Alert
and Discovery in the Arctic
Expedition of 1875-6, and find the proportion of various shades of hair to be
the same among them as is shown in the Diagram. Seven-tenths of the crews had
complexions described as light, fair, fresh, ruddy or freckled, and the same
proportion had blue or gray eyes. They would have contrasted strongly with
Cromwell’s regiment of Ironsides, who were recruited from the dark-haired
men of the fen districts, and who are said to have left the impression on
contemporary observers as being men of a peculiar breed. They would also
probably have contrasted with any body of thoroughgoing Puritan soldiers taken
at haphazard; for there is a prevalence of dark hair among men of atrabilious
and sour temperament.

If we may believe caricaturists, the fleshiness and obesity of many
English men and women in the earlier years of this century must have been
prodigious. It testifies to the grosser conditions of life in those days, and
makes it improbable that the types best adapted to prevail then would be the
best adapted to prevail now.

6            Inquiries
into Human Faculty

COMPOSITE
PORTRAITURE.

As a means of getting over the difficulty of procuring really
representative faces, I contrived the method of composite portraiture, which
has been explained of late on many occasions, and of which a full account will
be found in Appendix A. The principle on which the composites are made will
best be understood by a description of my earlier and now discarded method; it
was this—(1) I collected photographic portraits of different persons, all
of whom had been photographed in the same aspect (say full face), and under the
same conditions of light and shade (say with the light coming from the right
side). (2) I reduced their portraits photographically to the same size, being
guided as to scale by the distance between any two convenient points of
reference in the features; for example, by the vertical distance between two
parallel lines, one of which passed through the middle of the pupils of the
eyes and the other between the lips. (3) I superimposed the portraits like the
successive leaves of a book, so that the features of each portrait lay as
exactly as the case admitted, in front of those of the one behind it, eye in
front of eye and mouth in front of mouth. This I did by holding them
successively to the light and adjusting them, then by fastening each to the
preceding one with a strip of gummed paper along one of the edges. Thus I
obtained a book, each page of which contained a separate portrait, and all the
portraits lay exactly in front of one another. (4) fastened the book against
the wall in such a way that I could turn over the pages in succession, leaving
in turn each portrait flat and fully exposed. (5) I focused my camera on the
book, fixed it firmly, and put a sensitive plate inside it. (6) I began
photographing, taking one page after the other in succession without moving the
camera, but putting on the cap whilst I was turning over the pages, so that an
image of each of the portraits in succession was thrown on the same part of the
sensitised plate.

Only a fraction of the exposure required to make a good picture was
allowed to each portrait. Suppose that period was twenty seconds, and that
there were ten portraits, then

Composite Portraiture                    7

an exposure
of two seconds would be allowed for each portrait, making twenty seconds in
all. This is the principle of the process, the details of that which I now use
are different and complex. They are fully explained in the Appendix for the use
of those who may care to know about them.

The effect of composite portraiture is to bring into evidence all the
traits in which there is agreement, and to leave but a ghost of a trace of
individual peculiarities. There are so many traits in common in all faces that
the composite picture when made from many components is far from being a blur;
it has altogether the look of an ideal composition.

It may be worth mentioning that when. I take any small bundle of
portraits, selected at hazard, I have generally found it easy to sort them into
about five groups, four of which have enough resemblance among themselves to
make as many fairly clear composites, while the fifth consists of faces that
are too incongruous to be grouped in a single class. In dealing with portraits
of brothers and sisters, I can generally throw most of them into a single
group, with success.

In the small collection of composites given in the Plate facing p. 8, I
have purposely selected many of those that I have previously published, and
whose originals, on a larger scale, I have at various times exhibited, together
with  their components, in order to
put the genuineness of the results beyond doubt. Those who see them for, the
first time can hardly believe but that one dominant face has overpowered the
rest, and that they are composites only in name. When, however, the details are
examined, this objection disappears. It is true that with careless photography
one face may be allowed to dominate, but with the care that ought to be taken,
and with the precautions described in the Appendix, that does not occur. I have
often been amused when showing composites and their components to friends, to
hear a strong expression of opinion that the predominance of one face was
evident, and then on asking which face it was, to discover that they disagreed.
I have even known a composite in which one portrait seemed unduly to prevail,
to be remade without the component in

8            Inquiries
into Human Faculty

question,
and the result to be much the same as before, showing that the reason of the
resemblance was that the rejected portrait had a close approximation to the
ideal average picture of the rest.

These small composites give a better notion of the utmost capacity of the
process than the larger ones, from which they are reduced. In the latter, the
ghosts of individual peculiarities are more visible, and usually the equal
traces left by every member of a moderately-sized group can be made out by
careful inspection; but it is hardly possible to do this in the pictures in the
Plate, except in a good light and in a very few of the cases. On the other
hand, the larger pictures do not contain more detail of value than the smaller
ones.

DESCRIPTION
OF THE COMPOSITES.

The medallion of Alexander the Great was made by combining the images of
six different medals, with a view of obtaining the type of features that the
makers of those medals concurred in desiring to ascribe to him. The originals
were kindly selected for me by Mr. R. Stuart Poole from the collection in the British Museum. This composite was one of the
first I ever made, and is printed together with its six components in the
Journal of the Royal Institution in illustration of a lecture I gave there in
April 1879. It seems to me that it is possible on this principle to obtain a
truer likeness of a man than in an other way. Every artist makes mistakes; but
by combining the conscientious works of many artists, their separate mistakes
disappear, and what is common to all of their works remains. So as regards
different photographs of the same person, those accidental momentary
expressions are got rid of, which an ordinary photograph made by a brief
exposure cannot help recording. On the other hand, any happy sudden trait of
expression is lost. The composite gives the features in repose.

The next pair of composites (full face and profile) on the Plate has not
been published before. The interest of the pair lies chiefly in their having
been made from only two components, and they show how curiously even two

[left blank]

Description
of the Composites             9

faces that
have a moderate family likeness will blend into a single one. That neither of
these predominated in the present case will be learned from the following
letter by the father of the ladies, who is himself a photographer

“I am
exceedingly obliged for the very curious and interesting composite portraits of
my two children. Knowing the faces so well, it caused me quite a surprise when
I opened your letter. I put one of the full faces on the table for the mother to
pick up casually. She said, “When did you do this portrait of A? how like she is to B! Or is it B? I never thought they were so
like before.” It has puzzled several people to say whether the profile
was intended for A or B. Then I tried one of them on a friend who has not seen
the girls for years. He said, “Well, it is one of the family for certain,
but I don’t know which.”

I have made several other family portraits, which to my eye seem great
successes, but must candidly own that the persons whose portraits are blended
together seldom seem to care much for the result, except as a curiosity. We are
all inclined to assert our individuality, and to stand on our own basis, and to
object to being mixed up indiscriminately with others. The same feeling finds
expression when the resident in a suburban street insists on calling his house
a villa with some fantastic name, and refuses, so long as he can, to call it
simply Number so and so in the street.

The last picture in the upper row shows the easy way in which young and
old, male and female, combine to form an effective picture. The components
consist in this case of the father and mother, two sons, and two daughters. I
exhibited the original of this, together with the portraits from which it was
taken, at the Loan Photographic Exhibition at the Society of Arts in February
1882. I also sent copies of the original of this same composite to several amateur
photographers, with a circular letter asking them to get from me family groups for
the purpose of experiments, to see how far the process was suitable for family
portraiture.

The middle row of portraits illustrates health, disease, and criminality.
For health, I have combined the portraits of twelve officers of the Royal
Engineers with about an equal number of privates, which were taken for me by

10              Inquiries into Human Faculty

Lieutenant
Darwin, R.E. The individuals from whom this composite was made, which has not
come out as clearly as I should have liked, differed considerably in feature,
and they came from various parts of England. The points they had in
common were the bodily and mental qualifications required for admission into
their select corps, and their generally British descent. The result is a
composite having an expression of considerable vigour, resolution,
intelligence, and frankness. I have exhibited both this and others that were
made respectively from the officers, from the whole collection of
privates—thirty-six in number—and from that selected portion of
them that is utilised in the present instance.

This face and the qualities it connotes probably gives a clue to the
direction in which the stock of the English race might most easily be improved.
It is the essential notion of a race that there should be some ideal typical
form from which the individuals may deviate in all directions, but about which
they chiefly cluster, and towards which their descendants will continue to
cluster. The easiest direction in which a race can be improved is towards that
central type, because nothing new has to be sought out. It is only necessary to
encourage as far as practicable the breed of those who conform most nearly to
the central type, and to restrain as far as may be the breed of those who
deviate widely from it. Now there can hardly be a more appropriate method of
discovering the central physiognomical type of any race or group than that of
composite portraiture.

As a contrast to the composite of the Royal Engineers, I give those of
two of the coarse and low types of face found among the criminal classes. The
photographs from which they were made are taken from two large groups. One are
those of men undergoing severe sentences for murder and other crimes connected
with violence; the other of thieves. They were reprints from those taken by
order of the prison authorities for purposes of identification. I was allowed
to obtain copies for use in my inquiries by the kind permission of Sir Edmund
Du Cane, H.M. Director of Prisons. The originals of these and their components
have frequently been exhibited. It is unhappily a fact that fairly distinct
types of criminals breeding

Description
of the Composites           11

true to
their kind have become established, and are one of the saddest disfigurements
of modern civilisation. To this subject I shall recur.

I have made numerous composites of various groups of convicts, which are
interesting negatively rather than positively. They produce faces of a mean
description, with no villainy written on them. The individual faces are
villainous enough, but they are villainous in different ways, and when they are
combined, the individual peculiarities disappear, and the common humanity of a
low type is all that is left.

The remaining portraits are illustrations of the application of the
process to the study of the physiognomy of disease. They were published a year
ago with many others, together with several of the portraits from which they
were derived; in a joint memoir by Dr. Mahomed and myself, in vol. xxv. of the Guy’s Hospital Reports. The
originals and all the components have been exhibited on several occasions.

In the lower division of the Plate will be found three composites, each
made from a large number of faces, unselected, except on the ground of the
disease under which they were suffering. When only few portraits are used,
there must be some moderate resemblance between them, or the result would be
blurred; but here, dealing with as many as 56, 100, and. 50 cases respectively,
the combination of any medley group results in an ideal expression.

It will be observed that the composite of 56 female faces is made by the
blending of two other composites, both of which are given. The history was
this—I took the 56 portraits and sorted them into two groups; in the
first of these were 20 portraits that showed a tendency to thin features, in
the other group there were 36 that showed a tendency to thickened features. I
made composites of each of them as shown in the Plate. Now it will be remarked
that, notwithstanding the attempt to make two contrasted groups, the number of
mediocre cases was so great that the composites of the two groups are much
alike. If I had divided the 56 into two haphazard groups, the results would
have been closely alike, as I know from abundant experience of the kind. The
co-composite of the

12              Inquiries into Human Faculty

two will be
observed to have an intermediate expression. The test and measure of
statistical truth lies in the degree of accordance between results obtained
from different batches of instances of the same generic class. It will be
gathered from these instances that composite portraiture may attain statistical
constancy, within limits not easily distinguished by the eye, after some 30
haphazard portraits of the same class have been combined. This at least has
been my experience thus far.

The two faces illustrative of the same type of tubercular disease are
very striking; the uppermost is photographically interesting as a case of
predominance of one peculiarity, happily of no harm to the effect of the ideal
wan face. It is that one of the patients had a sharply-checked black and white
scarf, whose pattern has asserted itself unduly in the composite. In such cases
I ought to throw the too clearly defined picture a little out of focus. The way
in which the varying brightness of different pictures is reduced to a uniform
standard of illumination is described in the Appendix.

It must be clearly understood that these portraits do not profess to give
the whole story of the physiognomy of phthisis. I have not room to give illustrations
of other types—namely, that with coarse and blunted features, or the
strumous one, nor any of the intermediates. These have been discussed chiefly
by Dr. Mahomed in the memoir alluded to above.

In the large experience I have had of sorting photographs, literally by
the thousand, while making experiments with composites, I have been struck by
certain general impressions. The consumptive patients consisted of many hundred
cases, including a considerable proportion of very ignoble specimens of humanity.
Some were scrofulous and misshapen, or suffered from various loathsome forms of
inherited disease; most were ill nourished. Nevertheless, in studying their
portraits the pathetic interest prevailed, and I returned day after day to my
tedious work of classification, with a liking for my materials. It was quite
otherwise with the criminals. I did not adequately appreciate the degradation
of their expressions for some time; at last the sense of it took firm hold of
me, and I cannot now handle the

Bodily Qualities                       13

portraits
without overcoming by an effort the aversion they suggest.

I am sure that the method of composite portraiture opens a fertile field
of research to ethnologists, but I find it very difficult to do much
single-handed, on account of the difficulty of obtaining the necessary
materials. As a rule, the individuals must be specially photographed. The
portraits made by artists are taken in every conceivable aspect and variety of
light and shade, but for the purpose in question the aspect and the shade must
be the same throughout. Group portraits would do to work from, were it not for
the strong out-of-door light under which they are necessarily taken, which
gives an unwonted effect to the expression of the faces. Their scale also is
too small to give a sufficiently clear picture when enlarged. I may say that
the scale of the portraits need not be uniform, as my apparatus enlarges or
reduces as required, at the same time that it superposes the images; but the
portraits of the heads should never be less than twice the size of that of the
Queen on a halfpenny piece.

I heartily wish that amateur photographers would seriously take up the
subject of composite portraiture as applied to different sub-types of the
varying races of men. I have already given more time to perfecting the process
and experimenting with it than I can well spare.

BODILY
QUALITIES.

The differences in the bodily qualities that are the usual subjects of
anthropometry are easily dealt with, and are becoming widely registered in many
countries. We are unfortunately destitute of trustworthy measurements of
Englishmen of past generations to enable us to compare class with class, and to
learn how far the several sections of the English nation may be improving or
deteriorating. We shall, however, hand useful information concerning our own
times to our successors, thanks principally to the exertions of an
Anthropometric Committee established five years ago by the British Association,
who have collected

14              Inquiries into Human Faculty

and partly
classified and published a large amount of facts, besides having induced
several institutions, such as Marlborough
College, to undertake a
regular system of anthropometric record. I am not, however, concerned here with
the labours of this committee, nor with the separate valuable publications of
some of its members, otherwise than in one small particular which appears to
show that the English population as a whole, or perhaps I should say the urban
portion of it, is in some sense deteriorating. It is that the average stature
of the older persons measured by or for the committee has not been found to
decrease steadily with their age, but sometimes the reverse.[1] This contradicts observations made on
the heights of the same men at different periods, whose stature after middle
age is invariably reduced by the shrinking of the cartilages. The explanation
offered was that the statistical increase of stature with age should be
ascribed to the survival of the more stalwart. On reconsideration, I am
inclined to doubt the adequacy of the explanation, and partly to account for
the fact by a steady, slight deterioration of stature in successive years; in
the urban population owing to the conditions of their lives, and in the rural
population owing to the continual draining away of the more stalwart of them to
the towns.

It cannot be doubted that town life is harmful to the town population. I
have myself investigated its effect on fertility (see Appendix B), and found
that taking on the one hand a number of rural parishes, and on the other hand
the inhabitants of a medium town, the former reared nearly twice as many adult
grandchildren as the latter. The vital functions are so closely related that an
inferiority in the production of healthy children very probably implies a loss
of vigour generally, one sign of which is a diminution of stature.

Though the bulk of the population may deteriorate, there are many signs
that the better housed and fed portion of it improves. In the earlier years of
this century the so-called manly sports of boxing and other feats of strength
ranked high among the national amusements. A man who was

[1] Trans. Brit. Assoc., 1881, Table V., p.
242; and remarks by Mr. Roberts, p. 235.

Bodily
Qualities                       15

successful
in these became the hero of a large and demonstrative circle of admirers, and
it is to be presumed that the best boxer, the best pedestrian, and so forth,
was the best adapted to succeed, through his natural physical gifts. If he was
not the most gifted man in those respects in the whole kingdom, he was
certainly one of the most gifted of them. It therefore does no injustice to the
men of that generation to compare the feats of their foremost athletes with
those of ours who occupy themselves in the same way. The comparison would probably
err in their favour, because the interest in the particular feats in which our
grandfathers and great-grandfathers delighted are not those that chiefly
interest the present generation, and notwithstanding our increased population,
there are fewer men now who attempt them. In the beginning of this century
there were many famous walking matches, and incomparably the best walker was
Captain Barclay of Ury. His paramount feat, which was once very familiar to the
elderly men of the present time, was that of walking a thousand miles in a
thousand hours, but of late years that feat has been frequently equalled and
overpassed. I am willing to allow much influence to the modem conditions of
walking under shelter and subject to improved methods of training (Captain
Barclay himself originated the first method, which has been greatly improved
since his time); still the fact remains that in executing this particular feat,
the athletes of the present day are more successful than those who lived some
eighty years ago.

I may be permitted to give an example bearing on the increased stature of
the better housed and fed portion of the nation, in a recollection of my own as
to the difference in height between myself and my fellow-collegians at Trinity
College, Cambridge, in 1840-4. My height is 5 feet 9¾ inches, and I
recollect perfectly that among the crowd of undergraduates I stood somewhat
taller than the majority. I generally looked a little downward when I met their
eyes. In later years, whenever I have visited Cambridge, I have lingered in the ante-chapel
and repeated the comparison, and now I find myself decidedly shorter than the
average of the students. I have precisely the same kind of recollection and the
same present experience of the height of crowds of well-dressed persons. I used
always to get a fair view of

16          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

what was
going on over or between their heads; I rarely can do so now.

The athletic achievements at school and college are much superior to what
they used to be. Part is no doubt due to more skilful methods of execution, but
not all. I cannot doubt that the more wholesome and abundant food, the
moderation in drink, the better cooking, the warmer wearing apparel, the airier
sleeping rooms, the greater cleanliness, the more complete change in holidays,
and the healthier lives led by the women in their girlhood, who become mothers
afterwards, have a great influence for good on the favoured portion of our
race.

The proportion of weakly and misshapen individuals is not to be estimated
by those whom we meet in the streets; the worst cases are out of sight. We
should parade before our mind’s eye the inmates of the lunatic, idiot,
and pauper asylums, the prisoners, the patients in hospitals, the sufferers at
home, the crippled, and the congenitally blind, and that large class of more or
less wealthy persons who flee to the sunnier coasts of England, or
expatriate themselves for the chance of life. There can hardly be a sadder
sight than the crowd of delicate English men and women with narrow chests and
weak chins, scrofulous, and otherwise gravely affected, who are to he found in
some of these places. Even this does not tell the whole of the story; if there
were a conscription in England, we should find, as in other countries, that a
large fraction of the men who earn their living by sedentary occupations are
unfit for military service. Our human civilised stock is far more weakly
through congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals,
whether wild or domestic.

It is, however, by no means the most shapely or the biggest personages
who endure hardship the best. Some very shabby-looking men have extraordinary
stamina. Sickly-looking and puny residents in towns may have a more suitable
constitution for the special conditions of their lives, and may in some sense
be better knit and do more work and live longer than much haler men imported to
the same locality from elsewhere. A wheel and a barrel seem to have the
flimsiest possible constitutions;, they

Energy                              17

consist of
numerous separate pieces all oddly shaped, which, when lying in a heap, look
hopelessly unfitted for union; but put them properly together, compress them
with a tire in the one case and with hoops in the other, and a remarkably
enduring organisation will result. A wheel with a ton weight on the top of it
in the waggons of South Africa will jolt for thousands of miles over stony,
roadless country without suffering harm; a keg of water may be strapped on the
back of a pack-ox or a mule, and be kicked off and trampled on, and be
otherwise misused for years, without giving way.

I do not propose to enter further into the anthropometric differences of
race, for the subject is a very large one, and this book does not profess to go
into detail. Its intention is to touch on various topics more or less connected
with that of the cultivation of race, or, as we might call it, with
“eugenic "[1] questions, and to
present the results of several of my own separate investigations.

ENERGY.

Energy is the capacity for labour. It is consistent with all the robust
virtues, and makes a large practice of them possible. It is the measure of
fulness of life; the more energy the more abundance of it; no energy at all is
death; idiots are feeble and listless. In the inquiries I made on the
antecedents of men of science no points came out more strongly than that the
leaders of scientific thought were generally gifted with remarkable energy, and
that they had

[1] That
is, with questions bearing on what is termed in Greek, eugenes namely, good in stock, hereditarily endowed with noble
qualities. This, and the allied words, eugeneia,
etc., are equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a
brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means
confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of
man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to
give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of
prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had.
The word eugenics would sufficiently
express the idea; it is at least a neater word and a more generalised one than viriculture which I once ventured to
use.

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

Sensitivity                           19

solely for
sport and its attendant advantages. There is little fear that misery will ever
cease from the land, or that the compassionate will fail to find objects for
their compassion; but at present the supply vastly exceeds the demand: the land
is overstocked and overburdened with the listless and the incapable.

In any scheme of eugenics, energy is the most important quality to
favour; it is, as we have seen, the basis of living action, and it is eminently
transmissible by descent.

SENSITIVITY.

The only information that reaches us concerning outward events appears to
pass through the avenue of our senses; and the more perceptive the senses are
of difference, the larger is the field upon which our judgment and intelligence
can act. Sensation mounts through a series of grades of “just perceptible
differences.” It starts from the zero of consciousness, and it becomes
more intense as the stimulus increases (though at a slower rate) up to the
point when the stimulus is so strong as to begin to damage the nerve apparatus.
It then yields place to pain, which is another form of sensation, and which
continues until the nerve apparatus is destroyed. Two persons may be equally
able just to hear the same faint sound, and they may equally begin to be pained
by the same loud sound, and yet they may differ as to the number of
intermediate grades of sensation. The grades will be less numerous as the
organisation is of a lower order, and the keenest sensation possible to it will
in consequence be less intense. An artist who incapable of discriminating more
differences of tint than another man is not necessarily more capable of seeing
clearly in twilight, or more or less intolerant of sunshine. A musician is not
necessarily able to hear very faint sounds, nor to be more startled by loud
sounds than others are. A mechanic who works hard with heavy tools and has
rough and grimy thumbs, insensible to very slight pressures, may yet have a
singularly discriminating power of touch in respect to the pressures that he
can feel.

The discriminative faculty of idiots is curiously low;

20              Inquiries into Human Faculty

they hardly
distinguish between heat and cold, and their sense of pain is so obtuse that
some of the more idiotic seem hardly to know what it is. In their dull lives,
such pain as can be excited in them may literally be accepted with a welcome
surprise. During a visit to Earlswood Asylum I saw two boys whose toe-nails had
grown into the flesh and had been excised by the surgeon. This is a horrible
torture to ordinary persons, but the idiot lads were said to have shown no
distress during the operation; it was not necessary to hold them, and they
looked rather interested at what was being done.[1]
I also saw a boy with the scar of a
severe wound on his wrist; the story being that he had first burned himself
slightly by accident, and, liking the keenness of the new sensation, he took
the next opportunity of repeating the experience, but, idiot-like, he overdid
it.

The trials I have as yet made on the sensitivity of different persons confirms
the reasonable expectation that it would on the whole be highest among the
intellectually ablest. At first, owing to my confusing the quality of which I
am speaking with that of nervous irritability, I fancied that women of delicate
nerves who are distressed by noise, sunshine, etc., would have acute powers of
discrimination. But this I found not to be the case. In morbidly sensitive
persons both pain and sensation are induced by lower stimuli than in the
healthy, but the number of just perceptible grades of sensation between them is
not necessarily different.

I found as a rule that men have more delicate powers of discrimination
than women, and the business experience of life seems to confirm this view. The
tuners of pianofortes are men, and so I understand are the tasters of tea and
wine, the sorters of wool, and the like. These latter occupations are well
salaried, because it is of the first moment to the merchant that he should be
rightly advised on the real value of what he is about to purchase or to sell.
If the sensitivity of women were superior to that of men, the self-interest of
merchants would lead to their being

[1] See
“Remarks on Idiocy,” by E. Graham, M.D., Medical Journal, January
16, 1875.

Sensitivity                           21

always
employed; but as the reverse is the case, the opposite supposition is likely to
be the true one.

Ladies rarely distinguish the merits of wine at the dinner-table, and
though custom allows them to preside at the breakfast-table, men think them on
the whole to be far from successful makers of tea and coffee.

Blind persons are reputed to have acquired in compensation for the loss
of their eyesight an increased acuteness in their other senses; I was therefore
curious to make some trials with my test apparatus, which I will describe in
the next chapter. I was permitted to do so on a number of boys at a large
educational blind asylum, but found that, although they were anxious to do
their best, their performances were by no means superior to those of other
boys. It so happened that the blind lads who showed the most delicacy of touch
and won the little prizes I offered to excite emulation, barely reached the
mediocrity of the various sighted lads of the same age whom I had previously
tested. I have made not a few observations and inquiries, and find that the
guidance of the blind depends mainly on the multitude of collateral indications
to which they give much heed, and not in their superior sensitivity to any one
of them. Those who see do not care for so many of these collateral indications,
and habitually overlook and neglect several of them. I am convinced also that
not a little of the popular belief concerning the sensitivity of the blind is
due to exaggerated claims on their part that have not been verified. Two
instances of this have fallen within my own experience, in both of which the
blind persons claimed to have the power of judging by the echo of their voice
and by certain other feelings, the one when they were approaching objects, even
though the object was so small as a handrail, and the other to tell how far the
door of the room in which he was standing was open. I used all the persuasion I
could to induce each of these persons to allow me to put their assertions to
the test; but it was of no use. The one made excuses, the other positively
refused. They had probably the same tendency that others would have who
happened to be defective in any faculty that their comrades possessed, to fight
bravely against their disadvantage, and

22              Inquiries into Human Faculty

at the same
time to be betrayed into some overvaunting of their capacities in other
directions. They would be a little conscious of this, and would therefore
shrink from being tested.

The power of reading by touch is not so very wonderful. A former Lord
Chancellor of England, the late Lord Hatherley, when he was advanced in years,
lost his eyesight for some time owing to a cataract, which was not ripe to be
operated on. He assured me that he had then learned and practised reading by
touch very rapidly. This fact may perhaps also serve as additional evidence of
the sensitivity of able men.

Notwithstanding many traveller’s tales, I have thus far been
unsuccessful in obtaining satisfactory evidence of any general large
superiority of the senses of savages over those of civilised men. My own
experience, so far as it goes, of Hottentots, Damaras, and some other wild
races, went to show that their sense discrimination was not superior to those
of white men, even as regards keenness of eyesight. An offhand observer is apt
to err by assigning to a single cause what is partly due to others as well.
Thus, as regards eye sight, a savage who is accustomed to watch oxen grazing at
a distance becomes so familiar with their appearance and habits that he can
identify particular animals and draw conclusions as to what they are doing with
an accuracy that may seem to strangers to be wholly dependent on exceptional
acuteness of vision. A sailor has the reputation of keen sight because he sees
a distant coast when a lands-man cannot make it out; the fact being that the
landsman usually expects a different appearance to what he has really to look
for, such as a very minute and sharp outline instead of a large, faint blur. In
a short time a landsman becomes quite as quick as a sailor, and in some test
experiments[1] he was found on the average to be distinctly the
superior. It is not surprising that this should be so, as sailors in vessels of
moderate size have hardly ever the practice of focussing their eyes sharply
upon objects farther off than the length of the vessel or the top of the mast,
say at a distance of fifty paces. The horizon itself as seen from the deck, and

[1] Gould’s Military and Anthropological Statistics,
p. 530. New York,
1869.

Sequence
of Test Weights               23

under the
most favourable circumstances, is barely four miles off, and there is no
sharpness of outline in the intervening waves. Besides this, the life of a
sailor is very unhealthy, as shown by his growing old prematurely, and his eyes
must be much tried by foul weather and salt spray.

We inherit our language from barbarous ancestors, and it shows traces of
its origin in the imperfect ways by which grades of difference admit of being
expressed. Suppose a pedestrian is asked whether the knapsack on his back feels
heavy. He cannot find a reply in two words that cover more varieties than (1)
very heavy, (2) rather heavy, (3) moderate, (4) rather light, (5) very light. I
once took considerable pains in the attempt to draw up verbal scales of more
than five orders of magnitude, using those expressions only that every
cultivated person would understand in the same sense; but I did not succeed. A
series that satisfied one person was not interpreted in the same sense by
another.

The general intention of this chapter has been to show that a delicate
power of sense discrimination is an attribute of a high race, and that it has
not the drawback of being necessarily associated with nervous irritability.

SEQUENCE
OF TEST WEIGHTS.

I will now describe an apparatus I have constructed to test the delicacy
with which weights may be discriminated by handling them. I do so because the
principle on which it is based may be adopted in apparatus for testing other
senses, and its description and the conditions of its use will illustrate the
desiderata and difficulties of all such investigations.

A series of test weights is a simple enough idea —the difficulty
lies in determining the particular sequence of weights that should be employed.
Mine form a geometric series, for the reason that when stimuli of all kinds
increase by geometric grades the sensations they give rise to will increase by
arithmetic grades, so long as the stimulus is neither so weak as to be barely
felt, nor so strong as to excite

24              Inquiries into Human Faculty

fatigue. My
apparatus, which is explained more fully in the Appendix, consists of a number
of common gun cartridge cases filled with alternate layers of shot, wool, and
wadding, and then closed in the usual way. They are all identical in
appearance, and may be said to differ only in their specific gravities. They
are marked in numerical sequence with the register numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc., but
their weights are proportioned to the numbers of which 1, 2, 3, etc., are the
logarithms, and consequently run in a geometric series. Hence the numbers of
the weights form a scale of equal degrees of sensitivity. If a person can just
distinguish between the weights numbered 1 and 3, he can also just distinguish
between 2 and 4, 3 and 5, and any other pair of weights of which the register
number of the one exceeds that of the other by 2. Again, his coarseness of
discrimination is exactly double of that of another person who can just
distinguish pairs of weights differing only by 1, such as 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 3
and 4, and so on. The testing is performed by handing pairs of weights to the
operatee until his power of discrimination is approximately made out, and then
to proceed more carefully. It is best now, for reasons stated in the Appendix,
to hand to the operatee sequences of three weights at a time, after shuffling
them. These he has to arrange in their proper order, with his eyes shut, and by
the sense of their weight alone. The operator finally records the scale
interval that the operatee can just appreciate, as being the true measure of the
coarseness (or the inverse measure of the delicacy) of the sensitivity of the
operatee.

It is somewhat tedious to test many persons in succession, but any one
can test his own powers at odd and end times with ease and nicety, if he
happens to have ready access to suitable apparatus.

The use of tests, which, objectively speaking, run in a geometric series,
and subjectively in an arithmetic one, may be applied to touch, by the use of
wire-work of various degrees of fineness; to taste, by stock bottles of solutions
of salt, etc., of various strengths; to smell, by bottles of attar of rose,
etc., in various degrees of dilution.

The tests show the sensitivity at the time they are made, and give an
approximate measure of the discrimination with

Sequence
of Test Weights               25

which the
operatee habitually employs his senses. It does not measure his capacity for
discrimination, because the discriminative faculty admits of much education and
the test results always show increased delicacy after a little practice. However,
the requirements of everyday life educate all our faculties in some degree, and
I have not found the performances with test weights to improve much after a
little familiarity with their use. The weights have, as it were, to be played
with at first, then they must be tried carefully on three or four separate
occasions.

I did not at first find it at all an easy matter to make test weights so
alike as to differ in no other appreciable respect than in their specific
gravity, and if they differ and become known apart, the knowledge so acquired
will vitiate future judgments in various indirect ways. Similarity in outward
shape and touch was ensured by the use of mechanically-made cartridge cases;
dissimilarity through any external stain was rendered of no hindrance to the
experiment by making the operatee handle them in a bag or with his eyes shut.
Two bodies may, however, be alike in weight and outward appearance and yet
behave differently when otherwise mechanically tested, and, consequently, when
they are handled. For example, take two eggs, one raw and the other hard
boiled, and spin them on the table; press the finger for a moment upon either
of them whilst it is still spinning: if it be the hard-boiled egg it will stop
as dead as a stone: if it be the raw egg, after a little apparent hesitation,
it will begin again to rotate. The motion of its shell had alone been stopped;
the internal part was still rotating and this compelled the shell to follow it.
Owing to this cause, when we handle the two eggs, the one feels quick and the
other does not. Similarly with the cartridges, when one is rather more loosely
packed than the others the difference is perceived on handling them. Or it may
have one end heavier than the other, or else its weight may not be equally
distributed round its axis, causing it to rest on the table with the same part
always lowermost; differences due to these causes are also easily perceived
when handling the cartridges. Again, one of two similar cartridges may balance
perfectly in all directions, but the weight of one

26              Inquiries into Human Faculty

of them may
be disposed too much towards the ends, as in a dumb-bell, or gathered too much
towards the centre. The period of oscillation will differ widely in the two
cases, as may be shown by suspending the cartridges by strings round their
middle so that they shall hang horizontally, and then by a slight tap making
them spin to and fro round the string as an axis.

The touch is very keen in distinguishing all these peculiarities. I have
mentioned them, and might have added more, to show that experiments on
sensitivity have to be made in the midst of pitfalls warily to be avoided. Our
apparently simplest perceptions are very complex. We hardly ever act on the
information given by only one element of one sense, and our sensitivity in any
desired direction cannot be rightly determined except by carefully-devised
apparatus judiciously used.

WHISTLES
FOR AUDIBILITY OF SHRILL NOTES.

I contrived a small whistle for conveniently ascertaining the upper limits
of audible sound in different persons, which Dr. Wollaston had shown to vary
considerably. He used small pipes, and found much difficulty in making them. I
made a very small whistle from a brass tube whose internal diameter was less
than one-tenth of an inch in diameter. A plug was fitted into the lower end of
the tube, which could be pulled out or pushed in as much as desired, thereby
causing the length of the bore of the whistle to be varied at will. When the
bore is long the note is low; when short, it is high. The plug was graduated,
so that the precise note produced by the whistle could be determined by reading
off the graduations and referring to a table. (See Appendix.)

On testing different persons, I found there was a remarkable falling off
in the power of hearing high notes as age advanced. The persons themselves were
quite unconscious of their deficiency so long as their sense of hearing low
notes remained unimpaired. It is an only too amusing experiment to test a party
of persons of various ages, including some rather elderly and self-satisfied
personages. They are indignant at being thought deficient in the power of
hearing, yet

Whistles
for Audibility of Shrill Notes     27

the
experiment quickly shows that they are absolutely deaf to shrill notes which
the younger persons hear acutely, and they commonly betray much dislike to the
discovery. Every one has his limit, and the limit at which sounds become too
shrill to be audible to any particular person can be rapidly determined by this
little instrument. Lord Rayleigh and others have found that sensitive flames
are powerfully affected by the vibrations of whistles that are too rapid to be
audible to ordinary ears.

I have tried experiments with all kinds of animals on their powers of
hearing shrill notes. I have gone through the whole of the Zoological Gardens,
using an apparatus arranged for the purpose. It consists of one of my little
whistles at the end of a walking-stick—that is, in reality, a long tube;
it has a bit of India-rubber pipe under the handle, a sudden squeeze upon which
forces a little air into the whistle and causes it to sound. I hold it as near
as is safe to the ears of the animals, and when they are quite accustomed to
its presence and heedless of it, I make it sound; then if they prick their ears
it shows that they hear the whistle; if they do not, it is probably inaudible
to them. Still, it is very possible that in some cases they hear but do not
heed the sound. Of all creatures, I have found none superior to cats in the power
of hearing shrill sounds; it is perfectly remarkable what a faculty they have
in this way. Cats, of course, have to deal in the dark with mice, and to find
them out by their squealing. Many people cannot hear the shrill squeal of a
mouse. Some time ago, singing mice were exhibited in London, and of the people who went to hear
them, some could hear nothing, whilst others could hear a little, and others
again could hear much. Cats are differentiated by natural selection until they
have a power of hearing all the high notes made by mice and other little
creatures that they have to catch. A cat that is at a very considerable
distance, can be made to turn its ear round by sounding a note that is too
shrill to be audible by almost any human ear. Small dogs also hear very shrill
notes, but large ones do not. I have walked through the streets of a town with
an instrument like that which I used in the Zoological Gardens, and made nearly
all the little dogs turn round, but not the large ones. At Berne,
where there appear to be more large dogs

28              Inquiries into Human Faculty

lying idly
about the streets than in any other town in Europe, I have tried the whistle
for hours together, on a great many large dogs, but could not find one that
heard it. Ponies are sometimes able to hear very high notes. I once frightened
a pony with one of these whistles in the middle of a large field. My attempts
on insect hearing have been failures.

ANTHROPOMETRIC
REGISTERS.

When shall we have anthropometric laboratories, where a man may, when he
pleases, get himself and his children weighed, measured, and rightly
photographed, and have their bodily faculties tested by the best methods known
to modern science? The records of growth of numerous persons from childhood to
age are required before it can be possible to rightly appraise the effect of
external conditions upon development, and records of this kind are at present
non-existent. The various measurements should be accompanied by photographic
studies of the features in full face and in profile, and on the same scale, for
convenience of comparison.

We are all lazy in recording facts bearing on ourselves, but parents are
glad enough to do so in respect to their children, and they would probably be
inclined to avail themselves of a laboratory where all that is required could
be done easily and at small cost. These domestic records would hereafter become
of considerable biographical interest. Every one of us in his mature age would
be glad of a series of pictures of himself from childhood onwards, accompanied
by physical records, and arranged consecutively with notes of current events by
their sides. Much more would he be glad of similar collections referring to his
father, mother, grandparents, and other near relatives. It would be peculiarly
grateful to the young to possess likenesses of their parents and those whom
they look upon as heroes, taken when they were of the same age as themselves.
Boys are too apt to think of their parents as having always been elderly men,
because they have insufficient data to construct imaginary pictures of them as
they were in their youth.

The cost of taking photographs in batches is so small, and

Anthropometric
Registers               29

the time
occupied is so brief, when the necessary preparations have been made and the sitters
are ready at hand, that a practice of methodically photographing schoolboys and
members of other large institutions might easily be established. I, for one,
should dearly prize the opportunity of visiting the places where I have been
educated, and of turning over pages showing myself and my companions as we were
in those days. But no such records exist; the institutions last and flourish,
the individuals who pass through them are dispersed and leave few or no
memorials behind. It seems a cruel waste of opportunity not to make and keep
these brief personal records in a methodical manner. The fading of ordinary
photographic prints is no real objection to keeping a register, because they
can now be reproduced at small charge in permanent printers ink, by the
autotype and other processes.

I have seen with admiration, and have had an opportunity of availing
myself of, the newly-established library of well-ordered folios at the
Admiralty, each containing a thousand pages, and each page containing a brief
summary of references to the life of a particular seaman. There are already 80,000
pages, and owing to the excellent organisation of the office it is a matter of
perfect ease to follow out any one of these references, and to learn every
detail of the service of any seaman. A brief register of measurements and
events in the histories of a large number of persons, previous to their
entering any institution and during their residence in it, need not therefore
be a difficult matter to those who may take it in hand seriously and
methodically.

The recommendation I would venture to make to my readers is to obtain
photographs and ordinary measurements periodically of themselves and their
children, making it a family custom to do so, because, unless driven by some
custom, the act will be postponed until the opportunity is lost. Let those
periodical photographs be full and side views of the face on an adequate scale,
adding any others that may be wished, but not omitting these. As the portraits
accumulate have collections of them autotyped. Keep the prints methodically in
a family register, writing by their side careful chronicles of illness and all
such events as used to find a place on the fly-leaf of the Bible of former
generations,

30              Inquiries into Human Faculty

and
inserting other interesting personal facts and whatever anthropometric data can
be collected.

Those who care to initiate and carry on a family chronicle illustrated by
abundant photographic portraiture, will produce a work that they and their
children and their descendants in more remote generations will assuredly be
grateful for. The family tie has a real as well as a traditional significance.
The world is beginning to awaken to the fact that the life of the individual is
in some real sense a prolongation of those of his ancestry. His vigour, his
character, and his diseases are principally derived from theirs; sometimes his
faculties are blends of ancestral qualities; but more frequently they are
mosaics, patches of resemblance to one or other of them showing now here and now
there. The life-histories of our relatives are prophetic of our own futures;
they are far more instructive to us than those of strangers, far more fitted to
encourage and to forewarn us. If there be such a thing as a natural birthright,
I can conceive of none superior to the right of the child to be informed, at
first by proxy through his guardians, and afterwards personally, of the
life-history, medical and other, of his ancestry. The child is thrust into
existence without his having any voice at all in the matter, and the smallest
amend that those who brought him here can make, is to furnish him with all the
guidance they can, including the complete life-histories of his near
progenitors.

The investigation of human eugenics—that is, of the conditions
under which men of a high type are produced—is at present extremely
hampered by the want of full family histories, both medical and general,
extending over three or four generations. There is no such difficulty in
investigating animal eugenics, because the generations of horses, cattle, dogs,
etc., are brief, and the breeder of any such stock lives long enough to acquire
a large amount of experience from his own personal observation. A man, however,
can rarely be familiar with more than two or three generations of his
contemporaries before age has begun to check his powers; his working experience
must therefore be chiefly based upon records. Believing, as I do, that human
eugenics will become recognised before long as a study of the highest practical
importance, it seems to me that no time ought to be lost in encouraging and
directing a habit of compiling

Unconsciousness
of Peculiarities          31

personal
and family histories. If the necessary materials be brought into existence, it
will require no more than zeal and persuasiveness on the part of the future
investigator to collect as large a store of them as he may require.

UNCONSCIOUSNESS
OF PECULIARITIES.

The importance of submitting our faculties to measurement lies in the
curious unconsciousness in which we are apt to live of our personal
peculiarities, and which our intimate friends often fail to remark. I have
spoken of the ignorance of elderly persons of their deafness to high notes, but
even the existence of such a peculiarity as colour blindness was not suspected
until the memoir of Dalton in 1 794. That one person out of twenty-nine or
thereabouts should be unable to distinguish a red from a green, without knowing
that he had any deficiency of colour sense, and without betraying his deficiency
to his friends, seems perfectly incredible to the other twenty-eight; yet as a
matter of fact he rarely does either the one or the other. It is hard to
convince the colour-blind of their own infirmity. I have seen curious instances
of this: one was that of a person by no means unpractised in physical research,
who had been himself tested in matching colours. He gave me his own version of
the result, to the effect that though he might perhaps have fallen a little
short of perfection as judged by over-refined tests, his colour sense was for
all practical purposes quite good. On the other hand, the operator assured me
that when he had toned the intensities of a pure red and a pure green in a
certain proportion, the person ceased to be able to distinguish between them!
Colour blindness is often very difficult to detect, because the test hues and
tints may be discriminated by other means than by the normal colour sense.
Ordinary pigments are never pure, and the test colours may be distinguished by
those of their adventitious hues to which the partly colour-blind man may be
sensitive. We do not suspect ourselves to be yellow-blind by candle light,
because we enjoy pictures in the evening nearly or perhaps quite as much as in
the day time; yet we may observe that a yellow primrose laid on

32          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

the white
table-cloth wholly loses its colour by candle light, and becomes as white as a
snowdrop.

In the inquiries I made on the hereditary transmission of capacity, I was
often amused by the naive remark of men who had easily distanced their
competitors, that they ascribed their success to their own exertions. They
little recognised how much they owed to their natural gifts of exceptional
capacity and energy on the one hand, and of exceptional love for their special
work on the other.

In future chapters I shall give accounts of persons who have unusual
mental characteristics as regards imagery, visualised numerals, colours
connected with sounds and special associations of ideas, being unconscious of
their peculiarities; but I cannot anticipate these subjects here, as they all
require explanation. It will be seen in the end how greatly metaphysicians and
psychologists may err, who assume their own mental operations, instincts, and
axioms to be identical with those of the rest of mankind, instead of being
special to themselves. The differences between men are profound, and we can
only be saved from living in blind unconsciousness of our own mental
peculiarities by the habit of informing ourselves as well as we can of those of
others. Examples of the success with which this can be done will be found
farther on in the book.

I may take this opportunity of remarking on the well-known hereditary
character of colour blindness in connection with the fact, that it is nearly
twice as prevalent among the Quakers as among the rest of the community, the
proportions being as 5.9 to 3.5 per cent.[1] We might have expected
an even larger ratio. Nearly every Quaker is descended on both sides solely
from members of a group of men and women who segregated themselves from the
rest of the world five or six generations ago; one of their strongest opinions
being that the fine arts were worldly snares, and their most conspicuous
practice being to dress in drabs. A born artist could never have consented to
separate himself from his fellows on such grounds; he would have felt the
profession of those opinions and their accompanying

[1]
Trans. Opthalmological Soc., 1881, p. 198.

Statistical
Methods                    33

practices
to be a treason to his aesthetic nature. Consequently few of the original stock
of Quakers are likely to have had the temperament that is associated with a
love for colour, and it is in consequence most reasonable to believe that a
larger proportion of colour-blind men would have been found among them than
among the rest of the population.

Again, Quakerism is a decreasing sect, weakened by yearly desertions and
losses, especially as the act of marriage with a person who is not a member of
the Society is necessarily followed by exclusion from it. It is most probable
that a large proportion of the deserters would be those who, through reversion
to some bygone ancestor, had sufficient artistic taste to make a continuance of
Quaker practices too irksome to be endured. Hence the existing members of the
Society of Friends are a race who probably contained in the first instance an
unduly large proportion of colour-blind men, and from whose descendants many of
those who were not born colour blind have year by year been drafted away. Both
causes must have combined with the already well-known tendency of colour
blindness to hereditary transmission, to cause it to become a characteristic of
their race. Dalton,
who first discovered its existence as a personal peculiarity of his own, was a
Quaker to his death; Young, the discoverer of the undulatory theory of light,
and who wrote specially on colours, was a Quaker by birth, but he married
outside the body and so ceased to belong to it.

STATISTICAL
METHODS.

The object of statistical science is to discover methods of condensing
information concerning large groups of allied facts into brief and compendious
expressions suitable for discussion. The possibility of doing this is based on
the constancy and continuity with which objects of the same species are found
to vary. That is to say, we always find, after sorting any large number of such
objects in the order 4 let us suppose) of their lengths, beginning with the
shortest and ending with the tallest, and setting them side by

34          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

side like a
long row of park palings between the same limits, their upper outline will be
identical. Moreover, it will run smoothly and not in irregular steps. The
theoretical interpretation of the smoothness of outline is that the individual
differences in the objects are caused by different combinations of a large
number of minute influences; and as the difference between any two adjacent
objects in a long row must depend on the absence in one of them of some single
influence, or of only a few such, that were present in the other, the amount of
difference will be insensible. Whenever we find on trial that the outline of
the row is not a flowing curve, the presumption is that the objects are not all
of the same species, but that part are affected by some large influence from
which the others are free; consequently there is a confusion of curves. This
presumption is never found to be belied.

It is unfortunate for the peace of mind of the statistician that the
influences by which the magnitudes, etc., of the objects are determined can
seldom if ever be roundly classed into large and small, without intermediates.
He is tantalised by the hope of getting hold of sub-groups of sufficient size
that shall contain no individuals except those belonging strictly to the same
species, and he is almost constantly baffled. In the end he is obliged to
exercise his judgment as to the limit at which he should cease to subdivide. If
he subdivides very frequently, the groups become too small to have statistical value;
if less frequently, the groups will be less truly specific.

A species may be defined as a group of objects whose individual
differences are wholly due to different combinations of the same set of minute
causes, no one of which is so powerful as to be able by itself to make any
sensible difference in the result. A well-known mathematical consequence flows
from this, which is also universally observed as a fact, namely, that in all
species the number of individuals who differ from the average value, up to any
given amount, is much greater than the number who differ more than that amount,
and up to the double of it. In short, if an assorted series be represented by
upright lines arranged side by side along a horizontal base at equal distances
apart, and of lengths proportionate to the magnitude of the

Statistical
Methods                    35

quality in
the corresponding objects, then their shape will always resemble that shown in
Fig. 1.

The form of the bounding curve resembles that which is called in
architectural language an ogive, from “augive, an old French word for a
cup, the figure being not unlike the upper half of a cup lying sideways with
its axis horizontal. In consequence of the multitude of mediocre values, we
always find that on either side of the middlemost ordinate Cc, which is the median value and may be accepted as the average,
there is a much less rapid change of height than elsewhere. If the figure were
pulled out sideways to make it accord with such physical conceptions as that of
a

row of men
standing side by side, the middle part of the curve would be apparently
horizontal.

The mathematical
conception of the curve is best expressed in Fig. 2. where PQ represents any
given deviation from the average value, and the ratio of PO
to AB re resents the relative probability of its occurrence. The equation to
the curve and a discussion of its properties will be found in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, No.
198, 1879, by Dr. M’Alister. The title of the paper is the “Law of
the Geometric Mean,” and it follows one by myself on “The Geometric
Mean in Vital and Social Statistics.”

We can lay down the ogive of any quality, physical or mental, whenever we
are capable of judging which of any two members of the group we are engaged
upon has the

36          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

larger
amount of that quality. I have called this the method of statistics by
intercomparison. There is no bodily or mental attribute in any race of
individuals that can be so dealt with, whether our judgment in comparing them
be guided by common-sense observation or by actual measurement, which cannot be
gripped and consolidated into an ogive with a smooth outline, and thenceforward
be treated-in discussion as a single object.

It is easy to describe any given ogive which has been based upon
measurements, so that it may be drawn from the description with approximate
truth. Divide AB into a convenient number of fractional parts, and record the
height of the ordinates at those parts. In reproducing the ogive from these
data, draw a base line of any convenient length, divide it in the same number
of fractional parts, erect ordinates of the stated lengths at those parts,
connect their tops with a flowing line, and the thing is done. The most
convenient fractional parts are the middle (giving the median), the outside
quarters (giving the upper and lower quartiles), and similarly the upper and
lower octiles or deciles. This is sufficient for most purposes. It leaves only
the outer eighths or tenths of the cases undescribed and undetermined, except so
far as may be guessed by the run of the intermediate portion of the curve, and
it defines all of the intermediate portion with as close an approximation as is
needed for ordinary or statistical purposes.

Thus the heights of all but the outer tenths of the whole body of adult
males of the English professional classes may be derived from the five
following ordinates, measured in inches, of which the outer pair are deciles

67.2; 67.5; 68.8;
70.3; 71.4.

Many other instances will be found in the Report of the Anthropometric
Committee of the British Association in 1881, pp. 245—257.

When we desire to compare any two large statistical groups, we may
compare median with median, quartiles with quartiles, and octiles with octiles;
or we may proceed

Statistical Methods                    37

on the
method to be described in the next paragraph but one.

We are often called upon to define the position of an individual in his
own series, in which case it is most conformable to usage to give his
centesimal grade—that is, his place on the base line AB—supposing
it to be graduated from 0° to 100° In reckoning this, a confusion ought
to be avoided between “graduation” and “rank,” though
it leads to no sensible error in practice. The first of the” park
palings” does not stand at A, which is 0°, nor does the hundredth
stand at B, which is 100°, for that would make 101 of them; but they stand
at 0°.5 and 99°.5 respectively. Similarly, all intermediate ranks stand half a degree short of the graduation bearing the same number. When
the class is large, the value of half a place becomes extremely small, and the
rank and graduation may be treated as identical.

Examples of method of calculating a centesimal position

1. A child A is classed after examination as No. 5 in a class of 27 children;
what is his centesimal graduation?

Answer.- If AB be
divided into 27 graduations, his rank of No. will correspond to the graduation
40.5; therefore if AB be graduated afresh into 100 graduations, his centesimal
grade, t; will be found by the Rule of Three, thus—

x : 4°.5 :: 100 : 27;
x=459/27° = 16°.6

2. Another child B is classed No. 13 in a class of 25.

Answer.—If AB be
divided into 25 graduations, the rank of No. 13 will correspond to graduation
12°.5 whence as before—

x : 12°.5::100:
25; x = 1250/25° = 50°; i.e. B
is the median.

The second method of comparing two statistical groups, to which I alluded
in the last paragraph but one, consists in stating the centesimal grade in the
one group that corresponds with the median or any other fractional grade in the
other This, it will be remarked, is a very simple method of comparison,
absolutely independent of any theory, and applicable to any statistical groups
whatever, whether of physical or of mental qualities. Wherever we can sort in
order, there we can apply this method. Thus, in the above examples, suppose A
and B had been selected because they

38          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

were equal
when compared together, then we can concisely express the relative merits of
the two classes to which they respectively belong, by saying that 160.6 in the
one is equal to 500 (the median) in the other.

I frequently make statistical records of form and feature, in the streets
or in company, without exciting attention, by means of a fine pricker and a
piece of paper. The pricker is a converted silver pencil-case, with the usual
sliding piece; it is a very small one, and is attached to my watch chain. The
pencil part has been taken out and replaced by a fine short needle, the open
mouth of the case is covered with a hemispherical cap having a hole in the
centre, and the adjustments are such that when the slide is pushed forward as
far as it can go, the needle projects no more than one-tenth of an inch. If I
then press it upon a piece of paper, held against the ball of my thumb, the paper
is indelibly perforated with a fine hole, and the thumb is not wounded. The
perforations will not be found to run into one another unless they are very
numerous, and if they happen to do so now and then, it is of little consequence
in a statistical inquiry. The holes are easily counted at leisure, by holding
the paper against the light, and any scrap of paper will serve the purpose. It
will be found that the majority of inquiries take the form of “more,”
“equal to,” or “less,” so I arrange the paper in a way
to present three distinct compartments to the pricker, and to permit of its
being held in the correct position and used by the sense of touch alone.

I do so by tearing the paper into the form of a cross— that is,
maimed in one of its arms—and hold it by the maimed part between the
thumb and finger, the head of the cross pointing upward. The head of the cross
receives the pricks referring to “more “; the solitary arm that is
not maimed, those meaning “the same”; the long foot of the cross
those meaning “less.” It is well to write the subject of the
measurement on the paper before beginning to use it, then more than one set of
records can be kept in the pocket at the same time, and be severally added to
as occasion serves, without fear of mistaking one for the other.

Character                            39

CHARACTER.

The fundamental and intrinsic differences of character that exist in
individuals are well illustrated by those that distinguish the two sexes, and
which begin to assert themselves even in the nursery, where all the children
are treated alike. One notable peculiarity in the character of the woman is
that she is capricious and coy, and has less straightforwardness than the man.
It is the same in the female of every sex about the time of pairing, and there
can be little doubt as to the origin of the peculiarity. If any race of animals
existed in whom the sexual passions of the female were as quickly and as
directly stirred as those of the male, each would mate with the first who
approached her, and one essential condition of sexual selection would be
absent. There would be no more call for competition among the males for the
favour of each female; no more fighting for love, in which the strongest male
conquers; no more rival display of personal charms, in which the best-looking
or best-mannered prevails. The drama of courtship, with its prolonged strivings
and doubtful success, would be cut quite short, and the race would degenerate
through the absence of that sexual selection for which the protracted
preliminaries of love-making give opportunity. The willy-nilly disposition of
the female in matters of love is as apparent in the butterfly as in the man,
and must have been continuously favoured from the earliest stages of animal
evolution down to the present time. It is the factor in the great theory of
sexual selection that corresponds to the insistence and directness of the male.
Coyness and caprice have in consequence become a heritage of the sex, together
with a cohort of allied weaknesses and petty deceits, that men have come to
think venial and even amiable in women, but which they would not tolerate among
themselves.

Various forms of natural character and temperament would no doubt be
found to occur in constant proportions among any large group of persons of the
same race, but what those proportions may be has never yet been investigated.
It is extremely difficult to estimate it by observations of adults, owing to
their habit of restraining natural ill

40          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

tendencies,
and to their long-practised concealment of those they do not restrain but
desire to hide. The necessary observations ought, however, to be easily made on
young children in schools, whose manifestations of character are conspicuous,
who are simultaneously for months and years under the eye of the same master or
mistress, and who are daily classed according to their various merits. I have
occasionally asked the opinion of persons well qualified to form them, and who
have had experience of teaching, as to the most obvious divisions of character
to be found among school children. The replies have differed, but, those on
which most stress was laid were connected with energy, sociability, desire to
attract notice, truthfulness, thoroughness, and refinement.

The varieties of the emotional constitution and of likings and
antipathies are very numerous and wide. I may give two instances which I have
not seen elsewhere alluded to, merely as examples of variation. One of them was
often brought to my notice at the time when the public were admitted to see the
snakes fed at the Zoological Gardens. Rabbits, birds, and other small animals
were dropped in the different cages, which the snakes, after more or less
serpentine action, finally struck with their poison fangs or crushed in their
folds. I found it a horrible but a fascinating scene. We lead for the most part
such an easy and carpeted existence, screened from the stern realities of life
and death, that many of us are impelled to draw aside the curtain now and then,
and gaze for a while behind it. This exhibition of the snakes at their
feeding-time, which gave to me, as it doubtless did to several others, a sense
of curdling of the blood, had no such effect on many of the visitors. I have
often seen people—nurses, for instance, and children of all
ages—looking unconcernedly and amusedly at the scene. Their indifference
was perhaps the most painful element of the whole transaction. Their sympathies
were absolutely unawakened. I quote this instance, partly because it leads to
another very curious fact that I have noticed as regards the way with which
different persons and races regard snakes.

I myself have a horror of them, and can only by great self-control, and
under a sense of real agitation, force myself to touch one. A considerable
proportion of the English race

Character                            41

would feel
much as I do; but the remainder do not. I have questioned numbers of persons of
both sexes, and have been astonished at the frequency with which I have been
assured that they had no shrinking whatever from the sight of the wriggling
mysterious reptile. Some persons, as is well known, make pets of them;
moreover, I am told that there is no passage in Greek or Latin authors
expressive of that form of horror which I myself feel, and which may be
compared to what is said to be felt by hydrophobic sufferers at the undulating
movements of water. There are numerous allusions in the classics to the venom
fang or the crushing power of snakes, but not to an aversion inspired by its
form and movement. It was the Greek symbol of Hippocrates and of healing. There
is nothing of the kind in Hebrew literature, where the snake is figured as an
attractive tempter. In Hindu fables the cobra is the ingenious and intelligent
animal, corresponding to the fox in ours. Serpent worship was very widely
spread. I therefore doubt whether the antipathy to the snake is very common
among mankind, notwithstanding the instinctive terror that their sight inspires
in monkeys.

The other instance I may adduce is that of the horror of blood which is
curiously different in animals of the same species and in the same animals at
different times. I have had a good deal of experience of the behaviour of oxen
at the sight of blood, and found it to be by no means uniform. In my South
African travels I relied chiefly on half-wild slaughter oxen to feed my large
party, and occasionally had to shoot one on every second day. Usually the rest
of the drove paid no particular heed to the place of blood, but at other rare
times they seemed maddened and performed a curious sort of war-dance at the
spot, making buck-leaps, brandishing their horns, and goring at the ground. It
was a grotesque proceeding, utterly unlike the usual behaviour of cattle. I
only witnessed it once elsewhere, and that was in the Pyrenees,
where I came on a herd that was being driven homewards. Each cow in turn, as it
passed a particular spot, performed the well-remembered antics. I asked, and
learned that a cow had been killed there by a bear a few days previously. The
natural horror at blood, and it may be the consequent dislike of red, is common

42              Inquiries into Human Faculty

among
mankind; but I have seen a well-dressed child of about four years old poking
its finger with a pleased innocent look into the bleeding carcase of a sheep
hung up in a butcher’s shop, while its nurse was inside.

The subject of character deserves more statistical investigation than it
has yet received, and none have a better chance of doing it well than
schoolmasters; their opportunities are indeed most enviable. It would be
necessary to approach the subject wholly without prejudice, as a pure matter of
observation, just as if the children were the fauna and flora of hitherto
undescribed species in an entirely new land.

CRIMINALS
AND THE INSANE.

Criminality, though not very various in its development, is extremely
complex in its origin; nevertheless certain general conclusions are arrived at
by the best writers on the subject, among whom Prosper Despine is one of the
most instructive. The ideal criminal has marked peculiarities of character: his
conscience is almost deficient, his instincts are vicious, his power of
self-control is very weak, and he usually detests continuous labour. The
absence of self-control is due to ungovernable temper, to passion, or to mere
imbecility, and the conditions that determine the particular description of
crime are the, character of the instincts and of the temptation.

The deficiency of conscience in criminals, as shown by the absence of
genuine remorse for their guilt, astonishes all who first become familiar with
the details of prison life. Scenes of heartrending despair are hardly ever
witnessed among prisoners; their sleep is broken by no uneasy dreams—on
the contrary, it is easy and sound; they have also excellent appetites. But
hypocrisy is a very common vice; and all my information agrees as to the utter
untruthfulness of criminals, however plausible their statements may be.

We must guard ourselves against looking upon vicious instincts as
perversions, inasmuch as they may be strictly in accordance with the healthy
nature of the man, and, being transmissible by inheritance, may become the
normal characteristics of a healthy race, just as the sheep-dog, the retriever,

Criminals
and the Insane                43

the
pointer, and the bull-dog, have their several instincts. There can be no
greater popular error than the supposition that natural instinct is a perfectly
trustworthy guide, for there are striking contradictions to such an opinion in
individuals of every description of animal. The most that we are entitled to
say in any case is, that the prevalent instincts of each race are trustworthy,
not those of every individual. But even this is saying too much, because when
the conditions under which the race is living have recently been changed, some
instincts which were adapted to the old state of things are sure to be
fallacious guides to conduct in the new one. A man who is counted as an
atrocious criminal in England,
and is punished as such by English law in social self-defence, may nevertheless
have acted in strict accordance with instincts that are laudable in less
civilised societies. The ideal criminal is, unhappily for him, deficient in
qualities that are capable of restraining his unkindly or inconvenient
instincts; he has neither sympathy for others nor the sense of duty, both of
which lie at the base of conscience; nor has he sufficient self-control to
accommodate himself to the society in which he has to live, and so to promote
his own selfish interests in the long-run. He cannot be preserved from criminal
misadventure, either by altruistic sentiments or by intelligently egoistic
ones.

The perpetuation of the criminal class by heredity is a question
difficult to grapple with on many accounts. Their vagrant habits, their
illegitimate unions, and extreme untruthfulness, are among the difficulties of
the investigation. It is, however, easy to show that the criminal nature tends
to be inherited; while, on the other hand, it is impossible that women who
spend a large portion of the best years of their life in prison can contribute
many children to the population. The true state of the case appears to be that
the criminal population receives steady accessions from those who, without
having strongly-marked criminal natures, do nevertheless belong to a type of
humanity that is exceedingly ill suited to play a respectable part in our
modern civilisation, though it is well suited to flourish under half-savage
conditions, being naturally both healthy and prolific. These persons are apt to
go to the bad; their daughters

44          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

consort
with criminals and become the parents of criminals.

An extraordinary example of this is afforded by the history of the
infamous Jukes family in America,
whose pedigree has been made out, with extraordinary care, during no less than
seven generations, and is the subject of an elaborate memoir printed in the
Thirty-first Annual Report of the Prison Association of New York, 1876. It
includes no less than 540 individuals of Jukes blood, of whom a frightful
number degraded into criminality, pauperism, or disease.

It is difficult to summarise the results in a few plain figures, but I
will state those respecting the fifth generation, through the eldest of the
five prolific daughters of the man who is the common ancestor of the race. The
total number of these was 123, of whom thirty-eight came through an
illegitimate granddaughter, and eighty-five through legitimate grandchildren.
Out of the thirty-eight, sixteen have been in jail, six of them for heinous
offences, one of these having been committed no less than nine times; eleven
others led openly disreputable lives or were paupers; four were notoriously
intemperate; the history of three had not been traced, and only four are known
to have done well. The great majority of the women consorted with criminals. As
to the eighty-five legitimate descendants, they were less flagrantly bad, for
only five of them had been in jail, and only thirteen others had been paupers.
Now the ancestor of all this mischief, who was born about the year 1730, 15
described as having been a jolly companionable man, a hunter, and a fisher,
averse to steady labour, but working hard and idling by turns, and who had
numerous illegitimate children, whose issue has not been traced. He was, in fact,
a somewhat good specimen of a half-savage, without any seriously criminal
instincts. The girls were apparently attractive, marrying early and sometimes
not badly; but the gipsy-like character of the race was unsuited to success in
a civilised country. So the descendants went to the bad, and such hereditary
moral weaknesses as they may have had, rose to the surface and worked their
mischief without check. Cohabiting with criminals, and being extremely
prolific, the result was the production of a stock exceeding 500 in number, of
a prevalent criminal type. Through disease and intemperance the breed is now
rapidly

Criminals
and the Insane                45

diminishing;
the infant mortality has of late been horrible, but fortunately the women of
the present generation bear usually but few children, and many of them are
altogether childless.

The criminal classes contain a considerable portion of epileptics and
other persons of instable, emotional temperament, subject to nervous explosions
that burst out at intervals and relieve the system. The mad outbreaks of women
in convict prisons is a most curious phenomenon. Some of them are apt from time
to time to have a gradually increasing desire that at last becomes
irresistible, to “break out,” as it is technically called; that is,
to smash and tear everything they can within reach, and to shriek, curse, and
bowl. At length the fit expends itself; the devil, as it were, leaves them, and
they begin to behave again in their ordinary way. The highest form of emotional
instability exists in confirmed epilepsy, where its manifestations have often
been studied; it is found in a high but somewhat less extraordinary degree in
the hysterical and allied affections. In the confirmed epileptic constitution
the signs of general instability of nervous action are muscular convulsions,
irregularities of bodily temperature, mobile intellectual activity, and
extraordinary oscillations between opposed emotional states. I am assured by
excellent authority that instable manifestations of extreme piety and of
extreme vice are almost invariably shown by epileptics, and should be regarded
as a prominent feature of their peculiar constitution. These unfortunate beings
see no incongruity between the pious phrases that they pour out at one moment
and their vile and obscene language in the next; neither do they show
repentance for past misconduct when they are convicted of crimes, however
abominable these may be. They are creatures of the moment, possessing no
inhibitory check upon their desires and emotions, which drive them headlong
hither and thither.

Madness is often associated with epilepsy; in all cases it is a frightful
and hereditary disfigurement of humanity, which appears, from the upshot of
various conflicting accounts, to be on the increase. The neurotic constitution

46          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

from which
it springs is however not without its merits, as has been well pointed out,
since a large proportion of the enthusiastic men and women to whose labour the
world is largely indebted, have had that constitution, judging from the fact
that insanity existed in their families.

The phases of extreme piety and extreme vice, which so rapidly succeed
one another in the same individual among the epileptics, are more widely
separated among those who are simply insane. It has been noticed that among the
morbid organic conditions which accompany the show of excessive piety and
religious rapture in the insane, none are so frequent as disorders of the
sexual organisation. Conversely, the frenzies of religious revivals have not
unfrequently ended in gross profligacy. The encouragement of celibacy by the
fervent leaders of most creeds, utilises in an unconscious way the morbid
connection between an over-restraint of the sexual desires and impulses towards
extreme devotion.

Another remarkable phase among the insane consists in strange views about
their individuality. They think that their body is made of glass, or that their
brains have literally disappeared, or that there are different persons inside
them, or that they are somebody else, and so forth. It is said that this phase
is most commonly associated with morbid disturbance of the alimentary organs.
So in many religions fasting has been used as an agent for detaching the
thoughts from the body and for inducing ecstasy.

There is yet a third peculiarity of the insane which is almost universal,
that of gloomy segregation. Passengers nearing London by the Great Western Railway must have
frequently remarked the unusual appearance of the crowd of lunatics when taking
their exercise in the large green enclosure in front of Hanwell Asylum. They
almost without exception walk apart in moody isolation, each in his own way,
buried in his own thoughts. It is a scene like that fabled in Vathek’s
hall of Eblis. I am assured that whenever two are seen in company, it is either
because their attacks of madness are of an intermittent and epileptic character
and they are temporarily sane, or otherwise that they are near recovery.
Conversely, the curative influence of social habits is fully recognised, and
they are promoted

Gregarious
and Slavish Instincts          47

by
festivities in the asylums. On the other hand, the great teachers of all creeds
have made seclusion a prominent religious exercise. In short, by enforcing
celibacy, fasting, and solitude, they have done their best towards making men
mad, and they have always largely succeeded in inducing morbid mental
conditions among their followers.

Floods of light are thrown upon various incidents of devotee life, and
also upon the disgusting and not otherwise intelligible character of the
sanctimonious scoundrel, by the everyday experiences of the madhouse. No
professor of metaphysics, psychology, or religion can claim to know the
elements of what he teaches, unless he is acquainted with the ordinary
phenomena of idiocy, madness, and epilepsy. He must study the manifestations of
disease and congenital folly, as well as those of sanity and high intellect.

GREGARIOUS AND SLAVISH
INSTINCTS.

I propose in this chapter to discuss a curious and apparently anomalous
group of base moral instincts and intellectual deficiencies, that are innate
rather than acquired, by tracing their analogies in the world of brutes and
examining the conditions through which they have been evolved. They are the slavish
aptitudes from which the leaders of men are exempt, but which are
characteristic elements in the disposition of ordinary persons. The vast
majority of persons of our race have a natural tendency to shrink from the
responsibility of standing and acting alone they exalt the vox populi even when they know it to be the utterance of a mob of
nobodies, into the vox Dei, and they
are willing slaves to tradition, authority, and custom. The intellectual
deficiencies corresponding to these moral flaws are shown by the rareness of
free and original thought as compared with the frequency and readiness with
which men accept the opinions of those in authority as binding on their
judgment. I shall endeavour to prove that the slavish aptitudes in man are a
direct consequence of his gregarious nature, which itself is a result of the conditions
both of his primeval barbarism and of the forms of his subsequent civilisation.
My argument will be, that gregarious brute

48          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

animals
possess a want of self-reliance in a marked degree; that the conditions of the lives of these animals have made a want
of self-reliance a necessity to them, and that by the law of natural selection
the gregarious instincts and their accompanying slavish aptitudes have gradually
become evolved.  Then I shall argue
that our remote ancestors. have lived under parallel conditions, and that other
causes peculiar to human society have acted up to the present day in the same
direction, and that we have inherited the gregarious instincts and slavish
aptitudes which have been needed under past circumstances, although in our
advancing civilisation they are becoming of more harm than good to our race.

It was my fortune, in earlier life, to gain an intimate knowledge of
certain classes of gregarious animals. The urgent need of the camel for the
close companionship of his fellows was a never-exhausted topic of curious
admiration to me during tedious days of travel across many North African
deserts. I also happened to hear and read a great deal about the still more
marked gregarious instincts of the llama; but the social animal into whose
psychology I am conscious of having penetrated most thoroughly is the ox of the
wild parts of western South
Africa. It is necessary to insist upon the
epithet “wild,” because an ox of tamed parentage has different
natural instincts; for instance, an English ox is far less gregarious than
those I am about to describe, and affords a proportionately less valuable
illustration to my argument. The oxen of which I speak belonged to the Damaras,
and none of the ancestry of these cattle had ever been broken to harness. They
were watched from a distance during the day, as they roamed about the open
country, and at night they were driven with cries to enclosures, into which
they rushed much like a body of terrified wild animals driven by huntsmen into
a trap. Their scared temper was such as to make it impossible to lay hold of
them by other means than by driving the whole herd into a clump, and lassoing
the leg of the animal it was desired to seize, and throwing him to the ground
with dexterous force. With oxen and cows of this description, whose nature is
no doubt shared by the bulls, I spent more than a year in the closest
companionship.

Gregarious
and Slavish Instincts          49

I had nearly a hundred of the beasts broken in for the waggon, for packs,
and for the saddle. I travelled an entire journey of exploration on the back of
one of them, with others by my side, either labouring at their tasks or walking
at leisure; and with others again who were wholly unbroken, and who served the
purpose of an itinerant larder. At night, when there had been no time to erect
an enclosure to hold them, I lay down in their midst, and it was interesting to
observe how readily they then availed themselves of the neighbourhood of the
camp fire and of man, conscious of the protection they afforded from prowling
carnivora, whose cries and roars, now distant, now near, continually broke upon
the stillness. These opportunities of studying the disposition of such peculiar
cattle were not wasted upon me. I had only too much leisure to think about
them, and the habits of the animals strongly attracted my curiosity. The better
I understood them, the more complex and worthy of study did their minds appear
to be. But I am now concerned only with their blind gregarious instincts, which
are conspicuously distinct from the ordinary social desires. In the latter they
are deficient; thus they are not amiable to one another, but show on the whole
more expressions of spite and disgust than of forbearance or fondness. They do
not suffer from an ennui, which society can remove, because their coarse
feeding and their ruminant habits make them somewhat stolid. Neither can they
love society, as monkeys do, for the opportunities it affords of a fuller and
more varied life, because they remain self-absorbed in the middle of their
herd, while the monkeys revel together in frolics, scrambles, fights, loves,
and chatterings. Yet although the ox has so little affection for, or individual
interest in, his fellows, he cannot endure even a momentary severance from his
herd. If he be separated from it by stratagem or force, he exhibits every sign
of mental agony; he strives with all his might to get back again, and when he succeeds,
he plunges into its middle to bathe his whole body with the comfort of closest
companionship. This passionate terror at segregation is a convenience to the
herdsman, who may rest assured in the darkness or in the mist that the whole
herd is safe whenever he can get a glimpse of a single ox. It is also the cause
of great

50          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

inconvenience
to the traveller in ox-waggons, who constantly feels himself in a position
towards his oxen like that of a host to a company of bashful gentlemen at the
time when he is trying to get them to move from the drawing-room to the
dinner-table, and no one will go first, but every one backs and gives place to
his neighbour. The traveller finds great difficulty in procuring animals
capable of acting the part of fore-oxen to his team, the ordinary members of
the wild herd being wholly unfitted by nature to move in so prominent and
isolated a position, even though, as is the custom, a boy is always in front to
persuade or pull them onwards. Therefore, a good fore-ox is an animal of an
exceptionally independent disposition. Men who break in. wild cattle for
harness watch assiduously for those who show a self-reliant nature, by grazing
apart or ahead of the rest, and these they break in for fore-oxen. The other
cattle may be indifferently devoted to ordinary harness purposes, or to
slaughter; but the born leaders are far too rare to be used for any less
distinguished service than that which they alone are capable of fulfilling. But
a still more exceptional degree of merit may sometimes be met with among the
many thousands of Damara cattle. It is possible to find an ox who may be
ridden, not indeed as freely as a horse, for I have never heard of a feat like
that, but at all events wholly apart from the companionship of others; and an
accomplished rider will even succeed in urging him out at a trot from the very
middle of his fellows. With respect to the negative side of the scale, though I
do not recollect definite instances, I can recall general impressions of oxen
showing a deficiency from the average ox standard of self-reliance, about equal
to the excess of that quality found in ordinary fore-oxen. Thus I recollect
there were some cattle of a peculiarly centripetal instinct, who ran more madly
than the rest into the middle of the herd when they were frightened; and I have
no reason to doubt from general recollections that the law of deviation from an
average would be as applicable to independence of character among cattle as one
might expect it theoretically to be. The conclusion to which we are driven is,
that few of the Damara cattle have enough originality and independence of
disposition to pass unaided through their daily risks in a

Gregarious
and Slavish Instincts          51

tolerably
comfortable manner. They are essentially slavish, and seek no better lot than
to be led by any one of their number who has enough self-reliance to accept
that position. No ox ever dares to act contrary to the rest of the herd, but he
accepts their common determination as an authority binding on his conscience.

An incapacity of relying on oneself and a faith in others are precisely
the conditions that compel brutes to congregate and live in herds; and, again,
it is essential to their safety in a country infested by large carnivora, that
they should keep closely together in herds. No ox grazing alone could live for
many days unless he were protected, far more assiduously and closely than is
possible to barbarians. The Damara owners confide perhaps 200 cattle to a
couple of half-starved youths, who pass their time in dozing or in grubbing up
roots to eat. The owners know that it is hopeless to protect the herd from
lions, so they leave it to take its chance; and as regards human marauders they
equally know that the largest number of cattle watchers they could spare could
make no adequate resistance to an attack; they therefore do not send more than
two, who are enough to run home and give the alarm to the whole male population
of the tribe to run in arms on the tracks of their plundered property.
Consequently, as I began by saying, the cattle have to take care of themselves
against the wild beasts, and they would infallibly be destroyed by them if they
had not safeguards of their own, which are not easily to be appreciated at first
sight at their full value. We shall understand them better by considering the
precise nature of the danger that an ox runs. When he is alone it is not simply
that he is too defenceless, but that lie is easily surprised. A crouching lion
fears cattle who turn boldly upon him, and he does so with reason. The horns of
an ox or antelope are able to make an ugly wound in the paw or chest of a
springing beast when he receives its thrust in the same way that an  meets his adversary’s
“counter” hit.

Hence it is that a cow who has calved by the wayside, and has been
temporarily abandoned by the caravan, is never seized by lions. The incident
frequently occurs, and as frequently are the cow and calf eventually brought
safe to

52          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

the camp;
and yet there is usually evidence in footprints of her having sustained a
regular siege from the wild beasts; but she is so restless and eager for the
safety of her young that no beast of prey can approach her unawares. This state
of exaltation is of course exceptional; cattle are obliged in their ordinary
course of life to spend a considerable part of the day with their heads buried
in the grass, where they can neither see nor smell what is about them. A still
larger part of their time must be spent in placid rumination, during which they
cannot possibly be on the alert. But a herd of such animals, when considered as
a whole, is always on the alert; at almost every moment some eyes, ears, and
noses will command all approaches, and the start or cry of alarm of a single
beast is a signal to all his companions. To live gregariously is to become a
fibre in a vast sentient web overspreading many acres; it is to become the
possessor of faculties always awake, of eyes that see in all directions, of
ears and nostrils that explore a broad belt of air; it is also to become the
occupier of every bit of vantage ground whence the approach of a wild beast
might be overlooked. The protective senses of each individual who chooses to
live in companionship are multiplied by a large factor, and he thereby receives
a maximum of security at a minimum cost of restlessness. When we isolate an
animal who has been accustomed to a gregarious life, we take away his sense of
protection, for he feels himself exposed to danger from every part of the
circle around him, except the one point on which his attention is momentarily
fixed; and he knows that disaster may easily creep up to him from behind.
Consequently his glance is restless and anxious, and is turned in succession to
different quarters; his movements are hurried and agitated, and he becomes a
prey to the extremest terror. There can be no room for doubt that it is
suitable to the well-being of cattle in a country infested with beasts of prey
to live in close companionship, and being suitable, it follows from the law of
natural selection that the development of gregarious and therefore of slavish
instincts must be favoured in such cattle. It also follows from the same law
that the degree in which those instincts are developed is on the whole the most
conducive to their safety.  If they
were more gregarious they

Gregarious
and Slavish Instincts          53

would crowd
so closely as to interfere with each other when grazing the scattered pasture
of Damara land; if less gregarious, they would be too widely scattered to keep
a sufficient watch against the wild beasts.

I now proceed to consider more particularly why the range of deviation
from the average is such that we find about one ox out of fifty to possess
sufficient independence of character to serve as a pretty good fore-ox. Why is
it not one in five or one in five hundred? The reason undoubtedly is that
natural selection tends to give but one leader to each suitably-sized herd, and
to repress superabundant leaders. There is a certain size of herd most suitable
to the geographical and other conditions of the country; it must not be too
large, or the scattered puddles which form their only watering-places for a
great part of the year would not suffice; and there are similar drawbacks in respect
to pasture. It must not be too small, or it would be comparatively insecure;
thus a troop of five animals is far more easy to be approached by a stalking
huntsman than one of twenty, and the latter than one of a hundred. We have seen
that it is the oxen who graze apart, as well as those who lead the herd, who
are recognised by the trainers of cattle as gifted with enough independence of
character to become fore-oxen. They are even preferred to the actual leaders of
the herd; they dare to move more alone, and therefore their independence is
undoubted. The leaders arc safe enough from lions, because their flanks and
rear are guarded by their followers; but each of those who graze apart, and who
represent the superabundant supply of self-reliant animals, have one flank and
the rear exposed, and it is precisely these whom the lions take. Looking at the
matter in a broad way, we may justly assert that wild beasts trim and prune
every herd into compactness, and tend to reduce it into a closely-united body
with a single well-protected leader. That the development of independence of
character in cattle is thus suppressed below its otherwise natural standard by
the influence of wild beasts, is shown by the greater display of self-reliance
among cattle whose ancestry for some generations have not been exposed to such
danger.

What has been said about cattle, in relation to wild

54          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

beasts,
applies with more or less obvious modifications to barbarians in relation to
their neighbours, but I insist on a close resemblance in the particular
circumstance, that many savages are so unamiable and morose as to have hardly
any object in associating together, besides that of mutual support. If we look
at the inhabitants of the very same country as the oxen I have described, we
shall find them congregated into multitudes of tribes, all more or less at war
with one another. We shall find that few of these tribes are very small, and
few very large, and that it is precisely those that are exceptionally large or
small whose condition is the least stable. A very small tribe is sure to be
overthrown, slaughtered, or driven into slavery by its more powerful neighbour.
A very large tribe falls to pieces through its own unwieldiness, because, by
the nature of things, it must be either deficient in centralisation or
straitened in food, or both. A barbarian population is obliged to live
dispersedly, since a square mile of land will support only a few hunters or
shepherds; on the other hand, a barbarian government cannot be long maintained
unless the chief is brought into frequent contact with his dependants, and this
is geographically impossible when his tribe is so scattered as to cover a great
extent of territory. The law of selection must discourage every race of
barbarians which supplies self-reliant individuals in such large numbers as to
cause tribes of moderate size to lose their blind desire of aggregation. It
must equally discourage a breed that is incompetent to supply such men in
sufficiently abundant ratio to the rest of the population to ensure the
existence of tribes of not too large a size. It must not be supposed that
gregarious instincts are equally important to all forms of savage life; but I
hold, from what we know of the clannish fighting habits of our forefathers,
that they were every whit as applicable to the earlier ancestors of our
European stock as they are still to a large part of the black population of
Africa.

There is, moreover, an extraordinary power of tyranny invested in the
chiefs of tribes and nations of men, that so vastly outweighs the analogous
power possessed by the leaders of animal herds as to rank as a special
attribute of human society, eminently conducive to slavishness. If any

Gregarious
and Slavish Instincts          55

brute in a
herd makes itself obnoxious to the leader, the leader attacks him, and there is
a free fight between the two, the other animals looking on the while. But if a
man makes himself obnoxious to his chief, he is attacked, not by the chief
single-handed, but by the overpowering force of his executive. The rebellious
individual has to brave a disciplined host; there are spies who will report
his, doings, a local authority who will send a detachment of soldiers to drag
him to trial; there are prisons ready built to hold him, civil authorities
wielding legal powers of stripping him of all his possessions, and official
executioners prepared to torture or kill him. The tyrannies under which men
have lived, whether under rude barbarian chiefs, under the great despotisms of
half-civilised Oriental countries, or under some of the more polished but
little less severe governments of modern days must have had a frightful
influence in eliminating independence of character from the human race. Think
of Austria,
of Naples and
even of France
under Napoleon III. It was stated[1] in 1870
that, according to papers found at the Tuileries, 26,642 persons had been
arrested in France
for political offences since 2nd
December, 1851 and that 14,118 had been transported, exiled, or
detained in prison.

I have already spoken in Hereditary
Genius of the large effects of religious persecution in comparatively
recent years, on the natural character of races, and shall not say more about
it here; but it must not be omitted from the list of steady influences
continuing through ancient historical times down, in some degree, to the
present day, in destroying the self-reliant, and therefore the nobler races of
men.

I hold that the blind instincts evolved under these long-continued
conditions have been ingrained into our breed, and that they are a bar to our
enjoying the freedom which the forms of modern civilisation are otherwise
capable of giving us. A really intelligent nation might be held together by far
stronger forces than are derived from the purely gregarious instincts. A nation
need not be a mob of slaves, clinging to one another through fear, and for the
most part incapable of self-government, and begging to be led; but it might
consist of vigorous self-reliant men, knit to one

[1] Daily News, 17th October, 1870.

56          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

another by
innumerable ties, into a strong, tense, and elastic organisation.

The character of the corporate action of a nation in which each man
judges for himself, might be expected to possess statistical constancy. It
would be the expression of the dominant character of a large number of separate
members of the same race, and ought therefore to be remarkably uniform.
Fickleness of national character is principally due to the several members of
the nation exercising no independent judgment, but allowing themselves to be
led hither and thither by the successive journalists, orators, and
sentimentalists who happen for the time to have the chance of directing them.

Our present natural dispositions make it impossible for us to attain the
ideal standard of a nation of men all judging soberly for themselves, and
therefore the slavishness of the mass of our countrymen, in morals and
intellect, must be an admitted fact in all schemes of regenerative policy.

The hereditary taint due to the primeval barbarism of our race, and
maintained by later influences, will have to be bred out of it before our
descendants can rise to the position of free members of an intelligent society:
and I may add that the most likely nest at the present time for self-reliant
natures is to be found in States founded and maintained by emigrants.

Servility has its romantic side, in the utter devotion of a slave to the
lightest wishes and the smallest comforts of his master, and in that of a loyal
subject to those of his sovereign; but such devotion cannot be called a
reasonable self-sacrifice; it is rather an abnegation of the trust imposed on
man to use his best judgment, and to act in the way he thinks the wisest. Trust
in authority is a trait of the character of children, of weakly women, and of
the sick and infirm, but it is out of place among members of a thriving
resolute community during the fifty or more years of their middle life. Those
who have been born in a free country feel the atmosphere of a paternal
government very oppressive. The hearty and earnest political and individual
life which is found when every man has a continual sense of public

Intellectual
Differences                 57

responsibility,
and knows that success depends on his own right judgment and exertion, is
replaced under a despotism by an indolent reliance upon what its master may
direct, and by a demoralising conviction that personal advancement is best
secured by solicitations and favour.

INTELLECTUAL
DIFFERENCES.

It is needless for me to speak here about the differences in intellectual
power between different men and different races, or about the convertibility of
genius as shown by different members of the same gifted family achieving
eminence in varied ways, as I have already written at length on these subjects
in Hereditary Genius and in Antecedents of English Men of Science. It
is, however, well to remark that during the fourteen years that have elapsed
since the former book was published, numerous fresh instances have arisen of
distinction being attained by members of the gifted families whom I quoted as
instances of heredity, thus strengthening my arguments.

MENTAL
IMAGERY.

Anecdotes find their way into print, from time to timer of persons whose
visual memory is so clear and sharp as to present mental pictures that may be
scrutinised with nearly as much ease and prolonged attention as if they were
real objects. I became interested in the subject and made a rather extensive
inquiry into the mode of visual presentation in different persons, so far as
could be gathered from their respective statements. It seemed to me that the
results might illustrate the essential differences between the mental
operations of different men, that they might give some clue to the origin of visions,
and that the course of the inquiry might reveal some previously unnoticed
facts. It has done all this more or less, and I will explain the results in the
present and in the three following chapters.

It is not necessary to trouble the reader with my earlier tentative steps
to find out what I desired to learn. After the inquiry had been fairly started
it took the form of submitting a certain number of printed questions to a large
number of

58          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

persons
(see Appendix E). There is hardly any more difficult task than that of framing
questions which are not likely to be misunderstood, which admit of easy reply,
and which cover the ground of inquiry. I did my best in these respects, without
forgetting the most important part of all— namely, to tempt my
correspondents to write freely in fuller explanation of their replies, and on
cognate topics as well. These separate letters have proved more instructive and
interesting by far than the replies to the set questions.

The first group of the rather long series of queries
related to the illumination, definition, and colouring of the mental image, and
were framed thus

“Before addressing yourself to any of the
Questions on the opposite page, think of some definite object—suppose it
is your breakfast-table as you sat down to it this morning—and consider
carefully the picture that rises before your mind’s eye.

1. Illumination.—Is the image dim or fairly
clear? Is its brightness comparable to that of the actual scene?

2. Definition.—Are all the objects pretty
well defined at the same time, or is the place of sharpest definition at any
one moment more contracted than it is in a real scene?

3. Colouring.—Are
the colours of the china, of the toast, bread-crust, mustard, meat, parsley, or
whatever may have been on the table, quite distinct and natural?”

The earliest results of my inquiry amazed me. I had begun by questioning
friends in the scientific world, as they were the most likely class of men to
give accurate answers concerning this faculty of visualising, to which
novelists and poets continually allude, which has left an abiding mark on the
vocabularies of every language, and which supplies the material out of which
dreams and the well-known hallucinations of sick people are built.

To my astonishment, I found that the great majority of the men of science
to whom I first applied protested that mental imagery was unknown to them, and
they, looked on me as fanciful and fantastic in supposing that the words
“mental imagery” really expressed what I believed everybody
supposed them to mean. They had no more notion of its true nature than a
colour-blind man, who has not discerned his defect, has of the nature of
colour. They had a mental deficiency of which they were unaware, and

Mental Imagery                       59

naturally
enough supposed that those who affirmed they possessed it, were romancing. To
illustrate their mental attitude it will be sufficient to quote a few lines
from the letter of one of my correspondents, who writes

“These
questions presuppose assent to some sort of a proposition regarding the “mind’s
eye,” and the “images” which it sees. . . . This points to
some initial fallacy. . . . It is only by a figure of speech that I can
describe my recollection of a scene as a “mental image” which I can
“see” with my “mind’s eye.” . . . I do not see it
. . any more than a man sees the thousand lines of Sophocles which under due
pressure he is ready to repeat. The memory possesses it, etc.”

Much the same result followed inquiries made for me by a friend among members
of the French Institute.

On the other hand, when I spoke to persons whom I met in general society,
I found an entirely different disposition to prevail. Many men and a yet larger
number of women, and many boys and girls, declared that they habitually saw
mental imagery, and that it was perfectly distinct to them and full of colour.
The more I pressed and cross-questioned them, professing myself to be
incredulous, the more obvious was the truth of their first assertions. They
described their imagery in minute detail, and they spoke in a tone of surprise
at my apparent hesitation in accepting what they said. I felt that I myself
should have spoken exactly as they did if I had been describing a scene that
lay before my eyes, in broad daylight, to a blind man who persisted in doubting
the reality of vision. Reassured by this happier experience, I recommenced to
inquire among scientific men, and soon found scattered instances of what I
sought, though in by no means the same abundance as elsewhere. I then circulated
my questions more generally among my friends and through their hands, and
obtained the replies that are the main subject of this and of the three next
chapters. They were from persons of both sexes, and of various ages, and in the
end from occasional correspondents in nearly every civilised country.

I have also received batches of answers from various educational
establishments both in England
and America,

60          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

which were
made after the masters had fully explained the meaning of the questions, and
interested the boys in them. These have the merit of returns derived from a
general census, which my other data lack, because I cannot for a moment suppose
that the writers of the latter are a haphazard proportion of those to whom they
were sent. Indeed I know of some who, disavowing all possession of the power,
and of many others who, possessing it in too faint a degree to enable them to
express what their experiences really were, in a manner satisfactory to
themselves, sent no returns at all. Considerable statistical similarity was,
however, observed between the sets of returns furnished by the schoolboys and
those sent by my separate correspondents, and I may add that they accord in
this respect with the oral information I have elsewhere obtained. The
conformity of replies from so many different sources which was clear from the
first, the fact of their apparent trustworthiness being on the whole much
increased by cross-examination (though I could give one or two amusing instances
of break-down), and the evident effort made to give accurate answers, have
convinced me that it is a much easier matter than I had anticipated to obtain
trustworthy replies to psychological questions. Many persons, especially women
and intelligent children, take pleasure in introspection, and strive their very
best to explain their mental processes. I think that a delight in
self-dissection must be a strong ingredient in the pleasure that many are said
to take in confessing themselves to priests.

Here, then, are two rather notable results: the one is the proved
facility of obtaining statistical insight into the processes of other
persons’ minds, whatever à
priori objection may have been made as to its possibility; and the other is
that scientific men, as a class, have feeble powers of visual representation.
There is no doubt whatever on the latter point, however it may be accounted
for. My own conclusion is, that an over-ready perception of sharp mental
pictures is antagonistic to the acquirement of habits of highly-generalised and
abstract thought, especially when the steps of reasoning are carried on by
words as symbols, and that if the faculty of seeing the pictures was ever
possessed by men who think hard, it is very apt to be lost

Mental
Imagery                       61

by disuse.
The highest minds are probably those in which it is not lost, but subordinated,
and is ready for use on suitable occasions. I am, however, bound to say, that
the missing faculty seems to be replaced so serviceably by other modes of
conception, chiefly, I believe, connected with the incipient motor sense, not
of the eyeballs only but of the muscles generally, that men who declare
themselves entirely deficient in the power of seeing mental pictures can
nevertheless give life-like descriptions of what they have seen and can
otherwise express themselves as if they were gifted with a vivid visual
imagination. They can also become painters of the rank of Royal Academicians.

The facts I am now about to relate are obtained from the returns of 100
adult men, of whom 19 are Fellows of the Royal Society, mostly of very high
repute, and at least twice, and I think I may say three times, as many more are
persons of distinction in various kinds of intellectual work. As already
remarked, these returns taken by themselves do not profess to be of service in
a general statistical sense, but they are of much importance in showing how men
of exceptional accuracy express themselves when they are speaking of mental
imagery. They also testify to the variety of experiences to be met with in a
moderately large circle. I will begin by giving a few cases of the highest, of
the medium and of the lowest order of the faculty of visualising. The hundred
returns were first classified according to the order of the faculty, as judged
to the best of my ability from the whole of what was said in them, and of what
I knew from other sources of the writers; and the number prefixed to each
quotation shows its place in the class-list.

VIVIDNESS
OF MENTAL IMAGERY.

(From returns, furnished by 100 men, at least half of whom are
distinguished in science or in other fields of intellectual work.)

Cases where the faculty is very high.

1.      Brilliant,
distinct, never blotchy.

2.      Quite comparable
to the real object. I feel as though I was dazzled, e.g. when recalling the sun
to my mental vision.

62          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

3.      In some instances
quite as bright as an actual scene.

4.      Brightness as in
the actual scene.

5.      Thinking of the
breakfast-table this morning, all the objects in my mental picture are as
bright as the actual scene.

6.      The image once
seen is perfectly clear and bright.

7.      Brightness at
first quite comparable to actual scene.

8.      The mental image
appears to correspond in all respects with reality. I think it is as clear as
the actual scene.

9.      The brightness is
perfectly comparable to that of the real scene.

10.    I think the illumination of
the imaginary image is nearly equal to that of the real one.

11.    All clear and bright; all the
objects seem to me well defined at the same time.

12.    I can see my breakfast-table
or any equally familiar thing with my mind’s eye, quite as well in all
particulars as I can do if the reality is before me.

Cases where the faculty is mediocre.

46.    Fairly clear and not
incomparable in illumination with that of the real scene, especially when I
first catch it. Apt to become fainter when more particularly attended to.

47.    Fairly clear, not quite
comparable to that of the actual scene. Some objects are more sharply defined
than others, the more familiar objects coming more distinctly in my mind.

48.    Fairly clear as a general
image; details rather misty.

49.    Fairly clear, but not equal
to the scene. Defined, but not sharply; not all seen with equal clearness.

50.    Fairly clear. Brightness
probably at least one-half to two-thirds of original. [The writer is a
physiologist.] Definition varies very much, one or two objects being much more
distinct than the others, but the latter come out clearly if attention be paid
to them.

51.    Image of my breakfast-table
fairly clear, but not quite so bright as the reality. Altogether it is pretty
well defined; the part where I sit and its surroundings are pretty well so.

52.    Fairly clear, but brightness
not comparable to that of the actual scene. The objects are sharply defined;
some of them are salient, and others insignificant and dim, but by separate
efforts I can take a visualised inventory of the whole table.

53.    Details of breakfast-table
when the scene is reflected on are fairly defined and complete but I have had a
familiarity of many years with my own breakfast-table, and the above would not
be the case with a table seen casually unless there were some striking
peculiarity in it.

54.    I can recall any single
object or group of objects, but not

Mental Imagery                       63

the whole table at once. The things recalled are generally clearly
defined. Our table is a long one; I can in my mind pass my eyes all down the
table and see the different things distinctly, but not the whole table at once.

Cases
where the faculty is at the lowest.

89.    Dim and indistinct, yet I can
give an account of this morning’s breakfast-table; split herrings,
broiled chickens, bacon, rolls, rather light-coloured marmalade, faint green
plates with stiff pink flowers, the girls’ dresses, etc. etc. I can also
tell where all the dishes were, and where the people sat (I was on a visit).
But my imagination is seldom pictorial except between sleeping and Waking, when
I sometimes see rather vivid forms.

90.    Dim and not comparable in
brightness to the real scene. Badly defined with blotches of light; very
incomplete.

91.    Dim, poor definition; could
not sketch from it.  I have a
difficulty in seeing two images together.

92.    Usually very dim. I cannot
speak of its brightness, but only of its faintness. Not well defined and very
incomplete.

93.    Dim, imperfect.

94.    I am very rarely able to recall
any object whatever with any sort of distinctness. Very occasionally an object
or image will recall itself, but even then it is more like a generalised image
than an individual image. I seem to be almost destitute of visualising power,
as under control.

95.    No power of visualising.
Between sleeping and waking, illness and in health, with eyes closed, some
remarkable scenes have occasionally presented themselves, but I cannot recall
them when awake with eyes open, and by daylight, or under any circumstances
whatever when a copy could be made of them on paper. I have drawn both men and
places many days or weeks after seeing them, but it was by an effort of memory
acting on study at the time, and assisted by trial and error on the paper or
canvas, whether in black, yellow, or colour, afterwards.

96.    It is only as a figure of
speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a “mental
image” which I can “see " my “mind's eye.” The
memory possesses it, and the mind can at will roam over the whole, or study
minutely any part.

97.    No individual objects, only a
general idea of a very uncertain kind.

98.    No. My memory is not of the
nature of a spontaneous vision, though I remember well where a word occurs in a
page, how furniture looks in a room, etc. The ideas not felt to be mental
pictures, but rather the symbols of facts.

64          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

99.    Extremely dim. The
impressions are in all respects so dim, vague, and transient, that I doubt
whether they can reasonably be called images. They are incomparably less than
those of dreams.

100. My
powers are zero. To my consciousness there is almost no association of memory
with objective visual impressions. I recollect the breakfast-table, but do not
see it.

These quotations clearly show the great variety of natural powers of
visual representation, and though the returns from which they are taken have,
as I said, no claim to be those of 100 Englishmen taken at haphazard,
nevertheless, to the best of my judgment, they happen to differ among
themselves in much the same way that such returns would have done. I cannot
procure a strictly haphazard series for comparison, because in any group of
persons whom I may question there are always many too indolent to reply, or
incapable of expressing themselves, or who from some fancy of their own are
unwilling to reply. Still, as already mentioned, I have got together several
groups that approximate to what is wanted, usually from schools, and I have
analysed them as well as I could, and the general result is that the above
returns may be accepted as a fair representation of the visualising powers of
Englishmen. Treating these according to the method described in the chapter of
statistics, we have the following results, in which, as a matter of interest, I
have also recorded the highest and the lowest of the series

Highest.—Brilliant, distinct, never blotchy.

First Suboctile.—The image once
seen is perfectly clear and bright.

First Octile.—I can see my
breakfast-table or any equally familiar thing with my mind’s eye quite as
well in all particulars as I can do if the reality is before me.

First Quartile.—Fairly
clear; illumination of actual scene is fairly represented. Well defined. Parts
do not obtrude themselves, but attention has to be directed to different points
in succession to call up the whole.

Middlemost —Fairly
clear. Brightness probably at least from one-half to two-thirds of the
original. Definition varies very much, one or two objects being much more
distinct than

Mental Imagery                       65

the others,
but the latter come out clearly if attention be paid to them.

Last Quartile.—Dim, certainly
not comparable to the actual scene. I have to think separately of the several
things on the table to bring them clearly before the mind’s eye, and when
I think of some things the others fade away in confusion.

Last Octile.—Dim and not
comparable in brightness to the real scene. Badly defined, with blotches of
light; very incomplete; very little of one object is seen at one time.

Last Suboctile.—I am very
rarely able to recall any object whatever with any sort of distinctness. Very
occasionally an object or image will recall itself, but even then it is more
like a generalised image than an individual one. I seem to be almost destitute
of visualising power as under control.

Lowest.—My powers are
zero. To my consciousness there is almost no association of memory with
objective visual impressions. I recollect the table, but do not see it.

I next proceed to colour, as specified in the third of my questions, and
annex a selection from the returns classified on the same principle as in the
preceding paragraph.

COLOUR
REPRESENTATION.

Highest.—Perfectly
distinct, bright, and natural.

First Suboctile.—White
cloth, blue china, argand coffee-pot, buff stand with sienna drawing,
toast—all clear.

First Octile. —All
details seen perfectly.

First Quartile. —Colours
distinct and natural till I begin to puzzle over them.

Middlemost. —Fairly
distinct, though not certain that they are accurately recalled.

Last Quartile. —Natural, but very indistinct.

Last Octile. —Faint;
can only recall colours by a special effort for each.

Last Suboctile. —Power
is nil.

Lowest. —Power
is nil.

It may seem surprising that one out of every sixteen persons who are
accustomed to use accurate expressions should speak of their mental imagery as
perfectly clear and bright;

66          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

but it is
so, and many details are added in various returns emphasising the assertion.
One of the commonest of these is to the effect, “If I could draw, I am
sure I could draw perfectly from my mental image.” That some artists,
such as Blake, have really done so is beyond dispute, but I have little doubt
that there is an unconscious exaggeration in these returns. My reason for
saying so is that I have also returns from artists, who say as follows:
“My imagery is so clear, that if I had been unable to draw I should have
unhesitatingly said that I could draw from it.” A foremost painter of the
present day has used that expression. He finds deficiencies and gaps when he
tries to draw from his mental vision. There is perhaps some analogy between
these images and those of “faces in the fire.” One may often fancy
an exceedingly well-marked face or other object in the burning coals, but
probably everybody will find, as I have done, that it is impossible to draw it,
for as soon as its outlines are seriously studied, the fancy flies away.

Mr. Flinders Petrie, a contributor of interesting experiments on kindred
subjects to Nature, informs me that he habitually works out sums by aid of an
imaginary sliding rule, which he sets in the desired way and reads off
mentally. He does not usually visualise the whole rule, but only that part of
it with which he is at the moment concerned (see Plate II. Fig. 34, where,
however, the artist has not put in the divisions very correctly). I think this
is one of the most striking cases of accurate visualising power it is possible
to imagine.

I have a few returns from chess-players who play games blindfolded; but
the powers of such men to visualise the separate boards with different sets of
men on the different boards, some ivory, some wood, and so forth, are well
known, and I need not repeat them. I will rather give the following extract from
an article in the Pall Mall Gazette, 27th June 1882, on the
recent chess tournament at Vienna  “The modern feats of blindfold
play (without sight of board) greatly surpass those of twenty years ago. Paul
Morphy, the American, was the first who made an especial study of this kind of
display, playing some seven or eight games blindfold and simultaneously against
various inferior opponents,

Mental
Imagery                                                                                 67

and making
lucrative exhibitions in this way. His abilities in this line created a scare
among other rivals who had not practised this test of memory. Since his day
many chess-players who are gifted with strong and clear memory and power of
picturing to the mind the ideal board and men, have carried this branch of
exhibition play far beyond Morphy’s pitch; and, contemporaneously with
this development, it has become acknowledged that skill in blindfold play is
not an absolute test of similarly relative powers over the board: e.g. Blackburne and Zukertort can play
as many as sixteen, or even twenty, blindfold games at a time, and win about 80
per cent of them at least. Steinitz, who beats them both in match play, does
not essay more than six blindfold at a time. Mason does not, to our knowledge,
make any spécialité at
all of this sort.”

I have many cases of persons mentally reading off scores when playing the
pianoforte, or manuscript when they are making speeches. One statesman has
assured me that a certain hesitation in utterance which he has at times, is due
to his being plagued by the image of his manuscript speech with its original
erasures and corrections. He cannot lay the ghost, and he puzzles in trying to
decipher it.

Some few persons see mentally in print every word that is uttered; they
attend to the visual equivalent and not to the sound of the words, and they
read them off usually as from a long imaginary strip of paper, such as is
unwound from telegraphic instruments. The experiences differ in detail as to
size and kind of type, colour of paper, and so forth, but are always the same
in the same person.

A well-known frequenter of the Royal Institution tells me that he often
craves for an absence of visual perceptions, they are so brilliant and
persistent. The Rev. George Henslow speaks of their extreme restlessness; they
oscillate, rotate, and change.”

It is a mistake to suppose that sharp sight is accompanied by clear
visual memory. I have not a few instances in which the independence of the two
faculties is emphatically commented on; and I have at least one clear case
where great interest in outlines and accurate appreciation of straightness,
squareness, and the like, is unaccompanied by the power of visualising. Neither
does the faculty go with dreaming. I have cases where it is powerful, and at
the same time where dreams are rare and faint or altogether

68          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

absent. One
friend tells me that his dreams have not the hundredth part of the vigour of
his waking fancies.

The visualising and the identifying powers are by no means necessarily
combined. A distinguished writer on metaphysical topics assures me that he is
exceptionally quick at recognising a face that he has seen before, but that be
cannot call up a mental image of any face with clearness.

Some persons have the power of combining in a single perception more than
can be seen at any one moment by the two eyes.  It is needless to insist on the fact that
all who have two eyes see stereoscopically, and therefore somewhat round a
corner.  Children, who can focus
their eyes on very near objects, must be able to comprise in a single mental
image much more than a half of any small object they are examining. Animals
such as hares, whose eyes are set more on the side of the head than ours, must
be able to perceive at one and the same instant more of a panorama than we can.
I find that a few persons can, by what they often describe as a kind of
touch-sight, visualise at the same moment all round the image of a solid body.
Many can do so nearly, but not altogether round that of a terrestrial globe. An
eminent mineralogist assures me that he is able to imagine simultaneously all
the sides of a crystal with which he is familiar. I may be allowed to quote a
curious faculty of my own in respect to this. It is exercised only occasionally
and in dreams, or rather in nightmares, but under those circumstances I am
perfectly conscious of embracing an entire sphere in a single perception. It
appears to lie within my mental eyeball, and to be viewed centripetally.

This power of comprehension is practically attained in many cases by
indirect methods. It is a common feat to take in the whole surroundings of an
imagined room with such a rapid mental sweep as to leave some doubt whether it
has not been viewed simultaneously. Some persons have the habit of viewing
objects as though they were partly transparent; thus, if they so dispose a
globe in their imagination as to see both its north and south poles at the same
time, they will not be able to see its equatorial parts. They can also perceive
all the rooms of an imaginary house by a single mental glance, the walls and
floors being as if made of glass. A fourth class of persons have the habit of

Mental
Imagery                       69

recalling
scenes, not from the point of view whence they were observed, but from a
distance, and they visualise their own selves as actors on the mental stage. By
one or other of these ways, the power of seeing the whole of an object, and not
merely one aspect of it, is possessed by many persons.

The place where the image appears to lie, differs much. Most persons see
it in an indefinable sort of way, others see it in front of the eye, others at
a distance corresponding to reality. There exists a power which is rare
naturally, but can, I believe, be acquired without much difficulty, of
projecting a mental picture upon a piece of paper, and of holding it fast
there, so that it can be outlined with a pencil. To this I shall recur.

Images usually do not become stronger by dwelling on them; the first idea
is commonly the most vigorous, but this is not always the case. Sometimes the
mental view of a locality is inseparably connected with the sense of its
position as regards the points of the compass, real or imaginary. I have
received full and curious descriptions from very different sources of this
strong geographical tendency, and in one or two cases I have reason to think it
allied to a considerable faculty of geographical comprehension.

The power of visualising is higher in the female sex than in the male,
and is somewhat, but not much, higher in public schoolboys than in men. After
maturity is reached, the further advance of age does not seem to dim the
faculty, but rather the reverse, judging from numerous statements to that
effect; but advancing years are sometimes accompanied by a growing habit of
hard abstract thinking, and in these cases—not uncommon among those whom
I have questioned—the faculty undoubtedly becomes impaired. There is
reason to believe that it is very high in some young children, who seem to
spend years of difficulty in distinguishing between the subjective and objective
world. Language and book-learning certainly tend to dull it.

The visualising faculty is a natural gift, and, like all natural gifts,
has a tendency to be inherited. In this faculty the tendency to inheritance is
exceptionally strong, as I have abundant evidence to prove, especially in
respect to certain rather rare peculiarities, of which I shall speak in the
next

70          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

chapter,
and which, when they exist at all, are usually found among two, three, or more
brothers and sisters, parents, children, uncles and aunts, and cousins.

Since families differ so much in respect to this gift, we may suppose
that races would also differ, and there can be no doubt that such is the case.
I hardly like to refer to civilised nations, because their natural faculties
are too much modified by education to allow of their being appraised in an
off-hand fashion. I may, however, speak of the French, who appear to possess
the visualising faculty in a high degree. The peculiar ability they show in
prearranging ceremonials and fêtes of
all kinds, and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy, show that they
are able to foresee effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in all
technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and so
is their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase, “figurez-vous,”
or “picture to yourself,” seems to express their dominant mode of
perception. Our equivalent of “imagine” is ambiguous.

It is among uncivilised races that natural differences in the visualising
faculty are most conspicuous. Many of them make carvings and rude
illustrations, but only a few have the gift of carrying a picture in their
mind’s eye, judging by the completeness and firmness of their designs,
which show no trace of having been elaborated in that step-by-step manner which
is characteristic of draughtsmen who are not natural artists.

Among the races who are thus gifted are the commonly despised, but, as I
confidently maintain from personal knowledge of them, the much underrated
Bushmen of South Africa. They are no doubt deficient in the natural instincts
necessary to civilisation, for they detest a regular life, they are inveterate
thieves, and are incapable of withstanding the temptation of strong drink. On
the other hand, they have few superiors among barbarians in the ingenious
methods by which they supply the wants of a difficult existence, and  in the effectiveness and nattiness of
their accoutrements. One of their habits is to draw pictures on the walls of
caves of men and animals, and to colour them with ochre. These drawings were
once numerous, but they have been sadly destroyed by advancing colonisation,
and few of them, and

Mental
Imagery                       71

indeed few
wild Bushmen, now exist. Fortunately a large and valuable collection of
facsimiles of Bushman art was made before it became too late by Mr. Stow, of
the Cape Colony, who has very lately sent some
specimens of them to this country, in the hope that means might be found for
the publication of the entire series. Among the many pictures of animals in
each of the large sheets full of them, I was particularly struck with one of an
eland as giving a just idea of the precision and purity of their best work.
Others, again, were exhibited last summer at the Anthropological Institute by
Mr. Hutchinson.

The method by which the Bushmen draw is described in the following
extract from a letter written to me by Dr. Mann, the well-known authority on
South African matters of science. The boy to whom he refers belonged to a wild
tribe living in caves in the Drakenberg, who plundered outlying farms, and were
pursued by the neighbouring colonists. He was wounded and captured, then sent
to hospital, and subsequently taken into service. He was under Dr. Mann’s
observation in the year 1860, and has recently died, to the great regret of his
employer, Mr. Proudfoot, to whom he became a valuable servant.

Dr. Mann writes as follows

“This
lad was very skilful in the proverbial Bushman art of drawing animal figures,
and upon several occasions I induced him to show me how this was managed among
his people. He  invariably began by
jotting down upon paper or on a slate a number of isolated dots which presented
no connection or trace of outline of any kind to the uninitiated eye, but
looked like the stars scattered promiscuously in the sky. Having with much
deliberation satisfied himself of the sufficiency of these dots, he forthwith
began to run a free bold line from one to the other, and as he did so the form
of an animal— horse, buffalo, elephant, or some kind of
antelope—gradually developed itself. This was invariably done with a free
hand, and with such unerring accuracy of touch, that no correction of a line
was at any time attempted. I understood from the lad that this was the plan
which was invariably pursued by his kindred in making their clever
pictures.”

It is impossible, I think, for a drawing to be made on this method unless
the artist had a clear image in his

72          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

mind’s
eye of what he was about to draw, and was able, in some degree, to project it
on the paper or slate.

Other
living races have the gift of drawing, but none more so than the Eskimo. I will
therefore speak of these and not of the Australian and Tasmanian pictures, nor
of the still ruder performances of the old inhabitants of Guiana,
nor of those of some North American tribes, as the Iroquois. The Eskimos are
geographers by instinct, and appear to see vast tracts of country mapped out in
their heads. From the multitude of illustrations of their map-drawing powers, I
may mention one of those included in the journals of Captain Hall, at p. 224, which
were published in 1879 by the United States Government, under the editorship of
Professor J. E. Nourse. It is the facsimile of a chart drawn by an Eskimo who
was a thorough barbarian in the accepted sense of the word; that is to say, he
spoke no language besides his own uncouth tongue, he was wholly uneducated
according to our modern ideas, and he lived in what we should call a savage
fashion. This man drew from memory a chart of the region over which he had at
one time or another gone in his canoe. It extended from Pond’s Bay, in
lat. 73° to Fort
Churchill, in lat.
58°44', over a distance in a straight line of more than 960 nautical, or
1100 English miles, the coast being so indented by arms of the sea that its
length is six times as great. On comparing this rough Eskimo outline with the
Admiralty chart of 1870, their accordance is remarkable. I have seen many MS.
route maps made by travellers a few years since, when the scientific
exploration of the world was much less advanced than it is now, and I can
confidently say that I have never known of any traveller, white or brown,
civilised or uncivilised, in Africa, Asia, or Australia, who, being unprovided
with surveying instruments, and trusting to his memory alone, has produced a
chart comparable in extent and accuracy to that of this barbarous Eskimo. The
aptitude of the Eskimos to draw, is abundantly shown by the numerous
illustrations in Rink’s work, all of which were made by self-taught men,
and are thoroughly realistic.

So much for
the wild races of the present day; but even the Eskimo are equalled in their
power of drawing by the

Mental
Imagery                       73

men of old
times. In ages so far gone by, that the interval that separates them from our
own may be measured in perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, when Europe was
mostly icebound, a race who, in the opinion of all anthropologists, was closely
allied to the modern Eskimo, lived in caves in the more habitable places. Many
broken relics of that race have been found; some few of these are of bone
engraved with flints or carved into. figures, and among these are
representations of the mammoth, elk, and reindeer, which, if made by an English
labourer with the much better implements at his command, would certainly
attract local attention and lead to his being properly educated, and in much
likelihood to his becoming a considerable artist if he had intellectual powers
to match.

It is not
at all improbable that these prehistoric men had the same geographical
instincts as the modern Eskimo, whom they closely resemble in every known
respect. If so, it is perfectly possible that scraps of charts scratched on
bone or stone, of prehistoric Europe, when the
distribution of land, sea, and ice was very different to what it is now, may
still exist, buried underground, and may reward the zeal of some future cave
explorer.

There is
abundant evidence that the visualising faculty admits of being developed by
education. The testimony on which I would lay especial stress is derived from
the published experiences of M. Lecoq de Boisbaudran, late director of the
École Nationale de Dessein, in Paris, which are related in his Education de Za Mémoire Pittoresque.[1] He
trained his pupils with extraordinary success, beginning with the simplest
figures. They were made to study the models thoroughly before they tried to
draw them from memory. One favourite expedient was to associate the sight
memory with the muscular memory, by making his pupils follow at a distance the
outlines of the figures with a pencil held in their hands. After three or four
months practice, their visual memory became greatly strengthened. They had no
difficulty in summoning images at will, in holding them steady, and in drawing
them. Their copies

[1] Republished in an 8vo, entitled Enseignment Artistique Morel et Cie.
Paris, 1879.

74          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

were
executed with marvellous fidelity, as attested by a commission of the
Institute, appointed in 1852 to inquire into the matter, of which the eminent
painter Horace Vernet was a member. The present Slade Professor of Fine Arts at
University College, M. Légros, was a pupil
of M. de Boisbaudran. He has expressed to me his indebtedness to the system,
and he has assured me of his own success in teaching others in a somewhat
similar way.

Colonel
Moncrieff informs me that, when wintering in 1877 near Fort Garry
in North America, young Indians occasionally
came to his quarters, and that he found them much interested in any pictures or
prints that were put before them. On one of these occasions he saw an Indian
tracing the outline of a print from the Illustrated
News very carefully with the point of his knife. The reason he gave for
this odd maneuver was, that he would remember the better how to carve it when
he returned home.

I could
mention instances within my own experience in which the visualising faculty has
become strengthened by practice; notably one of an eminent electrical engineer,
who had the power of recalling form with unusual precision, but not colour. A
few weeks after he had replied to my questions, he told me that my inquiries
had induced him to practise his colour memory, and that he had done so with
such success that he was become quite an adept at it, and that the
newly-acquired power was a source of much pleasure to him.

A useful
faculty, easily developed by practice, is that of retaining a retinal picture.
A scene is flashed upon the eye; the memory of it persists, and details, which
escaped observation during the brief time when it was actually seen, may be
analysed and studied at leisure in the subsequent vision.

The
memories we should aim at acquiring are, however, such as are based on a
thorough understanding of the objects observed. In no case is this more surely
effected than in the processes of mechanical drawing, where the intended
structure has to be portrayed so exactly in plan, elevation, side view, and
sections, that the workman has simply to copy the drawing in metal, wood, or
stone, as the case may be. It is undoubtedly the fact that mechanicians,

Mental
Imagery                       75

engineers,
and architects usually possess the faculty of seeing mental images with
remarkable clearness and precision.

A few dots
like those used by the Bushmen give great assistance in creating an imaginary
picture, as proved by our general habit of working out ideas by the help of
marks and rude lines. The use of dolls by children also testifies to the value
of an objective support in the construction of mental images. The doll serves
as a kind of skeleton for the child to clothe with fantastic attributes, and
the less individuality the doll has, the more it is appreciated by the child,
who can the better utilise it as a lay figure in many different characters. The
chief art of strengthening visual, as well as every other form of memory, lies
in multiplying associations; the healthiest memory being that in which all the
associations are logical, and toward which all the senses concur in their due
proportions. It is wonderful how much the vividness of a recollection is
increased when two or more lines of association are simultaneously excited.
Thus the inside of a known house is much better visualised when we are looking
at its outside than when we are away from it, and some chess-players have told
me that it is easier for them to play a game from memory when they have a blank
board before them than when they have not.

There is an
absence of flexibility in the mental imagery of most persons. They find that
the first image they have acquired of any scene is apt to hold its place
tenaciously in spite of subsequent need of correction. They find a difficulty
in shifting their mental view of an object, and examining it at pleasure in
different positions. If they see an object equally often in many positions the
memories combine and confuse one another, forming a “composite”
blur, which they cannot dissect into its components. They are less able to
visualise the features of intimate friends than those of persons of whom they
have caught only a single glance. Many such persons have expressed to me their
grief at finding themselves powerless to recall the looks of dear relations
whom they had lost, while they had no difficulty in recollecting faces that
were uninteresting to them.

Others have
a complete mastery over their mental images. They can call up the figure of a
friend and make it sit on a chair or stand up at will; they can make it turn
round and

76          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

attitudinise
in any way, as by mounting it on a bicycle or compelling it to perform
gymnastic feats on a trapeze. They are able to build up elaborate geometric
structures bit by bit in their mind’s eye, and add, subtract, or alter at
will and at leisure. This free action of a vivid visualising faculty is of much
importance in connection with the higher processes of generalised thought,
though it is commonly put to no such purpose, as may be easily explained by an
example. Suppose a person suddenly to accost another with the following words
:—“ I want to tell you about a boat.” What is the idea that
the word “boat” would be likely to call up? I tried the experiment
with this result. One person, a young lady, said that she immediately saw the
image of a rather large boat pushing off from the shore, and that it was full
of ladies and gentlemen, the ladies being dressed in white and blue. It is
obvious that a tendency to give so specific an interpretation to a general word
is absolutely opposed to philosophic thought. Another person, who was
accustomed to philosophise, said that the word “boat” had aroused
no definite image, because he had purposely held his mind in suspense. He had
exerted himself not to lapse into any one of the special ideas that he felt the
word boat was ready to call up, such as a skiff, wherry, barge, launch, punt,
or dingy. Much more did he refuse to think of any one of these with any
particular freight or from any particular point of view. A habit of suppressing
mental imagery must therefore characterise men who deal much with abstract
ideas; and as the power of dealing easily and firmly with these ideas is the
surest criterion of a high order of intellect, we should expect that the
visualising faculty would be starved by disuse among philosophers, and this is
precisely what I found on inquiry to be the case.

But there
is no reason why it should be so, if the faculty is free in its action, and not
tied to reproduce hard and persistent forms; it may then produce generalised
pictures out of its past experiences quite automatically. It has no difficulty
in reducing images to the same scale, owing to our constant practice in
watching objects as they approach or recede, and consequently grow or diminish
in apparent size. It readily shifts images to any desired point of the field of
view, owing to our habit of looking at bodies in motion to

Mental
Imagery                       77

the right
or left, upward or downward. It selects images that present the same aspect,
either by a simple act of memory or by a feat of imagination that forces them
into the desired position, and it has little or no difficulty in reversing them
from right to left, as if seen in a looking-glass. In illustration of these
generalised mental images, let us recur to the boat, and suppose the speaker to
continue as follows :—“ The boat was a four-oared racing-boat, it
was passing quickly to the left just in front of me, and the men were bending
forward to take a fresh stroke.” Now at this point of the story the
listener ought to have a picture well before his eye. It ought to have the
distinctness of a real four-oar going to the left, at the moment when many of
its details still remained unheeded, such as the dresses of the men and their
individual features. It would be the generic image of a four-oar formed by the
combination into a single picture of a great many sight memories of those
boats.

In the
highest minds a descriptive word is sufficient to evoke crowds of shadowy
associations, each striving to manifest itself. When they differ so much from
one another as to be unfitted for combination into a single idea, there will be
a conflict, each being prevented by the rest from obtaining sole possession of
the field of consciousness. There could, therefore, be no definite imagery so
long as the aggregate of all the pictures that the word suggested of objects
presenting similar aspects, reduced to the same size, and accurately
superposed, resulted in a blur; but a picture would gradually evolve as
qualifications were added to the word, and it would attain to the distinctness
and vividness of a generic image long before the word had been so restricted as
to be individualised. If the intellect be slow, though correct in its
operations, the associations will be few, and the generalised image based on
insufficient data. If the visualising power be faint, the generalised image
will be indistinct.

I cannot
discover any closer relation between high visualising power and the
intellectual faculties than between verbal memory and those same faculties.
That it must afford immense help in some professions stands to reason, but in
ordinary social life the possession of a high visualising power, as of a high
verbal memory, may pass quite unobserved.

78          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

I have to
the last failed in anticipating the character of the answers that my friends
would give to my inquiries, judging from my previous knowledge of them; though
I am bound to say that, having received their answers, I could usually persuade
myself that they were justified by my recollections of their previous sayings
and conduct generally.

The faculty
is undoubtedly useful in a high degree to inventive mechanicians, and the great
majority of those whom I have questioned have spoken of their powers as very
considerable. They invent their machines as they walk, and see them in height,
breadth, and depth as real objects, and they can also see them in action. In
fact, a periodic action of any kind appears to be easily recalled. But the
powers of other men are considerably less; thus an engineer officer who has
himself great power of visual memory, and who has superintended the
mathematical education of cadets, doubts if one in ten can visualise an object
in three dimensions. I should have thought the faculty would be common among
geometricians, but many of the highest seem able somehow to get on without much
of it. There is a curious dictum of Napoleon
I. quoted in Hume’s Précis of Modern Tactics, p. 15, of
which I can neither find the original authority nor do I fully understand the
meaning. He is reported to have said that “there are some who, from some
physical or moral peculiarity of character, form a picture (tableau) of everything. No matter what
knowledge, intellect, courage, or good qualities they may have, these men are
unfit to command.” It is possible that “tableau” should be
construed rather in the sense of a pictorial composition, which, like an
epigrammatic sentence, may be very complete and effective, but not altogether
true.

There can,
however, be no doubt as to the utility of the visualising faculty when it is
duly subordinated to the higher intellectual operations. A visual image is the
most perfect form of mental representation wherever the shape, position, and
relations of objects in space are concerned. It is of importance in every
handicraft and profession where design is required. The best workmen are those
who visualise the whole of what they propose to do, before they take a tool in
their hands. The village smith and the carpenter who are employed on odd jobs
employ it no less for their work than

Number-Forms                        79

the
mechanician, the engineer, and the architect. The lady’s maid who
arranges a new dress requires it for the same reason as the decorator employed
on a palace, or the agent who lays out great estates. Strategists, artists of
all denominations, physicists who contrive new experiments, and in short all
who do not follow routine, have need of it. The pleasure its use can afford is
immense. I have many correspondents who say that the delight, of recalling
beautiful scenery and great works of art is the highest that they know; they
carry whole picture galleries in their minds. Our bookish and wordy education
tends to repress this valuable gift of nature. A faculty that is of importance
in all technical and artistic occupations, that gives accuracy to our
perceptions, and justness to our generalisations, is starved by lazy disuse,
instead of being cultivated judiciously in such a way as will on the whole
bring the best return. I believe that a serious study of the best method of
developing and utilising this faculty, without prejudice to the practice of
abstract thought in symbols, is one of the many pressing, desiderata in the yet
unformed science of education.

NUMBER-FORMS.

Persons who
are imaginative almost invariably think of numerals
in some form of visual imagery. If the idea of six occurs to them, the word “six” does not sound in
their mental ear, but the figure 6 in a written or printed form rises before
their mental eye. The clearness of the images of numerals, and the number of
them that can be mentally viewed at the same time, differs greatly in different
persons. The most common case is to see only two or three figures at once, and
in a position too vague to admit of definition. There are a few persons in whom
the visualising faculty is so low that they can mentally see neither numerals
nor anything else; and again there are a few in whom it is so high as to give
rise to hallucinations. Those who are able to visualise a numeral with a
distinctness comparable to reality, and to behold it as if it were before their
eyes, and not in some sort of dreamland, will define the direction in which it
seems to lie, and the distance at which it appears to be. If they were looking
at a ship on the horizon at the

80          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

moment that
the figure 6 happened to present itself to their minds, they could say whether
the image lay to the left or right of the ship, and whether it was above or
below the line of the horizon; they could always point to a definite spot in
space, and say with more or less precision that that was the direction in which
the image of the figure they were thinking of, first appeared.

Now the
strange psychological fact to which I desire to draw attention, is that among
persons who visualise figures clearly there are many who notice that the image
of the same figure invariably makes its first appearance in the same direction,
and at the same distance. Such a person would always see the figure when it
first appeared to him at (we may suppose) one point of the compass to the left
of the line between his eye and the ship, at the level of the horizon, and at
twenty feet distance. Again, we may suppose that he would see the figure 7
invariably half a point to the left of the ship, at an altitude equal to the
sun’s diameter above the horizon, and at thirty feet distance; similarly
for all the other figures. Consequently, when he thinks of the series of
numerals 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., they show themselves in a definite pattern that
always occupies an identical position in his field of view with respect to the
direction in which he is looking.

Those who
do not see figures with the same objectivity, use nevertheless the same
expressions with reference to their mental field of view. They can draw what
they see in a manner fairly satisfactory to themselves, but they do not locate
it so strictly in reference to their axis of sight and to the horizontal plane
that passes through it. It is with them as in dreams, the imagery is before and
around, but the eyes during sleep are turned inwards and upwards.

The pattern
or “ Form” in which the numerals are seen is by no means the same
in different persons, but assumes the most grotesque variety of shapes, which
run in all sorts of angles, bends, curves, and zigzags as represented in the
various illustrations to this chapter. The drawings, however, fail in giving
the idea of their apparent size to those who see them; they usually occupy a
wider range than the mental eye can take in at a single glance, and compel it
to wander. Sometimes they are nearly panoramic.

Number-Forms                        81

These Forms
have for the most part certain characteristics in common. They are stated in
all cases to have been in existence, so far as the earlier numbers in the Form
are concerned, as long back as the memory extends; they come into view quite
independently of the will, and their shape and position, at all events in the
mental field of view, is nearly invariable. They have other points in common to
which I shall shortly draw attention, but first I will endeavour to remove all
doubt as to the authenticity and trustworthiness of these statements.

I see no
“Form” myself, and first ascertained that such a thing existed
through a letter from Mr. G. Bidder, Q.C., in which he described his own case
as a very curious peculiarity. I was at the time making inquiries about the
strength of the visualising faculty in different persons, and among the
numerous replies that reached me I soon collected ten or twelve other cases in
which the writers spoke of their seeing numerals in definite forms. Though the
information came from independent sources, the expressions used were so closely
alike that they strongly corroborated one another. Of course I eagerly followed
up the inquiry, and when I had collected enough material to justify
publication, I wrote an account which appeared in Nature on 15th January
1880, with several illustrations. This has led to a wide
correspondence and to a much-increased store of information, which enables me
to arrive at the following conclusions. The answers I received whenever I have
pushed my questions, have been straightforward and precise. I have not
unfrequently procured a second sketch of the Form even after more than two
years interval, and found it to agree closely with the first one. I have also
questioned many of my own friends in general terms as to whether they visualise
numbers in any particular way. The large majority are unable to do so. But
every now and then I meet with persons who possess the faculty, and I have
become familiar with the quick look of intelligence with which they receive my
question. It is as though some chord had been struck which had not been struck
before, and the verbal answers they give me are precisely of the same type as
those written ones of which I have now so many. I cannot doubt of the
authenticity of independent statements

82          Inquiries
into. Human Faculty

which
closely confirm one another, nor of the general accuracy of the accompanying
sketches, because I find now that my collection is large enough for
classification, that they might be arranged in an approximately continuous
series. I am often told that the peculiarity is common to the speaker and to
some near relative, and that they had found such to be the case by accident. I
have the strongest evidence of its hereditary character after allowing, and
over-allowing, for all conceivable influences of education and family
tradition.

Last of
all, I took advantage of the opportunity afforded by a meeting of the
Anthropological Institute to read a memoir there on the subject, and to bring
with me many gentlemen well known in the scientific world, who have this habit
of seeing numerals in Forms, and whose diagrams were suspended on the walls.
Amongst them are Mr. G. Bidder, Q.C., the Rev. Mr. G. Henslow, the botanist;
Prof. Schuster, F.R.S., the physicist; Mr. Roget, Mr. Woodd Smith, and Colonel
Yule, C.B., the geographer. These diagrams are given in Plate I. Figs.
20—24. I wished that some of my foreign correspondents could also have
been present, such as M. Antoine d’Abbadie, the well-known French
traveller and Membre de l’Institut, and Baron v. Osten Sacken, the
Russian diplomatist and entomologist, for they had given and procured me much
information.

I feel sure
that I have now said enough to remove doubts as to the authenticity of my data.
Their trustworthiness will, I trust, be still more apparent as I proceed; it
has been abundantly manifest to myself from the internal evidences in a large
mass of correspondence, to which I can unfortunately do no adequate justice in
a brief memoir. It remains to treat the data in the same way as any other
scientific facts and to extract as much meaning from them as possible.

The
peculiarity in question is found, speaking very roughly, in about 1 out of
every 30 adult males or 15 females. It consists in the sudden and automatic
appearance of a vivid arid invariable “Form” in the mental field of
view, whenever a numeral is thought of; in which each numeral has its own
definite place. This Form may consist
of a mere line of any shape, of a peculiarly arranged row or rows of
figures, or of a shaded space.

Number-Forms                        83

I give
woodcuts of representative specimens of these Forms, and very brief
descriptions of them extracted from the letters of my correspondents.
Sixty-three other diagrams on a smaller scale will be found in Plates I.,
II. and III., and two more which are coloured are given in Plate IV.

D. A.
“From the very first I have seen numerals up to nearly 200, range
themselves always in a particular manner, and

in thinking of a number it always takes its place in the figure. The
more attention I give to the properties of numbers and their interpretations,
the less I am troubled with this clumsy framework for them, but it is indelible
in my mind’s eye even when for a long time less consciously so. The higher
numbers are to me quite abstract and unconnected with a shape. This rough and
untidy [1] production is the best I can do
towards repre-

[1] The
engraver took much pains to interpret the meaning of the rather faint but
carefully made drawing, by strengthening some of the shades. The result was
very very satisfactory, judging from the author’s own view of it, which
is as follows :—“ Certainly if the engraver has been as successful
with all the other representations as with that of my shape and its accompaniments,
your article must be entirely correct.”

84          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

senting
what I see. There was a little difficulty in the performance, because it is
only by catching oneself at unawares, so to speak, that one is quite sure that
what one sees is not affected by temporary imagination. But it does not seem
much like, chiefly because the mental picture never seems on the flat but in a
thick, dark gray atmosphere deepening in certain parts, especially where 1
emerges, and about 20. How I get from 100 to 120 I hardly know, though if I
could require these figures a few times without thinking of them on purpose, I
should soon notice. About 200 I lose all framework. I do not see the actual
figures very distinctly, but what there is of them is distinguished from the
dark by a thin whitish tracing. It is the place they take and the shape they
make collectively which is invariable. Nothing more definitely takes its place
than a person’s age. The person is usually there so long as his age is in
mind.”

T.M.
“The representation I carry in my mind of the numerical series is quite
distinct to me, so much so that I cannot think of any number but I at once see
it (as it were) in its peculiar place in the diagram. My remembrance of dates
is also nearly entirely dependent on a clear mental vision of their loci in the diagram. This, as nearly as
I can draw it, is the following

Number-Forms                        85

It is only approximately correct (if the term “correct”
be at all applicable). The numbers seem to approach more closely as I ascend
from 10 to 20, 30, 40, etc. The lines embracing a hundred numbers also seem to
approach as I go on to 400, 500, to 1000. Beyond 1000 I have only the sense of
an infinite line in the direction of the arrow, losing itself in darkness
towards the millions. Any special number of thousands returns in my mind to its
position in the parallel lines from 1 to 1000. The diagram was present in my
mind from early childhood; I remember that I learnt the multiplication table by
reference to it at the age of seven or eight. I need hardly say that the
impression is not that of perfectly straight lines, I have therefore used no
ruler in drawing it.”

J. S.
“The figures are about a quarter of an inch in length, and in ordinary
type. They are black on a white ground. The numeral 200 generally takes the
place of 100 and obliterates it. There is no light or shade, and the picture is
invariable.”

In some
cases, the mental eye has to travel along the faintly-marked and blank paths of
a Form, to the place where the numeral that is wanted is known to reside, and
then the figure starts into sight. In other cases all the numerals, as far as
100 or more, are faintly seen at once, but the figure that is wanted grows more
vivid than its neighbours; in one of the cases there is, as it were a chain,
and the particular link rises as if an unseen hand had lifted it. The Forms are
sometimes variously coloured, occasionally very brilliantly (see Plate IV.). In
all of these the definition and illumination vary much in different parts. Usually
the Forms fade away into indistinctness after 100; sometimes they come to a
dead stop. The higher numbers very rarely fill so large a space in the Forms as
the lower

86          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

ones, and
the diminution of space occupied by them is so increasingly rapid that I
thought it not impossible they might diminish according to some geometrical
law, such as that which governs sensitivity. I took many careful measurements
and averaged them, but the result did not justify the supposition.

It is
beyond dispute that these forms originate at an early age; they are
subsequently often developed in boyhood and youth so as to include the higher
numbers, and, among mathematical students, the negative, values.

Nearly all
of my correspondents speak with confidence of their Forms having been in
existence as far back as they recollect. One states that he knows he possessed
it at the age of four; another, that he learnt his multiplication table by the
aid of the elaborate mental diagram he still uses. Not one in ten is able to
suggest any clue as to their origin. They cannot be due to anything written or
printed, because they do not simulate what is found in ordinary writings or
books.

About
one-third of the figures are curved to the left, two-thirds to the right; they
run more often upward than downward. They do not commonly lie in a single
plane. Sometimes a Form has twists as well as bends, sometimes it is turned
upside down, sometimes it plunges into an abyss of immeasurable depth, or it
rises and disappears in the sky. My correspondents are often in difficulties
when trying to draw them in perspective. One sent me a stereoscopic picture
photographed from a wire that had been bent into the proper shape. In one case
the Form proceeds at first straightforward, then it makes a backward sweep high
above head, and finally recurves into the pocket, of all places! It is often
sloped upwards at a slight inclination from a little below the level of the
eye, just as objects on a table would appear to a child whose chin was barely
above it.

It may seem
strange that children should have such bold conceptions as of curves sweeping
loftily upward or downward to immeasurable depths, but I think it may be
accounted for by their much larger personal experience of the vertical
dimension of space than adults. They are lifted, tossed and swung, but adults
pass their lives very much on a level, and only judge of heights by inference

Number-Forms                        87

from the
picture on their retina. Whenever a man first ventures up in a balloon, or is
let, like a gatherer of sea-birds’ eggs, over the face of a precipice, he
is conscious of having acquired a much extended experience of the third
dimension of space.

The
character of the forms under which historical dates are visualised contrast strongly
with the ordinary Number-Forms. They are sometimes copied from the numerical
ones, but they are more commonly based both clearly and consciously on the
diagrams used in the schoolroom or on some recollected fancy.

The months
of the year are usually perceived as ovals, and they as often follow one
another in a reverse direction to those of the figures on the clock, as in the
same direction. It is a common, peculiarity that the months do not occupy equal
spaces, but those that are most important to the child extend more widely than
the rest. There are many varieties as to the topmost month; it is by no means
always January.

The Forms
of the letters of the alphabet, when imaged, as they sometimes are, in that
way, are equally easy to be accounted for, therefore the ordinary Number-Form
is the oldest of all, and consequently the most interesting. I suppose that it
first came into existence when the child was learning to count, and was used by
him as a natural mnemonic diagram, to which he referred the spoken words
“one,” “two,” “three,” etc. Also, that as
soon as he began to read, the visual symbol figures supplanted their verbal
sounds, and permanently established themselves on the Form. It therefore
existed at an earlier date than that at which the child began to learn to read;
it represents his mental processes at a time of which no other record remains;
it persists in vigorous activity, and offers itself freely to our examination.

The
teachers of many schools and colleges, some in America, have kindly questioned
their pupils for me; the results are given in the two first columns of Plate I.
It appears that the proportion of young people who see numerals in Forms is
greater than that of adults. But for the most part their Forms are neither well
defined nor complicated. I conclude that when they are too faint to be of
service they are gradually neglected, and become wholly forgotten; while

88          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

if they are
vivid and useful, they increase in vividness and definition by the effect of
habitual use. Hence, in adults, the two classes of seers and non-seers are
rather sharply defined, the connecting link of intermediate cases which is
observable in childhood having disappeared.

These Forms
are the most remarkable existing instances of what is called
“topical” memory, the essence of which appears to lie in the
establishment of a more exact system of division of labour in the different
parts of the brain, than is usually carried on. Topical aids to memory are of
the greatest service to many persons, and teachers of mnemonics make large use
of them, as by advising a speaker to mentally associate the corners, etc., of a
room with the chief divisions of the speech he is about to deliver. Those who
feel the advantage of these aids most strongly are the most likely to cultivate
the use of numerical forms. I have read many books on mnemonics, and cannot
doubt their utility to some persons; to myself the system is of no avail
whatever, but simply a stumbling-block, nevertheless I am well aware that many
of my early associations are fanciful and silly.

The
question remains, why do the lines of the Forms run in such strange and
peculiar ways? The reply is, that different persons have natural fancies for
different lines and curves. Their handwriting shows this, for handwriting is by
no means solely dependent on the balance of the muscles of the hand, causing
such and such strokes to be made with greater facility than others. Handwriting
is greatly modified by the fashion of the time. It is in reality a compromise
between what the writer most likes to produce, and what he can produce with the
greatest ease to himself. I am sure, too, that I can trace a connection between
the general look of the handwritings of my various correspondents and the lines
of their Forms. If a spider were to visualise numerals, we might expect he
would do so in some web-shaped fashion, and a bee in hexagons. The definite
domestic architecture of all animals as seen in their nests arid holes shows
the universal tendency of each species to pursue their work according to
certain definite lines and shapes, which are to them instinctive and in no way,
we may presume, logical. The same is seen in the groups and formations of
flocks of gregarious animals and in the flights of gregarious birds, among
which

Number-Forms                        89

the
wedge-shaped phalanx of wild ducks and the huge globe of soaring storks are as
remarkable as any.

I used to
be much amused during past travels in watching the different lines of search
that were pursued by different persons in looking for objects lost on the
ground, when the encampment was being broken up. Different persons had decided
idiosyncracies, so much so that if their travelling line of sight could have
scored a mark on the ground, I think the system of each person would have been
as characteristic as his Number-Form.

Children
learn their figures to some extent by those on the clock. I cannot, however,
trace the influence of the clock on the Forms in more than a few cases. In two
of them the clock-face actually appears, in others it has evidently had a
strong influence, and in the rest its influence is indicated, but nothing more.
I suppose that the complex Roman numerals in the clock do not fit in
sufficiently well with the simpler ideas based upon the Arabic ones.

The other
traces of the origin of the Forms that appear here and there, are dominoes,
cards, counters, an abacus, the fingers, counting by coins, feet and inches (a
yellow carpenter’s rule appears in one case with 56 in large figures upon
it), the country surrounding the child’s home, with its hills and dales,
objects in the garden (one scientific man sees the old garden walk and the
numeral 7 at a tub sunk in the ground where his father filled his
watering-pot). Some associations seem connected with the objects spoken of in
the doggerel verses by which children are often taught their numbers.

But the
paramount influence proceeds from the names of the numerals. Our nomenclature
is perfectly barbarous, and that of other civilised nations is not better than
ours, and frequently worse, as the French “quatre-vingt dix-huit,”
or " four score, ten
and eight,” instead of eighty-eight. We speak of ten, eleven, twelve,
thirteen, etc., in defiance of the beautiful system of decimal notation in
which we write those numbers. What we see is one-naught, one-one, one-two,
etc., and we should pronounce on that principle, with this proviso, that the
word for the “one" having to show both the place and the value,
should have a sound suggestive of “one” but not identical with it.
Let us suppose it to be the

90          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

letter o pronounced
short as in “on,” then instead of ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
etc., we might say on-naught, on-one,
on-two, on-three, etc.

The
conflict between the two systems creates a perplexity, to which conclusive
testimony is borne by these numerical forms. In most of them there is a marked
hitch at the 1 2 and this repeats itself at the 120. The run of the lines
between 1 and 20 is rarely analogous to that between 20 and 100, where it
usually first becomes regular. The ‘teens frequently occupy a larger
space than their due. It is not easy to define in words the variety of traces
of the difficulty and annoyance caused by our unscientific nomenclature, that
are portrayed vividly, and, so to speak, painfully in these pictures. They are
indelible scars that testify to the effort and ingenuity with which a sort of
compromise was struggled for and has finally been effected between the verbal
and decimal systems. I am sure that this difficulty is more serious and abiding
than has been suspected, not only from the persistency of these twists, which
would have long since been smoothed away if they did not continue to subserve
some useful purpose, but also from experiments on my own mind. I find I can
deal mentally with simple sums with much less strain if I audibly conceive the
figures as on-naught, on-one, etc., and I can both dictate and write from
dictation with much less trouble when that system or some similar one is
adopted. I have little doubt that our nomenclature is a serious though
unsuspected hindrance to the ready adoption by the public of a decimal system
of weights and measures. Three quarters of the Forms bear a duodecimal impress.

I will now
give brief explanations of the Number-Forms drawn in Plates I., II., and
III., and in the two front figures in Plate IV.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATE  I.

Fig 1 is by
Mr. Walter Larden, science-master of Cheltenham
College, who sent me a
very interesting and elaborate account of his own case, which by itself would
make a memoir; and he has collected other information for me. The Number-Forms
of one of his colleagues and of that

Number-Forms                        91

92          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

gentleman’s
sister are given in Figs. 53, 54, Plate III. I extract the following from Mr.
Larden’s letter—it is all for which I can find space

“All
numbers are to me as images of figures in general; I see them in ordinary
Arabic type (except in some special cases), and they have definite positions in
space (as shown in the Fig.). Beyond 100 I am conscious of coming down a dotted
line to the position of 1 again, and of going over the same cycle exactly as
before, e.g. with 1 20 in the place
of 20, and so on up to 140 or 150. With higher numbers the imagery is less
definite; thus, for 1140, I can only say that there are no new positions, I do
not see the entire number in the place of 40; but if I think of it as 11
hundred and 40, I see 40 in its place, 11 in its place, and 100 in its place;
the picture is not single though the ideas combine. I seem to stand near 1. I
have to turn somewhat to see from 30—40, and more and more to see from
40—100; 100 lies high up to my right and behind me. I see no shading nor
colour in the figures.”

Figs. 2 to 6 are from returns collected for me by the Rev. A. D. Hill,
science-master of Winchester College, who sent me replies from 135 boys of an
average age of 14—15. He says, speaking of their replies to my numerous
questions on visualising generally, that they “represent fairly those who
could answer anything; the boys certainly seemed interested in the subject; the
others, who had no such faculty either attempting and failing, or not finding
any response in their minds, took no interest in the inquiry.” A very
remarkable case of hereditary colour association was sent to me by Mr. Hill, to
which I shall refer later. The only five good cases of Number-Forms among the
135 boys are those shown in the Figs. I need only describe Fig. 2. The boy says

“Numbers,
except the first twenty, appear in waves; the two crossing-lines, 60—70,
140—150, never appear at the same
time. The first twelve are the image of a clock, and 13—20 a
continuation of them.”

Figs. 7, 8, are sent me by Mr. Henry F. Osborn of Princeton
in the United States,
who has given cordial assistance in obtaining information as regards
visualising generally. These two are the only Forms included in sixty returns
that he sent, 34 of which were from Princeton
College, and the
remaining 26 from Vassar (female) College.

Number-Forms                        93

Figs 9—19 and Fig. 28 are from returns communicated by Mr. W. H.
Poole, science-master of Charterhouse
College, which are very
valuable to me as regards visualising power generally. He read my questions
before a meeting of about 60 boys, who all consented to reply, and he had
several subsequent volunteers. All the answers were short, straightforward, and
often amusing. Subsequently the inquiry extended, and I have 168 returns from
him in all, containing 12 good Number-Forms, shown in Figs. 9—19, and in
Fig. 28. The first Fig. is that of Mr. Poole himself; he says, “The line
only represents position; it does not exist in my mind. After 100, I return to
my old starting-place, e.g. 140
occupies the same position as 40.”

The gross statistical result from the schoolboys is as follows
:—Total returns, 337 viz. Winchester 135, Princeton 34, Charterhouse 168;
the number of these that contained well-defined Number-Forms are 5, 1, and 12
respectively, or total 18—that is, one in twenty. It may justly be said
that the masters should not be counted, because it was owing to the accident of
their seeing the Number-Forms themselves that they became interested in the
inquiry; if this objection be allowed, the proportion would become 16 in 337,
or one in twenty-one. Again, some boys who had no visualising faculty at all
could make no sense out of the questions, and wholly refrained from answering;
this would again diminish the proportion. The shyness in some would help in a
statistical return to neutralise the tendency to exaggeration in others, but I
do not think there is much room for correction on either head. Neither do I
think it requisite to make much allowance for inaccurate answers, as the tone
of the replies is simple and straightforward. Those from Princeton,
where the students are older and had been specially warned, are remarkable for
indications of self-restraint. The result of personal inquiries among adults,
quite independent of and prior to these, gave me the proportion of 1 in 30 as a
provisional result for adults. This is as well confirmed by the present returns
of 1 in 21 among boys and youths as I could have expected.

I have not a sufficient number of returns from girls for useful
comparison with the above, though I am much

94          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

indebted to
Miss Lewis for 33 reports, to Miss Cooper of Edgbaston for 10 reports from the
female teachers at her school, and to a few other schoolmistresses, such as
Miss Stones of Carmarthen, whose returns I
have utilised in other ways. The tendency to see Number-Forms is certainly
higher in girls than in boys.

Fig. 20 is the Form of Mr. George Bidder, Q.C.; it is of much interest to
myself, because it was, as I have already mentioned, through the receipt of it
and an accompanying explanation that my attention was first drawn to the
subject. Mr. G. Bidder is son of the late Well-known engineer, the famous
“calculating boy” of the bygone generation, whose marvellous feats
in mental arithmetic were a standing wonder. The faculty is hereditary. Mr. G. Bidder
himself has multiplied mentally: fifteen figures by another fifteen figures,
but with less facility than his father. It has been again transmitted, though
in an again reduced degree, to the third generation. He says

“One
of the most curious peculiarities in my own case is the arrangement of the
arithmetical numerals. I have sketched this to the best of my ability. Every
number (at least within the first thousand, and afterwards thousands take the,
place of units) is always thought of by me in its own definite place in the
series, where it has, if I may say so, a home and an individuality. I should,
however, qualify this by saying that when I am multiplying together two large
numbers, my mind is engrossed in the operation, and the idea of locality in the
series for the moment sinks out of prominence.”

Fig. 21 is that of Prof. Schuster, F.R.S., whose visualising powers are
of a very high order, and who has given me valuable information, but want of
space compels me to extract very briefly. He says to the effect

“The diagram
of numerals which I usually see has roughly the shape of a horse-shoe, lying on
a slightly inclined plane, with the open end towards me. It always comes into
view in front of me, a little to the left, so that the right hand branch of the
horse-shoe, at the bottom of which I place 0, is in front of my left eye. When
I move my eyes without moving my head, the diagram remains fixed in space, and
does not, follow the

Number-Forms                        95

movement of
my eye. When I move the head the diagram unconsciously follows the, movement,
but I can, by an effort, keep it fixed in space as before. I can also shift it
from one part of the field to the other, and even turn it upside down. I use
the diagram as a resting-place for the memory, placing a number on it and finding
it again when wanted. A remarkable property of the diagram is a sort of
elasticity which enables me to join the two ends of the horse-shoe together
when I want to connect 100 with o. The same elasticity causes me to see that
part of the diagram on which I fix my attention larger than the rest.”

Mr. Schuster makes occasional use of a simpler form of diagram, which is
little more than a straight line variously divided, and which I need not
describe in detail.

Fig. 22 is by Colonel Yule, C.B.; it is simpler than the others, and he
has found it to become sensibly weaker in later years; it is now faint and hard
to fix.

Fig. 23. Mr. Woodd Smith

“Above
200 the form becomes vague and is soon lost, except that 999 is always in a
corner like 99. My own position in regard to it is generally nearly opposite my
own age, which is fifty now, at which point I can face either towards,
7—12, or towards 12—20, or 20—7, but never (I think) with my
back to 1 2—20.”

Fig. 24. Mr. Roget. He writes to the effect that the first twelve are
clearly derived from the spots in dominoes. After 100 there is nothing clear
but 108. The form is so deeply engraven in his mind that a strong effort of the
will was required to substitute any artificial arrangement in its place. His
father, the late Dr. Roget (well known for many years as secretary of the Royal
Society), had trained him in his childhood to the use of the memoria technica of Feinagle, in which
each year has its special place in the walls of a particular room, and the
rooms of a house represent successive centuries, but he never could locate them
in that way. They would go to what
seemed their natural homes in the arrangement shown in the figure, which had
come to him from some unknown source.

The remaining Figs., 25—28, in Plate
I., sufficiently

96          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

express
themselves. The last belongs to one of the Charter-house boys, the others
respectively to a musical critic, to a clergyman, and to a gentleman who is, I
believe, now a barrister.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATE II

Plate II. contains examples of more complicated Forms, which severally
require so much minuteness of description that I am in despair of being able to
do justice to them separately, and must leave most of them to tell their own
story.

Fig. 34 is that of Mr. Flinders Petrie, to which I have already referred
(p.66).

Fig. 37 is by Professor Herbert M’Leod, F.R.S. I
will quote his letter almost in full, as it is a very good example

“When
your first article on visualised numerals appeared in Nature, I thought of writing to tell you of my own case, of which I
had never previously spoken to any one, and which I never contemplated putting
on paper. It becomes now a duty to me to do so, for it is a fourth case of the
influence of the clock-face. [In my article I had spoken of only three cases
known to me.—F.
G.] The enclosed paper will give you a rough notion of the apparent positions
of numbers in my mind. That it is due to learning the clock is, I think, proved
by my being able to tell the clock certainly before I was four, and probably
when little more than three, but my mother cannot tell me the exact date. I had
a habit of arranging my spoon and fork on my plate to indicate the positions of
the hands, and I well remember being astonished at seeing an old watch of my
grandmother’s which had ordinary numerals in place of Roman ones. All
this happened before I could read, and I have no recollection of learning the
numbers unless it was by seeing numbers stencilled on the barrels in my
father’s brewery.

“When
learning the numbers from 12 to 20, they appeared to be vertically above the 12
of the clock, and you will see from the enclosed sketch that the most prominent
numbers which I have underlined all occur in the multiplication table. Those
doubly underlined are the most prominent [the lithographer has not rendered
these correctly.—F. G.], and just now I caught myself doing what I did
not anticipate—after doubly underlining some of the numbers, I found that
all the multiples of 12 except 84 are so marked. In the sketch I have written
in all the numbers up to 30; the others are not added merely for want of space;
they

Number-Forms                        97

98          Inquiries
into Human Faculty

appear in
their corresponding positions. You will see that 21 is curiously placed,
probably to get a fresh start for the next 10. The loops gradually diminish in
size as the numbers rise, and it seems rather curious that the numbers from 100
to 120 resemble in form those from I to 20. Beyond 144 the arrangement is less
marked, and beyond 200 they entirely vanish, although there is some hazy
recollection of a futile attempt to learn the multiplication table up to 20
times 20.”

“Neither
my mother nor my sister is conscious of any mental arrangement of numerals. I
have not found any idea of this kind among any of my colleagues to whom I have
spoken on the subject, and several of them have ridiculed the notion, and
possibly think me a lunatic for having any such feeling. I was showing the
scheme to G., shortly after your first article appeared, on the piece of paper
I enclose, and he changed the diagram to a sea-serpent [most amusingly and
grotesquely drawn.—F. G.], with the remark, ‘If you were a rich
man, and I knew I was mentioned in your will, I should destroy that piece of
paper, in case it should be brought forward as an evidence of insanity.’
I mention this in connection with a paragraph in your article.”

Fig. 40 is,
I think, the most complicated form I possess. It was communicated to me by Mr.
Woodd Smith as that of Miss L. K., a lady who was governess in a family, whom
he had closely questioned both with inquiries of his own and by submitting
others subsequently sent by myself. It is impossible to convey its full meaning
briefly, and I am not sure that I understand much of the principle of it myself.
A shows part only (I have not room for more) of the series 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, II,
13, 14, 17, 18, 19, each as two sides of a square,—that is, larger or
smaller according to the magnitude of the number; 1 does not appear anywhere. C
similarly shows part of the series (all divisible by 3) of 6, 9, 15, 21, 27,
30, 33, 39, 60, 63, 66, 69, 90, 93, 96. B shows the way in which most numbers
divisible by 4 appear. D shows the form of the numbers 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23,
25, 26, 27, 29, 41, 42—49, 81—83, 85—87, 89, 101-103,
105—107, and 109. E shows that of 31, 33—35, 37—39. The other
numbers are not clear, viz. 50, 51, 53—55, 57—59. Beyond 100 the
arrangement becomes hazy, except that the hundreds and thousands go on again in
complete, consecutive, and proportional squares indefinitely. The groups of
figures are not seen together, but one or other starts up as

Number-Forms                        99

the number
is thought of. The form has no background, and is always seen in front. No Arabic or other figures are
seen with it. Experiments were made as to the time required to get these images
well in the mental view, by reading to the lady a series of numbers as fast as
she could visualise them. The first series consisted of twenty numbers of two
figures each—thus, 17, 28, 13, 52, etc.; these were gone through on the
first trial in 22 seconds, on the second in 16, and on the third in 26. The
second series was more varied, containing numbers of one, two, and three
figures—thus 121, 117, 345, 187, 13, 6, 25, etc., and these were gone
through in three trials in 25, 25, and 22 seconds respectively, forming a
general result of 23 seconds for twenty numbers, or 4 seconds per number? A
noticeable feature in this case is the strict accordance of the scale of the
image with the magnitude of the number, and the geometric regularity of the
figures. Some that I drew, and sent for the lady to see, did not at all satisfy
her eye as to their correctness.

I should say that not a few mental calculators work by bulks rather than
by numerals; they arrange concrete magnitudes symmetrically in rank and file
like battalions, and march these about. I have one case where each number in a
Form seems to bear its own weight.

Fig. 45 15 a curious instance of a French Member of the Institute,
communicated to me by M. Antoine d’Abbadie (whose own Number-Form is
shown in Fig. 44):

“He
was asked, why he puts 4 in so conspicuous a place; he replied, ‘You see
that such a part of my name (which he wishes to withhold) means 4 in the south
of France,
which is the cradle of my family; consequently quare est ma raison d'être.' "

Subsequently, in 1880, M. d’Abbadie wrote: —

“I
mentioned the case of a philosopher whose, 4, 14, 24, etc., all step out of the
rank in his mind’s eye. He had a haze in his. mind from 60, I believe [it
was 50.— F. G.], up to 80; but latterly 80 has sprung out, not like the
sergeants 4, 14, 24; but like a captain, farther out still, and five or six
times as large as the privates 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, etc. ‘Were I
superstitious,’ said he, ‘I should conclude that my death would
occur in the 80th year of

100        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

the
century.’ The growth of 80 was sudden, and has remained constant ever
since.

This is the only case known to me of a new stage in the development of a
Number-Form being suddenly attained.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATE III.

Plate III. is intended to exhibit some instances of heredity. I have no
less than twenty-two families in which this curious tendency is hereditary, and
there may be many more of which I am still ignorant. I have found it to extend
in at least eight of these beyond the near degrees of parent and child, and
brother and sister. Considering that the occurrence is so rare as to exist in
only about one in every twenty-five or thirty males, these results are very
remarkable, and their trustworthiness is increased by the fact that the
hereditary tendency is on the whole the strongest in those cases where the
Number-Forms are the most defined and elaborate. I give four instances in which
the hereditary tendency is found, not only in having a Form at all, but also in
some degree in the shape of the Form.

Figs. 46-49 are those of various members of the Henslow family, where the
brothers, sisters, and some children of a sister have the peculiarity.

Figs. 53—54 are those of a master of Cheltenham College
and his sister.

Figs. 55—56 are those of a father and son; 57 and 58 belong to the
same family.

Figs. 59—60 are those of a brother and sister.

The lower half of the Plate explains itself. The last figure of all, Fig.
65, is of interest, because it was drawn for an intelligent little girl of only
11 years old, after she had been closely questioned by the father, and it was
accompanied by elaborate coloured illustrations of months and days of the week.
I thought this would be a good test case, so I let the matter drop for two
years, and then begged the father to question the child casually, and to send
me a fresh account. I asked at the same time if any notes had been kept of the
previous letter. Nothing could have come out more satisfactorily. No notes had
been kept; the subject

Number-Forms                      101

102        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

had passed
out of mind, but the imagery remained the same, with some trifling and very
interesting metamorphoses of details.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATE IV.

I can find room in Plate IV. for only two instances of coloured
Number-Forms, though others are described in Plate III. Fig. 64 is by Miss Rose
G. Kingsley, daughter of the late eminent writer the Rev. Charles Kingsley, and
herself an authoress. She says

“Up to
30 I see the numbers in clear white; to 40 in gray; 40-50 in flaming orange;
50-60 in green; 60—70 in dark blue; 70 1 am not sure about; 80 is
reddish, I think; and 90 is yellow; but these latter divisions are very
indistinct in my mind’s eye.”

She subsequently writes

“I now
enclose my diagram; it is very roughly done, I am afraid, not nearly as well as
I should have liked to have done it. My great fear has been that in thinking it
over I might be led to write down something more than what I actually see, but
I hope I have avoided this.”

Fig. 65 is an attempt at reproducing the form sent by Mr. George F.
Smythe of Ohio,
an American correspondent who has contributed much of interest. He says

“To me
the numbers from 1 to 20 lie on a level plane, but from 20 they slope up to 100
at an angle of about 25°. Beyond 100 they are generally all on a level, but
if for any reason I have to think of the numbers from 100 to 200, or from 200
to 300, etc., then the numbers, between these two hundreds, are arranged just
as those from 1 to 100 are. I do not, when thinking of a number, picture to
myself the figures which represent it, but I do think instantly of the place
which it occupies along the line. Moreover, in the case of numbers from I to 20
(and, indistinctly, from 20 up to 28 or 30), I always picture the
number—not the figures—as occupying a right-angled parallelogram
about twice as long as it is broad. These numbers all lie down flat and extend
in a straight line from 1 to 12 over an unpleasant, arid, sandy plain. At 1 2
the line turns abruptly to the right, passes into a pleasanter region where
grass grows, and so continues up to 20. At 20 the line turns to the left, and
passes up the before-described incline to 100. This figure will help you in
understanding my ridiculous notions. The asterisk (*) marks the

Number-Forms                      103

place where
I commonly seem to myself to stand and view the line. At times I take other
positions, but never any position to the left of the *, nor to the right of the
line from 20 upwards. I do not associate colours with numbers, but there is a
great difference in the illumination which different numbers receive. If a
traveller should start at 1 and walk to 100, he would be in an intolerable
glare of light until near 9 or 10. But at 11 he would go into a land of
darkness and would have to feel his way. At 12 light breaks in again, a
pleasant sunshine, which continues up to 19 or 20, where there is a sort of
twilight. From here to 40 the illumination is feeble, but still there is
considerable light. At 40 things light up, and until one reaches 56 or 57 there
is broad daylight. Indeed the tract from 48 to 50 is almost as bad as that from
1 to 9. Beyond 60 there is a fair amount of light up to about 97. From this
point to 100 it is rather cloudy.”

In a subsequent letter he adds

“I
enclose a picture in perspective and colour of my ‘form.’ I have
taken great pains with this, but am far from satisfied with it. I know nothing
about drawing, and consequently am unable to put upon the paper just what I
see. The faults which I find with the picture are these. The rectangles stand
out too distinctly, as something lying on the plane instead of being, as they
ought, a part of the plane. The view is taken of necessity from an unnatural
stand-point, and some way or other the region 1-12 does not look right. The
landscape is altogether too distinct in its features. I rather know that there is grass, and that there
are trees in the distance, than see them.
But the grass within a few feet of the line I see distinctly. I cannot make the
hill at the right slope down to the plane as it ought. It is too steep. I have
had my poor success in indicating my notion of the darkness which overhangs the
region of eleven. In reality it is not a cloud at all, but a darkness.

"My
sister, a married lady, thirty-eight years of age, sees numerals much as I do,
but very indistinctly. She cannot draw a figure which is not by far too
distinct.”

Most of those who associate colours with numerals do so in a vague way,
impossible to convey with truth in a painting. Of the few who see them with
more objectivity, many are unable to paint or are unwilling to take the trouble
required to match the precise colours of their fancies. A slight error in hue
or tint always dissatisfies them with their work.

Before dismissing the subject of numerals, I would call

104        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

attention
to a few other associations connected with them. They are often personified by
children, and characters are assigned to them, it may he on account of the part
they play in the multiplication table, or owing to some fanciful association
with their appearance or their sound. To the minds of some persons the
multiplication table appears dramatised, and any chance group of figures may
afford a plot for a tale. I have collated six full and trustworthy accounts,
and find a curious dissimilarity in the personifications and preferences; thus
the number 3 15 described as (1) disliked; (2) a treacherous sneak; (3) a good
old friend; (4) delightful and amusing; (5) a female companion to 2; (6) a
feeble edition of 9. In one point alone do I find any approach to unanimity,
and that is in the respect paid to 12, as in the following examples :—(1)
important and influential; (2) good and cautious—so good as to be almost
noble; (3) a more beautiful number than 10, from the many multiples that make
it up—in other words, its kindly relations to so many small numbers; (4)
a great love for 1 2, a large-hearted motherly person because of the number of
little ones that it takes, as it were, under its protection. The decimal system
seemed to me treason against this motherly 12.—All this concurs with the
importance assigned for other reasons to the number 12 in the Number-Form.

There is no agreement as to the sex of numbers; I myself had absurdly
enough fancied that of course the
even numbers would be taken to be of the male sex, and was surprised to find
that they were not. I mention this as an example of the curious way in which
our minds may be unconsciously prejudiced by the survival of some forgotten
early fancies. I cannot find on inquiring of philologists any indications of
different sexes having been assigned in any language to different numbers.

Mr. Hershon has published an analysis of the Talmud, on the odd principle
of indexing the various passages according to the number they may happen to
contain; thus such a phrase as “there were three men who,” etc.,
would be entered under the number 3. I cannot find any particular preferences
given there to especial numbers; even 7 occurs less often than I, 2, 3, 4, and
10. Their

Colour Associations                 105

respective
frequency being 47, 54, 53, 64, 54, 51; 12 occurs only sixteen times. Gamblers
have not unfrequently the silliest ideas concerning numbers, their heads being
filled with notions about lucky figures and beautiful combinations of them.
There is a very amusing chapter in Rome
Contemporaine, by E. About, in which he speaks of this in connection with,
the rage for lottery tickets.

COLOUR
ASSOCIATIONS.

Numerals are occasionally seen in Arabic or other figures, not disposed
in any particular Form, but coloured. An instance of this is represented in
Fig. 69 towards the middle part of the column, but as I shall have shortly to
enter at length into the colour associations of the author, I will pass over
this portion, of them, and will quote in preference from the letter of another
correspondent.

Baron von Osten Sacken, of whom I have already spoken, writes

“The
localisation of numerals, peculiar to certain persons, is foreign to me. In my
mind’s eye the figures appear in
front of me, within a limited space. My peculiarity, however, consists in
the fact that the numerals from I to 9 are differently coloured; (1) black, (2)
yellow, (3) pale brick red, (4) brown, (5) blackish gray, (6) reddish brown,
(7) green, (8) bluish, (9) reddish brown, somewhat like 6. These colours appear
very distinctly when I think of these figures separately; in compound figures
they become less apparent. But the most remarkable manifestation of these
colours appears in my recollections of chronology. When I think of the events
of a given century they invariably appear to me on a background coloured like
the principal figure in the dates of that century; thus events of the
eighteenth century invariably appear to me on a greenish ground, from the
colour of the figure 7. This habit clings to me most tenaciously, and the only
hypothesis I can form about its origin is the following :—My tutor, when
I was ten to twelve years old, taught me chronology by means of a diagram on
which the centuries were represented by squares, subdivided in 100 smaller
squares; the squares representing centuries had narrow coloured borders; it may be that in this way the
recollection of certain figures became associated with certain colours. I. venture this

106        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

explanation
without attaching too much importance to it, because it seems to me that if it
was true, my direct recollection of
those coloured borders would have been stronger than it is; still, the strong
association of my chronology with colour seems to plead in favour of that
explanation."

Figs. 66, 67. These two are selected out of a large collection of
coloured Forms in which the months of the year are visualised. They will
illustrate the gorgeousness of the mental imagery of some favoured persons. Of
these Fig. 66 is by the wife of an able London physician, and Fig. 67 is by
Mrs. Kempe Welch, whose sister, Miss Bevington, a well-known and thoughtful
writer, also sees coloured imagery in connection with dates. This Fig. 67 was
one of my test cases, repeated after the lapse of two years, and quite
satisfactorily. The first communication was a descriptive account, partly in
writing, partly by word of mouth; the second, on my asking for it, was a
picture which agreed perfectly with the description, and explained much that I
had not understood at the time. The small size of the Fig. in the Plate makes
it impossible to do justice to the picture, which is elaborate and on a large
scale; with a perspective of similar hills stretching away to the far distance,
and each standing for a separate year. She writes

“It is
rather difficult to give it fully without making it too definite; on each side
there is a total blank.”

The instantaneous association of colour with sound characterises a small
percentage of adults, and it appears to be rather common, though in an
ill-developed degree, among children. I can here appeal not only to my own
collection of facts, but to those of others, for the subject has latterly
excited some interest in Germany.
The first widely known case was that of the brothers Nussbaumer, published in
1873 by Professor Bruhl of Vienna,
of which the English reader will find an account in the last volume of
Lewis’s Problems of Life and Mind (p.
280). Since then many occasional notices of similar associations have appeared.
A pamphlet containing numerous cases was published in Leipsic in 1881 by two
Swiss investigators,

[Plate IV]

[left blank]

Colour
Associations                 107

Messrs.
Bleuler and Lehmann.[1] One of the authors had the faculty very
strongly, and the other had not; so they worked conjointly with advantage. They
carefully tabulated the particulars of sixty-two cases. As my present object is
to subordinate details to the general impression that I wish to convey of the
peculiarities of different minds, I will simply remark—First, that the
persistence of the colour association with sounds is fully as remarkable as
that of the Number-Form with numbers. Secondly, that the vowel sounds chiefly
evoke them. Thirdly, that the seers are invariably most minute in their
description of the precise tint and hue of the colour. They are never
satisfied, for instance, with saying “blue,” but will take a great
deal of trouble to express or to match the particular blue they mean. Fourthly,
that no two people agree, or hardly ever do so, as to the colour they associate
with the same sound. Lastly, that the tendency is very hereditary. The
publications just mentioned absolve me from the necessity of giving many
extracts from the numerous letters I have received, but I am particularly
anxious to bring the brilliancy of these colour associations more vividly
before the reader than is possible by mere description. I have therefore given
the elaborately-coloured diagrams in Plate IV., which were copied by the artist
directly from the original drawings, and which have been printed by the
superimposed impressions of different colours from different lithographic
stones. They have been, on the whole, very faithfully executed, and will serve as
samples of the most striking cases. Usually the sense of colour is much too
vague to enable the seer to reproduce the various tints so definitely as those
in this Plate. But this is by no means universally the case.

Fig. 68 is an excellent example of the occasional association of colours
with letters. It is by Miss Stones, the head teacher in a high school for
girls, who, as I have already mentioned, obtained useful information for me,
and has contributed several suggestive remarks of her own. She says

[1] Zwangmassige
Lichtempfindungen durch Schall und verwandte Erscheinungen, von E. Bleuler und K. Lehmann. Leipsig, Fues’ Verlag
(R. Reisland), 1881.

108        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

“The
vowels of the English language always appear to me, when I think of them, as
possessing certain colours, of which I enclose a diagram. Consonants, when
thought of by themselves, are of a purplish black; but when I think of a whole
word, the colour of the consonants tends towards the colour of the vowels. For
example, in the word ‘Tuesday,’ when I think of each letter
separately, the consonants are purplish-black, u is a light dove colour, 0 is a pale emerald green, and a is yellow; but when I think of the
whole word together, the first part is a light gray-green, and the latter part
yellow. Each word is a distinct whole. I have always associated the same
colours with the same letters, and no effort will change the colour of one
letter, transferring it to another. Thus the word ‘red’ assumes a
light-green tint, while the word ‘yellow’ is light-green at the
beginning and red at the end. Occasionally, when uncertain how a word should be
spelt, I have considered what colour it ought to be, and have decided in that
way. I believe this has often been a great help to me in spelling, both in
English and foreign languages. The colour of the letters is never smeared or
blurred in any way. I cannot recall to mind anything that should have first
caused me to associate colours with letters, nor can my mother remember any
alphabet or reading-book coloured in the way I have described, which I might
have used as a child. I do not associate any idea of colour with musical notes
at all, nor with any of the other senses.”

She adds

“Perhaps
you may be interested in the following account from my sister of her visual
peculiarities: ‘When I think of Wednesday I see a kind of oval flat wash
of yellow emerald green; for Tuesday, a gray sky colour; for Thursday, a
brown-red irregular polygon; and a dull yellow smudge for Friday.”’

The latter quotation is a sample of many that I have; I give it merely as
another instance of hereditary tendency. I will insert just one description of
other coloured letters than those represented in the Plate. It is from Mrs. H.,
the married sister of a well-known man of science, who writes

“I do
not know how it is with others, but to me the colours of vowels are so strongly
marked that I hardly understand their appearing of a different colour, or, what
is nearly as bad; colourless to any one. To me they are and always have been,
as long as I have known them, of the following tints

Colour Associations                 109

A,  pure
white, and like china in texture.

E,  red, not transparent; vermilion,
with china-white would represent it.

I,   light bright yellow;
gamboge.

O, black, but transparent; the colour of deep water seen through thick clear
ice.

U, purple.

Y  a dingier colour than I.”

“The
shorter sounds of the vowels are less vivid and pure in colour. Consonants are
almost or quite colourless to me, though there is some blackness about M.

“Some
association with U in the words blue and purple may account for that colour,
and possibly the E in red may have to do with that also; but I feel as if they
were independent of suggestions of the kind.

“My
first impulse is to say that the association lies solely in the sound of the
vowels, in which connection I certainly feel it the most strongly; but then the
thought of the distinct redness of such a [printed or written] word as ‘great,’ shows me that the relation must be visual as well as aural. The
meaning of words is so unavoidably associated with the sight of them, that I
think this association rather overrides the primitive impression of the colour
of the vowels, and the word ‘violet’
reminds me of its proper colour until I look at the word as a mere collection
of letters.

“Of my
two daughters, one sees the colours quite differently from this (A, blue; E,
white; I, black; 0, whity-brownish; U, opaque brown). The other is only
heterodox on the A and 0; A being with her black, and 0 white. My sister and I
never agreed about these colours, and I doubt whether my two brothers feel the
chromatic force of the vowels at all.”

I give this instance partly on account of the hereditary interest. I
could add cases from at least three different families in. which the heredity
is quite as strongly marked.

Fig. 69 fills the whole of the middle column of Plate IV., and contains
specimens from a large series of coloured illustrations, accompanied by many
pages of explanation from a correspondent, Dr. James Key of Montagu, Cape Colony.
The pictures will tell their own tale sufficiently well. I need only string
together a few brief extracts from his letters, as follows

“I
confess my inability to understand visualised numerals it is otherwise,
however, with regard to colour associations with

110        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

letters.
Ever since childhood these have been distinct and unchanging in my
consciousness; sometimes, although very seldom, I have mentioned them, to the
amazement of my teachers and the scorn of my comrades. A is brown. I say it
most dogmatically, and nothing will ever have the effect, I am convinced, of
making it appear otherwise! I can imagine no explanation of this association.
[He goes into much detail as to conceivable reasons connected with his childish
life to show that none of these would do.] Shades of brown accompany to my mind
the various degrees of openness in pronouncing A. I have never been destitute
in all my conscious existence of a
conviction that E is a clear, cold, light-gray blue. I remember daubing
in colours, when quite a little child, the picture of a jockey, whose shirt received
a large share of E, as I said to myself while daubing it with green. [He thinks
that the letter I may possibly be associated with black because it contains no
open space, and 0 with white because it does.] The colour of R has been
invariably of a copper colour, in which a swarthy blackness seems to intervene,
visually corresponding to the trilled pronunciation of R. This same appearance
exists also in J, X, and Z.”

The upper row of Fig. 69 shows the various shades of brown, associated
with different pronunciations of the letter A, as in “fame,”
“can,” “charm,” and “all” respectively. The
second, third and fourth rows similarly refer to the various pronunciations of
the other vowels. Then follow the letters of the alphabet, grouped according to
the character of the appearance they suggest. After these come the numerals.
Then I give three lines of words such as they appear to him. The first is my
own name, the second is “London,”
and the third is “Visualisation.” Proceeding conversely, Dr. Key
collected scraps of various patterns of wall paper, and sent them together with
the word that the colour of the several patterns suggested to him. Specimens of
these are shown in the three bottom lines of the Fig. I have gone through the
whole of them with care, together with his descriptions and reasons, and can
quite understand his meaning, and how exceedingly complex and refined these
associations are. The patterns are to him like words in poetry, which call up
associations that any substituted word of a like dictionary meaning would fail
to do. It would not, for example, be possible to print words by the use of
counters coloured like those in Fig. 69, because the

Colour Associations                 111

tint of
each influences that of its neighbours. It must be understood that my remarks,
though based on Dr. Key’s diagrams and statements as on a text, do not
depend, by any means, wholly upon them, but on numerous other letters from
various quarters to the same effect. At the same time I should say that Dr.
Key’s elaborate drawings and ample explanations, to which I am totally
unable to do justice in a moderate space, are the most full and striking of any
I have received. His illustrations are on a large scale, and are ingeniously
arranged so as to express his meaning.

Persons who have colour associations are unsparingly critical. To
ordinary individuals one of these accounts seems just as wild and lunatic as
another, but when the account of one seer is submitted to another seer, who is
sure to see the colours in a different way, the latter is scandalised and
almost angry at the heresy of the former. I submitted this very account of Dr.
Key to a lady, the wife of an ex governor of one of the most important British
possessions, who has vivid colour associations of her own, and who, I had some
reason to think, might have personal acquaintance with the locality where Dr.
Key lives. She could not comprehend his account at all, his colours were so
entirely different to those that she herself saw.

I have now completed as much as I propose to say about the quaint
phenomena of Visualised Forms of numbers and of dates, and of coloured
associations with letters. I shall not extend my remarks to such subjects as a
musician hearing mental music, of which I have many cases, nor to fancies
concerning the other senses, as none of these are so noteworthy. I am conscious
that the reader may desire even more assurance of the trustworthiness of the
accounts I have given than the space now at my disposal admits, or than I could
otherwise afford without wearisome iteration of the same tale, by multiplying
extracts from my large store of material. I feel, too, that it may seem
ungracious to many obliging correspondents not to have made more evident use of
what they have sent than my few and brief notices permit. Still their end and
mine will have been gained, if these remarks and illustrations succeed in
leaving a just impression of the vast

112        Inquiries into
Human Faculty

variety of
mental constitution that exists in the world, and how impossible it is for one
man to lay his mind strictly alongside that of another, except in the rare
instances of close hereditary resemblance.

VISIONARIES.

In the course of my inquiries into visual memory, I was greatly struck by
the frequency of the replies in which my informants described themselves as
subject to “visions.” Those of whom I speak were sane and healthy,
but were subject notwithstanding to visual presentations, for which they could
not account, and which in a few cases reached the level of hallucinations. This
unexpected prevalence of a visionary tendency among persons who form a part of
ordinary society seems to me suggestive and well worthy of being put on record.
The images described by different persons varied greatly in distinctness, some
were so faint and evanescent as to appear unworthy of serious notice; others
left a deep impression, and others again were so vivid as actually to deceive
the judgment. All of these belong to the same category, and it is the assurance
of their common origin that affords justification for directing scientific
attention to what many may be inclined to contemptuously disregard as the silly
vagaries of vacant minds.

The lowest order of phenomena that admit of being classed as visions are
the “Number-Forms” to which I have just drawn attention. They are
in each case absolutely unchangable, except through a gradual development in
complexity. Their diversity is endless, and the Number-Forms of different
persons are mutually unintelligible. These strange visions,” for such
they must be called, are extremely vivid in some cases, but are almost
incredible to the vast majority of mankind, who would set them down as
fantastic nonsense; nevertheless, they are familiar parts of the mental
furniture of the rest, in whose imaginations they have been unconsciously
formed, and where they remain unmodified and unmodifiable by teaching. I have
received many touching accounts of their childish experiences from persons who
see the Number-Forms, and other curious visions of which I have spoken or shall
speak. As is the

Visionaries                         113

case with
the colour-blind, so with these seers. They imagined at first that everybody
else had the same way of regarding things as themselves. Then they betrayed
their peculiarities by some chance remark that called forth a stare of
surprise, followed by ridicule and a sharp scolding for their silliness, so
that the poor little things shrank back into themselves, and never ventured
again to allude to their inner world. I will quote just one of many similar
letters as a sample. I received it, together with much interesting information,
immediately after a lecture I gave to the British Association at Swansea, in which I had
occasion to speak of the Number-Forms. The writer says

“I had
no idea for many years that everyone did not imagine numbers in the same
positions as those in which they appear to me. One unfortunate day I spoke of
it, and was sharply rebuked for my absurdity. Being a very sensitive child I
felt this acutely, but nothing ever shook my belief that, absurd or not, I
always saw numbers in this particular way. I began to be ashamed of what I
considered a peculiarity, and to imagine myself; from this and various other
mental beliefs and states, as somewhat isolated and peculiar. At your lecture
the other night, though I am now over twenty-nine, the memory of my childish
misery at the dread of being peculiar came over me so strongly that I felt I
must thank you for proving that, in this particular at any rate, my case is
most common.”

The next sort of vision that flashes unaccountably into existence is the
instant association in some persons of colour with sound, which was spoken of
in the last chapter, and on which I need not say more now.

A third curious and abiding fantasy of certain persons is invariably to
connect visualised pictures with words, the same picture to the same word.
These are perceived by many in a vague, fleeting, and variable way, but to a few
they appear strangely vivid and permanent. I have collected many cases of this
peculiarity, and am much indebted to the authoress, Mrs. Haweis, who sees these
pictures, for her kindness in sketching some of them for me, and for permitting
me to use her name in guarantee of their genuineness. She says:—
“Printed words have always had faces to me; they had definite
expressions, and certain faces made me think of certain

114        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

words. The
words had no connection with these
except sometimes by accident. The instances I give are few and ridiculous. When
I think of the word Beast, it has a face something like a gurgoyle. The word
Green has also a gurgoyle face, with the addition of big teeth. The word Blue
blinks and looks silly, and turns to the right. The word Attention has the eyes
greatly turned to the left. It is difficult to draw them properly because, like
Alice’s
‘Cheshire cat,’ which at times became a grin without a cat, these
faces have expression without features. The expression of course” [note
the naïve phrase “of
course.”—F. G.] “depends greatly on those of the letters,
which have likewise their faces and figures. All the little a’s turn
their eyes to the left, this determines the eyes of Attention. Ant, however,
looks a little down. Of course these faces are endless as words are, and it
makes my head ache to retain them long enough to draw.”

Some of the figures are very quaint. Thus the interrogation
“what?” always excites the idea of a fat man cracking a long whip.
They are not the capricious creations of the fancy of the moment, but are the
regular concomitants of the words, and have been so as far back as the memory
is able to recall.

When in perfect darkness, if the field of view be carefully watched, many
persons will find a perpetual series of changes to be going on automatically
and wastefully in it. I have much evidence of this. I will give my own
experience the first, which is striking to me, because I am very
unimpressionable in these matters. I visualise with effort; 1 am peculiarly
inapt to see “after-images,” “phosphenes,”
“lightdust,” and other phenomena due to weak sight or
sensitiveness; and, again, before I thought of carefully trying, I should have
emphatically declared that my field of view in the dark was essentially of a
uniform black, subject to an occasional light-purple cloudiness and other small
variations. Now, however, after habituating myself to examine it with the same
sort of strain that one tries to decipher a signpost in the dark, I have found out
that this is by no means the case, but that a kaleidoscopic change of patterns
and forms is continually going on, but they are too fugitive and elaborate for
me to draw with any approach to truth. I am astonished at their variety, and
cannot guess in the remotest degree the cause of them. They disappear out of
sight and

Visionaries                         115

memory the
instant I begin to think about anything, and it is curious to me that they
should often be so certainly present and yet be habitually overlooked. If they
were more vivid, the case would be very different, and it is most easily
conceivable that some very slight physiological change, short of a really
morbid character, would enhance their vividness. My own deficiencies, however,
are well supplied by other drawings in my possession. These are by the Rev.
George Henslow, whose visions are far more vivid than mine. His experiences are
not unlike those of Goethe, who said, in an often-quoted passage, that whenever
he bent his head and closed his eyes and thought of a rose, a sort of rosette
made its appearance, which would not keep its shape steady for a moment, but
unfolded from within, throwing out a succession of petals, mostly red but
sometimes green, and that it continued to do so without change in brightness and
without causing him any fatigue so long as he cared to watch it. Mr. Henslow,
when he shuts his eyes and waits, is sure in a short time to see before him the
clear image of some object or other, but usually not quite natural in its
shape. It then begins to change from one form to another, in his case also for
as long a time as he cares to watch it. Mr. Henslow has zealously made repeated
experiments on himself; and has drawn what he sees. He has also tried how far
he is able to mould the visions according to his will. In one case, after much
effort, he contrived to bring the imagery back to its starting-point, and
thereby to form what he terms a “visual cycle.” The following
account is extracted and condensed from his very interesting letter, and will
explain the illustrations copied from his drawings that are given in Plate IV.

Fig. 70. The first image that spontaneously presented itself was a
cross-bow (1); this was immediately provided with an arrow (2), remarkable for
its pronounced barb and superabundance of feathering. Some person, but too
indistinct to recognise much more of him than the hands, appeared to shoot the
arrow from the bow. The single arrow was then accompanied by a flight of arrows
from right to left, which completely occupied the field of vision. These
changed into falling stars, then into flakes of a heavy snowstorm; the ground
gradually appeared as a sheet of snow

116        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

where
previously there had been vacant space. Then a well-known rectory, fish-ponds,
walls, etc., all covered with snow, came into view most vividly and clearly
defined. This somehow suggested another view, impressed on his mind in
childhood, of a spring morning, brilliant sun, and a bed of red tulips: the tulips
gradually vanished except one, which appeared now to be isolated and to stand
in ‘the usual point of sight. It was a single tulip, but became double.
The petals then fell off rapidly in a continuous series until there was nothing
left but: the pistil (3), but (as is almost invariably the case with his
objects) that part was greatly exaggerated. The stigmas then changed into three
branching brown horns (4); then into a knob (5), while the stalk changed into a
stick. A slight bend in it seems to have suggested a centre-bit (6); this
passed into a sort of pin passing through a metal plate (7), this again into a
lock (8), and afterwards into a nondescript shape (9), distantly suggestive of
the original cross-bow. Here Mr. Henslow endeavoured to force his will upon the
visions, and to reproduce the cross-bow, but the first attempt was an utter
failure. The figure changed into a leather strap with loops (10), but while he
still endeavoured to change it into a bow the strap broke, the two ends were
separated, but it happened that an imaginary string connected them (11). This
was the first concession of his automatic chain of thoughts to his will. By a
continued effort the bow came (12), and then no difficulty was felt in
converting it into the cross-bow, and thus returning to the starting-point.

Fig. 71. Mr. Henslow writes

“Though
I can usually summon up any object thought of; it not only is somewhat
different from the real thing, but it rapidly changes. The changes are in many
cases clearly due to a suggestiveness in the article of something else, but not
always so, as in some cases hereafter described. It is not at all necessary to
think of any particular object at first, as something is sure to come
spontaneously within a minute or two. Some object having once appeared, the
automatism of the brain will rapidly induce the series of changes. The images
are sometimes very numerous, and very rapid in succession: very frequently of
great beauty and highly brilliant: Cut glass (far more elaborate than I am
conscious of ever having seen), highly chased gold

Visionaries                         117

and
silver-filigree ornaments; gold and silver flower-stands etc.; elaborate
coloured patterns of carpets in brilliant tints are not uncommon.

“Another
peculiarity resides in the extreme restlessness of my visual objects.  It is often very difficult to keep them
still, as well as from changing in character. They will rapidly oscillate or
else rotate to a most perplexing degree, and when the characters change at the
same time a critical examination is almost impossible. When the process is in
full activity, I feel as if I were a mere spectator at a diorama of a very
eccentric kind, and was in no way concerned with the getting up of the
performance.

“When
a succession of images has been passing, I sometimes determine to introduce an
object, say a watch. Very often it is next to impossible to succeed. There is
an evident struggle. The watch, pure and simple, will not come; but some hybrid
structure appears—something round, perhaps—but it lapses into a
warming-pan or other unexpected object.

“This
practice has brought to my mind very clearly the distinction between at least
one form of automatism of the brain and volition; but the strength of the
former is enormous, for the visual objects, when in full career of the change;
are imperative in their refusal to be interfered with.

“I
will now describe the cases illustrated. Fig. 71. I thought of a gun. The stock
came into view, the metal plate on the end very distinct towards the left (1).
The wood was elaborately carved. I cannot recall the pattern. As I scrutinised
it, the stock oscillated up and down, and crumpled up. The metallic plate sank
inwards: and the stock contracted so that it looked not unlike a tuning-fork
(2). I gave up the stock and proceeded cautiously to examine the lock. I got it
well into view, but no more of the gun. It turned out to be an old-fashioned
flint-lock. It immediately began to nod backwards and forwards in a manner
suggestive of the beak of a bird pecking. Consequently it forthwith became
converted into the head of a bird with a long curved beak, the knob on the lock
(3) becoming the head of the bird. I then looked to the right expecting to find
the barrel, but the snout of a saw-fish with the tip distinctly broken off
appeared instead. I had not thought either of a flint-lock or of a saw-fish:
both came spontaneously.

“Fig.
72. I have several times thought of a rosebud, as Goethe is said to have been
able to see one at will, and to observe it expand. The following are some of
the results. The bud appeared unexpectedly a moss rosebud. Its only abnormal
appearance was the inordinately elongated sepals (I). I tried to force it to
expand. It enlarged but only partially

118        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

opened (2),
when all of a sudden it burst open and the petals became reflexed (3).[1]

“Fig.
73. The spontaneous appearance of a poppy capsule* (1) dehiscing as usual by
‘pores,’ but with inordinately long and arching valves over the
pores. These valves were eminently suggestive of hooded flowers. Hence they
changed to a whorl of salvias. (2). Each blossom now gyrated rapidly in a
vertical plane. Concentrating observation on one rotating flower, it became a
‘rotating haze,’ as the rapid motion rendered the flower totally
indistinct. The ‘haze’ now shaped itself into a circle of moss with
a deep funnel-like cavity. This was suggestive of a bird’s nest. It
became lined with hair, but the nest was a deep, pointed cavity. A nest was
suggestive of eggs. Hence a series appeared (4); the two rows meeting in one at
the apex appears to have arisen from the perspective view of the nest. The eggs
all disappeared but one (5), which increased in size; the bright point of light
now shone with great intensity like a star; then it gradually grew dimmer and
dimmer till it disappeared into the usual hazy obscurity into which all [my]
visual objects ultimately vanish.”

I have a sufficient variety of cases to prove the continuity between all
the forms of visualisation, beginning with an almost total absence of it, and
ending with a complete hallucination. The continuity is, however, not simply
that of varying degrees of intensity, but of variations in the character of the
process itself, so that it is by no means uncommon to find two very different
forms of it concurrent in the same person. There are some who visualise well,
and who also are seers of visions, who declare that the vision is not a vivid
visualisation, but altogether a different phenomenon. In short, if we please to
call all sensations due to external impressions “direct,” and all others
“induced,” then there are many channels through which the
“induction” of the latter may take place, and the channel of
ordinary visualisation in the persons just mentioned is different from that
through which their visions arise.

The following is a good instance of this condition. A friend writes

“These
visions often appear with startling vividness, and so far from depending on any
voluntary effort of the mind, they

[1] The
details and illustrations of four other experiments with the image of a rosebud
have been given me. They all vary in detail.

Visionaries                         119

remain when
I often wish them very much to depart, and no effort of the imagination can
call them up. I lately saw a framed portrait of a face which seemed more lovely
than any painting I have ever seen, and again I often see fine landscapes which
bear no resemblance to any scenery I have ever looked upon. I find it difficult
to define the difference between a waking vision and a mental image, although
the difference is very apparent to myself. I think I can do it best in this
way. If you go into a theatre and look at a scene—say of a forest by
moonlight—at the back part of the stage you see every object distinctly
and sufficiently illuminated (being thus unlike a mere act of memory), but it
is nevertheless vague and shadowy, and you might have difficulty in telling
afterwards all the objects you have seen. This resembles a mental image in
point of clearness. The waking vision is like what one sees in the open street
in broad daylight, when every object is distinctly impressed on the memory. The
two kinds of imagery differ also as regards voluntariness, the image being
entirely subservient to the will, the visions entirely independent of it. They
differ also in point of suddenness, the images being formed comparatively
slowly as memory recalls each detail, and fading slowly as the mental effort to
retain them is relaxed, the visions appearing and vanishing in an instant. The
waking visions seem quite close, filling as it were the whole head, while the
mental image seems farther away in some far-off recess of the mind.”

The number of
sane persons who see visions no less distinctly than this correspondent is much
greater than I had any idea of when I began this inquiry. I have received an
interesting sketch of one, prefaced by a description of it by Mrs. Haweis. She
says:

“All
my life long I have had one very constantly-recurring vision, a sight which
came whenever it was dark or darkish, in bed or otherwise. It is a flight of
pink roses floating in a mass from left to right, and this cloud or mass of
roses is presently effaced by a flight of ‘sparks’ or gold speckles
across them. The sparks totter or vibrate from left to right, but they fly
distinctly upwards; they are like tiny blocks, half gold, half black, rather
symmetrically placed behind each other, and they are always in a hurry to
efface the roses; sometimes they have come at my call, sometimes by surprise,
but they are always equally pleasing. What interests me most is that, when a
child under nine, the flight of roses was light, slow, soft, close to my eves,
roses so large and brilliant and palpable that I tried to touch them; the scent was overpowering, the petals
perfect, with leaves peeping here and there, texture and motion all

120        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

natural.
They would stay a long time before the sparks came; and they occupied a large
area in black space. Then the sparks came slowly flying, and generally, not
always, effaced the roses at once, and every effort to retain the roses failed.
Since an early age the flight of roses has annually grown smaller, swifter, and
farther off, till by the time I was grown up my vision had become a speck, so
instantaneous that I had hardly time to realise that it was there before the
fading sparks showed that it was past. This is how they still come. The
pleasure of them is past, and it always depresses me to speak of them, though I
do not now, as I did when a child, connect the vision with any elevated
spiritual state. But when I read Tennyson’s Holy Grail, I wondered
whether anybody else had had my vision, ‘Rose-red, with beatings in
it.’ I may add, I was a London
child who never was in the country but once, and I connect no particular
flowers with that visit. I may almost say that I had never seen a rose,
certainly not a quantity of them together.”

A common form of vision is a phantasmagoria, or the appearance of a crowd
of phantoms, sometimes hurrying past like men in a street. It is occasionally
seen in broad daylight, much more often in the dark; it may be at the instant
of putting out the candle, but it generally comes on when the person is in bed,
preparing to sleep, but by no means yet asleep. I know no less than three men,
eminent in the scientific world, who have these phantasmagoria in one form or
another. It will seem curious, but it is a fact that I know of no less than
five editors of very influential newspapers who experience these night
visitations in a vivid form. Two of them have described the phenomena very
forcibly in print, but anonymously, and two others have written on cognate
experiences.

A near
relative of my own saw phantasmagoria very frequently. She was eminently sane,
and of such good constitution that her faculties were hardly impaired until
near her death at ninety. She frequently described them to me. It gave her
amusement during an idle hour to watch these faces, for their expression was
always pleasing, though never strikingly beautiful. No two faces were ever
alike, and no face ever resembled that of any acquaintance. When she was not
well the faces usually came nearer to her, sometimes almost suffocatingly
close. She never

Visionaries                         121

mistook
them for reality, although they were very distinct. This is quite a typical
case, similar in most respects to many others that I have.[1]

A notable proportion of sane persons have had not only visions, but
actual hallucinations of sight, sound, or other sense, at one or more periods
of their lives. I have a considerable packet of instances contributed by my
personal friends, besides a large number communicated to me by other
correspondents. One lady, a distinguished authoress, who was at the time a
little fidgeted, but in no way over wrought or ill, assured me that she once
saw the principal character of one of her novels glide through the door
straight up to her. It was about the size of a large doll, and it disappeared
as suddenly as it came. Another lady, the daughter of an eminent musician,
often imagines she hears her father playing. The day she told me of it the
incident had again occurred. She was sitting in her room with her maid, and she
asked the maid to open the door that she might hear the music better. The
moment the maid got up the hallucination disappeared. Again, another lady,
apparently in vigorous health, and belonging to a vigorous family, told me that
during some past months she had been plagued by voices. The words were at first
simple nonsense; then the word “pray” was frequently repeated; this
was followed by some more or less coherent sentences of little import, and
finally the voices left her. In short, the familiar hallucinations of the
insane are to be met with far more frequently than is commonly supposed, among
people moving in society and in good working health.

I have now nearly done with my summary of facts; it remains to make a few
comments on them.

The weirdness of visions lies in their sudden appearance in their
vividness while present, and in their sudden departure. An incident in the
Zoological Gardens struck me as a helpful simile. I happened to walk to the
seal-pond at a moment when a sheen rested on the unbroken surface of the water.
After waiting a while I became suddenly aware of the head of a seal, black,
conspicuous,

[1] See
some curious correspondence on this subject in the St. James Gazette, Feb. 10, 15, and 20, 1882.

122        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

and
motionless, just as though it had always been there, at a spot on which my eye
had rested a moment previously and seen nothing. Again, after a while my eye
wandered, and on its returning to the spot the seal was gone. The water had
closed in silence over its head without leaving a ripple, and the sheen on the
surface of the pond was as unbroken as when I first reached it. Where did the
seal come from, and whither did it go? This could easily have been answered if
the glare had not obstructed the view of the movements of the animal under
water. As it was, a solitary link in a continuous chain of actions stood
isolated from all the rest. So it is with the visions; a single stage in a series
of mental processes emerges into the domain of consciousness. All that precedes
and follows lies outside of it, and its character can only be inferred. We see
in a general way that a condition of the presentation of visions lies in the
over-sensitiveness of certain tracks or domains of brain action and the
under-sensitiveness of others, certain stages in a mental process being
represented very vividly in consciousness while the other stages are unfelt;
also that individualism is changed to dividualism.

I do not recollect seeing it remarked that the ordinary phenomena of
dreaming seem to show that partial sensitiveness is a normal condition during
sleep. They do so because one of the most marked characteristics of the dreamer
is the absence of common sense. He accepts wildly-incongruous visions without
the slightest scepticism. Now common sense consists in the comprehension of a
large number of related circumstances, and implies the simultaneous working of
many parts of the brain. On the other hand, the brain is known to be
imperfectly supplied with blood during sleep, and cannot therefore be at full
work. It is probable enough, from hydraulic analogies, that imperfect
irrigation would lead to partial irrigation, and therefore to suppression of
action in some parts of the brain, and that this is really the case seems to be
proved by the absence of common sense during dreams.

A convenient distinction is made between hallucinations and illusions.
Hallucinations are defined as appearances wholly due to fancy; illusions, as
fanciful perceptions of

Visionaries                         123

objects
actually seen. There is also a hybrid case which depends on fanciful visions
fancifully perceived. The problems we have to consider are, on the one hand,
those connected with “induced”
vision, and, on the other hand, those connected with the interpretation of
vision, whether the vision be direct or
induced.

It is probable that much of what passes for hallucination proper belongs
in reality to the hybrid case, being an illusive interpretation of some induced
visual cloud or blur. I spoke of the ever-varying patterns in the optical
field; these, under some slight functional change, may become more consciously
present, and be interpreted into fantasmal appearances. Many cases could be
adduced to support this view.

I will begin with illusions. What is the process by which they are
established? There is no simpler way of understanding it than by trying, as
children often do, to see “faces in the fire,” and to carefully
watch the way in which they are first caught. Let us call to mind at the same
time the experience of past illnesses, when the listless gaze wandered over the
patterns on the wall-paper and the shadows of the bed-curtains, and slowly
evoked the appearances of faces and figures that were not easily laid again.
The process of making the faces is so rapid in health that it is difficult to
analyse it without the recollection of what took place more slowly when we were
weakened by illness. The first essential element in their construction is, I believe,
the smallness of the area covered by the glance at any instant, so that the eye
has to travel over a long track before it has visited every part of the object
towards which the attention is directed generally. It is as with a plough, that
must travel many miles before the whole of a small field can be tilled, but
with this important difference—the plough travels methodically up and
down in parallel furrows; the eye wanders in devious curves, with abrupt bends,
and the direction of its course at any instant depends on four causes: (1) on
the easiest sequence of muscular motion, speaking in a general sense, (2) on
idiosyncrasy, (3) on the mood, and (4) on the associations current at the
moment. The effect of idiosyncrasy is excellently illustrated by the
“Number-Forms,” where we observe that a very special
sharply-defined track of mental vision is preferred by each

124        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

individual
who sees them. The influence of the mood of the moment is shown in the curves
that are felt appropriate to the various emotions, as the lank drooping lines
of grief; which make the weeping willow so—fit an emblem of it.  In constructing fire-faces it seems to me
that the eye in its wanderings tends to follow a favourite course, and it
especially dwells upon the marks that happen to coincide with that course. It
feels its way, easily diverted by associations based on what has just been
noticed, until at last, by the unconscious practice of a system of “trial
and error,” it hits upon a track that will suit—one that is easily
run over and that strings together accidental marks in a way that happens to
form a well-connected picture. This fancy picture is then dwelt upon; all that
is incongruous with it becomes disregarded, while all deficiencies in it are
supplied by the fantasy. The latest stages of the process might be represented
by a diorama. Three lanterns would converge on the same screen. The first
throws an image of what the imagination will discard, the second of that which
it will retain, the third of that which —it will supply. Turn on the
first and second, and the picture on the screen will be identical with that
which fell on the retina. Shut off the first and turn on the third, and the
picture will be identical with the illusion.

Turner the painter made frequent use of a practice analogous to that of
looking for fire-faces in the burning coals he was known to give colours to
children to daub in play on paper, while he keenly watched for suggestive but
accidental combinations.

I have myself had frequent experience of the automatic construction of
fantastic figures, through a practice I have somewhat encouraged for the
purpose, of allowing my hand to scribble at its own will, while I am giving my
best attention to what is being said by others, as at small committees. It is
always a surprise to me to see the result whenever I turn my thoughts on what I
have been subconsciously doing! I can rarely recollect even a few of the steps
by which the drawings were made; they grew piecemeal, with some almost
forgotten notice, from time to time, of the sketch as a whole. I can trace no
likeness between what I draw and the images that present themselves to me

Visionaries                         125

in dreams,
and I find that a very trifling accident, such as a chance dot on the paper,
may have great influence on the general character of any one of these automatic
sketches.

Visions, like dreams, are often mere patchworks built up of bits of
recollections. The following is one of these

“When
passing a shop in Tottenham Court Road, I went in order a Dutch cheese, and the
proprietor (a bullet-headed man whom I had never seen before) rolled a cheese
on the marble slab of his counter, asking me if that one would do. I answered
‘Yes,’ left the shop, and thought no more of the incident. The
following evening, on closing my eyes, I saw a head detached from the body
rolling about slightly on a white surface. I recognised the face, but could not
remember where I had seen it, and it was only after thinking about it for some
time that I identified it as that of the cheesemonger who had sold me the
cheese on the previous day. I may mention that I have often seen the man since,
and that I found the vision I saw was exactly like him, although if I had been
asked to describe the man before I saw the vision I should have been unable to
do so.”

Recollections need not be combined like mosaic work; they may be blended,
on the principle of composite portraiture. I suspect that the phantasmagoria
may be in some part due to blended memories; the number of possible
combinations would be practically endless, and each combination would give a
new face. There would thus be no limit to the dies in the coinage of the brain.

I have found that the peculiarities of visualisation, such as the
tendency to see Number-Forms, and the still rarer tendency to associate colour
with sound, is strongly hereditary, and I should infer, what facts seem to
confirm, that the tendency to be a seer of visions is equally so. Under these
circumstances we should expect that it would be unequally developed in
different races, and that a large natural gift of the visionary faculty might
become characteristic not only of certain families, as among the second-sight
seers of Scotland,
but of certain races, as that of the Gipsies.

It happens that the mere acts of fasting, of want of sleep, and of
solitary musing, are severally conducive to visions. I have myself been told of
cases in which persons accidentally long deprived of  food became for —a brief time
subject to

126        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

them. One
was of a pleasure party driven out to sea, and not being able to reach the
coast till nightfall, at a place where they got shelter but nothing to eat.
They were mentally at ease and conscious of safety, but all were troubled with
visions that were half dreams and half hallucinations. The cases of visions
following protracted wakefulness are well known, and I have collected a few of
them myself. I have already spoken of the maddening effect of solitariness: its
influence may be inferred from the recognised advantages of social amusements
in the treatment of the insane. It follows that the spiritual discipline
undergone for purposes of self-control and self-mortification, have also the
incidental effect of producing visions. It is to be expected that these should
often bear a close relation to the prevalent subjects of thought, and although
they may be really no more than the products of one portion of the brain, which
another portion of the same brain is engaged in contemplating, they often, through
error, receive a religious sanction. This is notably the case among
half-civilised races.

The number of great men who have been once, twice, or more frequently,
subject to hallucinations is considerable. A list, to which it would be easy to
make large additions, is given by Brierre de Boismont (Hallucinations, etc., 1862), from whom I translate the following
account of the star of the first Napoleon, which he heard, second-hand, from
General Rapp

“In
1806 General Rapp, on his return from the siege of Dantzic, having occasion to
speak to the Emperor, entered his study without being announced. He found him
so absorbed that his entry was unperceived. The General seeing the Emperor
continue motionless, thought he might be ill, and purposely made a noise. Napoleon
immediately roused himself; and without any preamble, seizing Rapp by the arm,
said to him, pointing to the sky, ‘Look there, up there.’ The
General remained silent, but on being asked a second time, he answered that he
perceived nothing. ‘What!’ replied the Emperor, ‘you do not
see it? It is my star, it is before you, brilliant;’ then animating by
degrees, he cried out, ‘it has never abandoned me, I see it on all great
occasions, it commands me to go forward, and it is a constant sign of good fortune
to me.’ ”

Napoleon was no doubt a consummate actor, ready and unscrupulous in
imposing on others, but I see no reason to

Visionaries                         127

distrust
the genuineness of this particular outburst, seeing that it is not the only
instance of his referring to the guidance of his star, as a literal vision and
not as a mere phrase, and that his belief in destiny was notorious.

It appears that stars of this kind, so frequently spoken of in history,
and so well known as a metaphor in language, are a common hallucination of the
insane. Brierre de Boismont has a chapter on the stars of great men. I cannot
doubt that visions of this description were in some cases the basis of that
firm belief in astrology, which not a few persons of eminence formerly
entertained.

The hallucinations of great men may be accounted for in part by their
sharing a tendency which we have seen to be not uncommon in the human race, and
which, if it happens to be natural to them, is liable to be developed in their
overwrought brains by the isolation of their lives. A man in the position of
the first Napoleon could have no intimate associates; a great philosopher who
explores ways of thought far ahead of his contemporaries must have an inner
world in which he passes long and solitary hours. Great men may be even
indebted to touches of madness for their greatness; the ideas by which they are
haunted, and to whose pursuit they devote themselves, and by which they rise to
eminence, having much in common with the monomania of insanity. Striking instances
of great visionaries may be mentioned, who had almost beyond doubt those very
nervous seizures with which the tendency to hallucinations is intimately
connected. To take a single instance, Socrates, whose daimon was an audible not a visual appearance, was, as has been
often pointed out, subject to cataleptic seizure, standing all night through in
a rigid attitude.

It is remarkable how largely the visionary temperament has manifested
itself in certain periods of history and epochs of national life. My interpretation
of the matter, to a certain extent, is this—That the visionary tendency
is much more common among sane people than is generally suspected. In early
life, it seems to be a hard lesson to an imaginative child to distinguish
between the real and visionary world. If the fantasies are habitually laughed
at and otherwise discouraged, the child soon acquires the power of
distinguishing them; any incongruity or nonconformity is quickly

128        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

noted, the
visions are found out and discredited, and are no further attended to. In this
way the natural tendency to see them is blunted by repression. Therefore, when
popular opinion is of a matter-of-fact kind, the seers of visions keep quiet;
they do not like to be thought fanciful or mad, and they hide their
experiences, which only come to light through inquiries such as these that I
have been making. But let the tide of opinion change and grow favourable to
supernaturalism, then the seers of visions come to the front. The faintly perceived
fantasies of ordinary persons become invested by the authority of reverend men
with a claim to serious regard; they are consequently attended to and
encouraged, and they increase in definition through being habitually dwelt
upon. We need not sup pose that a faculty previously non-existent has been
suddenly evoked, but that a faculty long smothered by many in secret has been
suddenly allowed freedom to express itself; and to run into extravagance owing
to the removal of reasonable safeguards.

NURTURE
AND NATURE.

Man is so educable an animal that it is difficult to distinguish between
that part of his character which has been acquired through education and
circumstance, and that which was in the original grain of his constitution. His
character is exceedingly complex, even in members of the simplest and purest
savage race; much more is it so in civilised races, who have long since been
exempted from the full rigour of natural selection, and have become more
mongrel in their breed than any other animal on the face of the earth.
Different aspects of the multifarious character of man respond to different
calls from without, so that the same individual, and, much more, the same race,
may behave very differently at different epochs. There may have been no fundamental
change of character, but a different phase or mood of it may have been evoked
by special circumstances, or those persons in whom that mood is naturally
dominant may through some accident have the opportunity of acting for the time
as representatives of the race. The same nation may be seized by a military
fervour

Nurture and Nature                  129

at one
period, and by a commercial one at another; they may be humbly submissive to a
monarch, or become outrageous republicans. The love of art, gaiety, adventure,
science, religion may be severally paramount at different times.

One of the most notable changes that can come over a nation is from a
state corresponding to that of our past dark ages into one like that of the
Renaissance. In the first case the minds of men are wholly taken up with
routine work, and in copying what their predecessors have done; they degrade
into servile imitators and submissive slaves to the past. In the second case,
some circumstance or idea has finally discredited the authorities that impeded
intellectual growth, and has unexpectedly revealed new possibilities. Then the
mind of the nation is set free, a direction of research is given to it, and all
the exploratory and hunting instincts are awakened. These sudden eras of great
intellectual progress cannot be due to any alteration in the natural faculties
of the race, because there has not been time for that, but to their being
directed in productive channels. Most of the leisure of the men of every nation
is spent in rounds of reiterated actions; if it could be spent in continuous
advance along new lines of research in unexplored regions, vast progress would
be sure to be made. It has been the privilege of this generation to have had
fresh fields of research pointed out to them by Darwin, and to have undergone a new
intellectual birth under the inspiration of his fertile genius.

A pure love of change, acting according to some law of contrast as yet
imperfectly understood, especially characterises civilised man. After a long
continuance of one mood he wants to throw himself into another for the pleasure
of setting faculties into action that have been long disused, but not yet
paralysed by disuse, and which have become fidgety for employment. He has so
many opportunities for procuring change, and has so complex a nature that he
easily learns to neglect a more deeply-seated feeling that innovation is
wicked, and which is manifest in children and barbarians. To a civilised man
the varied interests of civilisation are temptations in as many directions;
changes in dress and appliances of all kinds are comparatively

130        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

inexpensive
to him owing to the cheapness of manufactures and their variety; change of
scene is easy from the conveniences of locomotion. But a barbarian has none of
these facilities: his interests are few; his dress, such as it is, is intended
to stand the wear and tear of years, and all weathers; it is relatively very
costly, and is an investment, one may say, of his capital rather than of his
income; the invention of his people is sluggish, and their arts are few,
consequently he is perforce taught to be conservative, his ideas are fixed, and
he becomes scandalised even at the suggestion of change.

The difficulty of indulging in variety is incomparably greater among the
rest of the animal world. If a pea-hen should take it into her head that bars
would be prettier than eyes in the tail of her spouse, she could not possibly
get what she wanted. It would require hundreds of generations in which the
pea-hens generally concurred in the same view before sexual selection could
effect the desired alteration. The feminine delight of indulging her caprice in
matters of ornament is a luxury denied to the females of the brute world, and
the law that rules changes in taste, if studied at all, can only be ascertained
by observing the alternations of fashion in civilised communities.

There are long sequences of changes in character, which, like the tunes
of a musical snuff-box, are regulated by internal mechanism. They are such as
those of Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages,” and others due to the
progress of various diseases. The lives of birds are characterised by long
chains of these periodic sequences. They are mostly mute in winter, after that
they begin to sing; some species are seized in the early part of the year with
so strong a passion for migrating that if confined in a cage they will beat
themselves to death against its bars; then follow courtship and pairing,
accompanied by an access of ferocity among the males and severe fighting for
the females. Next an impulse seizes them to build nests, then a desire for
incubation, then one for the feeding of their young. After this a newly-arisen
tendency to gregariousness groups them into large flocks, and finally they fly
away to the place whence they came, goaded by a similar instinct to that which
drove them forth a few months previously. These remarkable

Associations                       131

changes are
mainly due to the conditions of their natures, because they persist with more
or less regularity under altered circumstances. Nevertheless, they are not
wholly independent of circumstance, because the period of migration, though
nearly coincident in successive years, is modified to some small extent by the
weather and condition of the particular year.

The interaction of nature and circumstance is very close, and it is
impossible to separate them with precision. Nurture acts before birth, during
every stage of embryonic and pre-embryonic existence, causing the potential
faculties at the time of birth to be in some degree the effect of nurture. We
need not, however, be hypercritical about distinctions; we know that the bulk
of the respective provinces of nature and nurture are totally different,
although the frontier between them may be uncertain, and we are perfectly
justified in attempting to appraise their relative importance.

I shall begin with describing some of the principal influences that may
safely be ascribed to education or other circumstances, all of which I include
under the comprehensive term of Nurture.

ASSOCIATIONS.

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. The same fact has been strongly brought out by the
replies from correspondents whom I had questioned on their mental imagery. It
was frequently stated that the mental image invariably evoked by certain words
was some event of childish experience or fancy. Thus one correspondent, of no
mean literary and philosophical power, recollects the left hand by a mental
reference to the rocking-horse which always stood by the side of the nursery
wall with its head in the same direction, and

132        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

had to be
mounted from the side next the wall. Another, a politician, historian, and
scholar, refers all his dates to the mental image of a nursery diagram of the
history of the world, which has since developed huge bosses to support his
later acquired information.

Our abstract ideas being mostly drawn from external experiences, their
character also must depend upon the events of our individual histories. For
example, the spoken words house and home must awaken ideas derived from the
houses and the homes with which the hearer is, in one way or other, acquainted,
and these could not be the same to persons of various social positions and
places of residence. The character of our abstract ideas, therefore, depends,
to a considerable degree, on our nurture.

I doubt, however, whether “abstract idea” is a correct phrase
in many of the cases in which it is used, and whether “cumulative
idea” would not be more appropriate. The ideal faces obtained by the
method of composite portraiture appear to have a great deal in common with
these so-called abstract ideas. The composite portraits consist, as was
explained, of numerous superimposed pictures, forming a cumulative result in
which the features that are common to all the likenesses are clearly seen;
those that are common to a few are relatively faint and are more or less
overlooked, while those that are peculiar to single individuals leave no
sensible trace at all.

This analogy, which I pointed out in a Memoir on Generic Images,[1] has been
extended and confirmed by subsequent experience of the process. One objection
to my view was that our so-called generalisations are commonly  no more than representative cases, our
recollections being apt to be unduly influenced by particular events, and not
by the totality of what we have seen; that the reason why some one recollection
has prevailed is that the case was sharply defined, or had something unusual
about it, or that our frame of mind was at the time of observation susceptible
to that particular kind of impression. I have had exactly the same difficulties
with the composites. If one  of the
individual portraits has sharp outlines, or if it is

[1]
“Generic Images,” Proc. Royal Institute, Friday, April 25, 1879,—partly
reprinted in the Appendix.

Psychometric
Experiments            133

unlike the
rest, or if the illumination is temporarily strong, it will assert itself
unduly in the result. The cases seem to me exactly analogous. I get over my
photographic difficulty very easily by throwing the sharp portrait a little out
of focus, by eliminating such portraits as have exceptional features, and by
toning down the illumination to a standard intensity.

PSYCHOMETRIC
EXPERIMENTS.

When we attempt to trace the first steps in each operation of our minds,
we are usually baulked by the difficulty of keeping watch, without embarrassing
the freedom of its action. The difficulty is much more than the common and
well-known one of attending to two things at once. It is especially due to the
fact that the elementary operations of the mind are exceedingly faint and
evanescent, and that it requires the -utmost painstaking to watch them
properly. It would seem impossible to give the required attention to the
processes of thought, and yet to think as freely as if the mind had been in no
way preoccupied. The peculiarity of the experiments I am about to describe  is that I have succeeded in evading this
difficulty. My method consists in allowing the mind to play freely for a very
brief period, until a couple or so of ideas have passed through it, and then,
while the traces or echoes of those ideas are still lingering in the brain, to
turn the attention upon them with a sudden and complete awakening; to arrest,
to scrutinise them, and to record their exact appearance. Afterwards I collate
the records at leisure, and discuss them, and draw conclusions. It must be
understood that the second of the two ideas was never derived from the first,
but always directly from the original object. This was ensured by absolutely
withstanding all temptation to reverie. I do not mean that the first idea was
of necessity a simple elementary thought; sometimes it was a glance down a
familiar line of associations, sometimes it was a well-remembered mental
attitude or mode of feeling, but I mean that it was never so far indulged in as
to displace the object that had suggested it from being the primary topic of
attention.

I must add, that I found the experiments to be extremely

134        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

trying and
irksome, and that it required much resolution to go through with them, using
the scrupulous care they demanded. Nevertheless the results well repaid the
trouble. They gave me an interesting and unexpected view of the number of the
operations of the mind, and of the obscure depths in which they took place, of
which I had been little conscious before. The general impression they have left
upon me is like that which many of us have experienced when the basement of our
house happens to be under thorough sanitary repairs, and we realise for the
first time the complex system of drains and gas and water pipes, flues,
bell-wires, and so forth, upon which our comfort depends, but which are usually
hidden out of sight, and with whose existence, so long as they acted well, we
had never troubled ourselves.

The first experiments I made were imperfect, but sufficient to inspire me
with keen interest in the matter, and suggested the form of procedure that I
have already partly described. My first experiments were these. On several
occasions, but notably on one when I felt myself unusually capable of the kind
of effort required, I walked leisurely along Pall Mall, a distance of 450
yards, during which time I scrutinised with attention every successive object
that caught my eyes, and I allowed my attention to rest on it until one or two
thoughts had arisen through direct association with that object; then I took
very brief mental note of them, and passed on to the next object. I never
allowed my mind to ramble. The number of objects viewed was, I think, about
300, for I had subsequently repeated the same walk under similar conditions and
endeavoured to estimate their number, with that result. It was impossible for
me to recall in other than the vaguest way the numerous ideas that had passed
through my mind; but of this, at least, I am sure, that samples of my whole
life had passed before me, that many bygone incidents, which I never suspected
to have formed part of my stock of thoughts, had been glanced at as objects too
familiar to awaken the attention. I saw at once that the brain was vastly more
active than I had previously believed it to be, and 12 was perfectly amazed at
the unexpected width of the field of its everyday operations. After an interval
of some days, during which I kept

Psychometric
Experiments
135

my mind from
dwelling on my first experiences, in order that it might retain as much
freshness as possible for a second experiment, I repeated the walk, and was
struck just as much as before by the variety of the ideas that presented
themselves, and the number of events to which they referred, about which I had
never consciously occupied myself of late years. But my admiration at the
activity of the mind was seriously diminished by another observation which I
then made, namely, that there had been a very great deal of repetition of
thought. The actors in my mental stage were indeed very numerous, but by no
means so numerous as I had imagined. They now seemed to be something like the
actors in theatres where large processions are represented, who march off one
side of the stage, and, going round by the back, come on again at the other. I
accordingly cast about for means of laying hold of these fleeting thoughts,
and, submitting them to statistical analysis, to find out more about their
tendency to repetition and other matters, and the method I finally adopted was
the one already mentioned. I selected a list of suitable words, and wrote them
on different small sheets of paper. Taking care to dismiss them from my
thoughts when not engaged upon them, and allowing some days to elapse before I
began to use them, I laid one of these sheets with all due precautions under a
book, but not wholly covered by it, so that when I leaned forward I could see
one of the words, being previously quite ignorant of what the word would be. Also
I held a small chronograph, which I started by pressing a spring the moment the
word caught my eye, and which stopped of itself the instant I released the
spring; and this I did so soon as about a couple of ideas in direct association
with the word had arisen in my mind. I found that I could not manage to
recollect more than two ideas with the needed precision, at least not in a
general way; but sometimes several ideas occurred so nearly together that I was
able to record three or even four of them, while sometimes I only managed one.
The second ideas were, as I have already said, never derived from the first,
but always direct from the word itself; for I kept my attention firmly fixed on
the word, and the associated ideas were seen only by a half glance. When the
two ideas had occurred,

136        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

I stopped
the chronograph and wrote them down, and the time they occupied. I soon got
into the way of doing all this in a very methodical and automatic manner,
keeping the mind perfectly calm and neutral, but intent and, as it were, at
full cock and on hair trigger, before displaying the word. There was no
disturbance occasioned by thinking of the forthcoming revulsion of the mind the
moment before the chronograph was stopped. My feeling before stopping, it was
simply that I had delayed long enough, and this in no way interfered with the
free action of the mind. I found no trouble in ensuring the complete fairness
of the experiment, by using a number of little precautions, hardly necessary to
describe, that practice quickly suggested, but it was a most repugnant and
laborious work, and it was only by strong self-control that I went through my
schedule according to programme. The list of words that I finally secured was
75 in number, though I began with more. I went through them on four separate
occasions, under very different circumstances, in England and abroad, and at
intervals of about a month. In no case were the associations governed to any
degree worth recording, by remembering what had occurred to me on previous
occasions, for I found that the process itself had great influence in
discharging the memory of what it had just been engaged in, and I, of course,
took care between the experiments never to let my thoughts revert to the words.
The results seem to me to be as trustworthy as any other statistical series
that has been collected with equal care.

On throwing these results into a common statistical hotchpot, I first
examined into the rate at which these associated ideas were formed. It took a
total time of 660 seconds to form the 505 ideas; that is, at about the rate of
50 in a minute, or 3000 in an hour. This would be miserably slow work in
reverie, or wherever the thought follows the lead of each association that
successively presents itself. In the present case, much time was lost in
mentally taking the word in, owing to the quiet unobtrusive way in which I
found it necessary to bring it into view, so as not to distract the thoughts.
Moreover, a substantive standing by itself is usually the equivalent of too
abstract an idea for us to conceive properly without delay. Thus it is very

Psychometric
Experiments            137

difficult
to get a quick conception of the word “carriage,” because there are
so many different kinds—two-wheeled, four-wheeled, open and closed, and
all of them in so many different possible positions, that the mind possibly
hesitates amidst an obscure sense of many alternatives that cannot blend
together. But limit the idea to say a laudau, and the mental association declares
itself more quickly. Say a laudau coming down the street to opposite the door,
and an image of many blended laudaus that have done so forms itself without the
least hesitation.

Next, I found that my list of 75 words gone over 4
times, had given rise to ideas and 13 cases of puzzle, in which nothing
sufficiently definite to note occurred within the brief maximum period of about
4 seconds, that I allowed myself to any single trial. Of these 505 only 289
were different. The precise proportions in which the 505 were distributed in
quadruplets, triplets, doublets, or singles, is shown in the uppermost lines of
Table I. The same facts are given under another form in the lower lines of the
Table, which show how the 289 different ideas were distributed in cases of
fourfold, treble, double, or single occurrences.

TABLE I.

RECURRENT ASSOCIATIONS.

Total Number
of Associations

Occurring in

Quadruplets.

Triplets.

Doublets.

Singles.

505

116

108

114

167

Per cent 100

23

21

23

33

Total Number
of Different Associations

Occurring

Four times

Three times

Twice.

Once.

289

29

36

57

167

Per cent 100

10

12

20

58

138        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

I was fully prepared to find much iteration in my ideas, but had little
expected that out of every hundred words twenty-three would give rise to
exactly the same association in every one of the four trials; twenty-one to the
same association in three out of the four, and so on, the experiments having
been purposely conducted under very different conditions of time and local circumstances.
This shows much less variety in the mental stock of ideas than I had expected,
and makes us feel that the roadways of our minds are worn into very deep ruts.
I conclude from the proved number of faint and barely conscious thoughts, and
from the proved iteration of them, that the mind is perpetually travelling over
familiar ways without our memory retaining any impression of its excursions.
Its footsteps are so light and fleeting that it is only by such experiments as
I have described that we can learn anything about them. It is apparently always
engaged in mumbling over its old stores, and if any one of these is wholly
neglected for a while, it is apt to be forgotten, perhaps irrecoverably. It is
by no means the keenness of interest and of the attention when first observing
an object, that fixes it in the recollection. We pore over the pages of a Bradshaw, and study the trains for some
particular journey with the greatest interest; but the event passes by, and the
hours and other facts which we once so eagerly considered become absolutely
forgotten. So in games of whist, and in a large number of similar instances. As
I understand it, the subject must have a continued living interest in order to
retain an abiding place in the memory. The mind must refer to it frequently,
but whether it does so consciously or unconsciously is not perhaps a matter of
much importance. Otherwise, as a general rule, the recollection sinks, and
appears to be utterly drowned in the waters of Lethe.

The instances, according to my personal experience, are very rare, and
even those are not very satisfactory, in which some event recalls a memory that
had lain absolutely dormant for many
years. In this very series of experiments a recollection which I thought had
entirely lapsed appeared under no less than three different aspects on
different occasions. It was this: when I was a boy, my father, who was anxious
that I should learn something of physical science, which was

Psychometric
Experiments            139

then never
taught at school, arranged with the owner of a large chemist’s shop to
let me dabble at chemistry for a few days in his laboratory. I had not thought
of this fact, so far as I was aware, for many years; but in scrutinising the
fleeting associations called up by the various words, I traced two mental
visual images (an alembic and a particular arrangement of tables and light),
and one mental sense of smell (chlorine gas) to that very laboratory. I
recognised that these images appeared familiar to me, but I had not thought of their
origin. No doubt if some strange conjunction of circumstances had suddenly
recalled those three associations at the same time, with perhaps two or three
other collateral matters which may be still living in my memory, but which I no
not as yet identify, a mental perception of startling vividness would be the
result, and I should have falsely imagined that it had supernaturally, as it
were, started into life from an entire oblivion extending over many years.
Probably many persons would have registered such a case as evidence that things
once perceived can never wholly vanish from the recollection, but that in the
hour of death, or under some excitement, every event of a past life may
reappear. To this view I entirely dissent. Forgetfulness appears absolute in
the vast majority of cases, and our supposed recollections of a past life are,
I believe, no more than that a large number of episodes in it, to be reckoned
perhaps in hundreds of thousands, but certainly not in tens of hundreds of
thousands, that have escaped oblivion. Every one of the fleeting,
half-conscious thoughts that were the subject of my experiments, admitted of
being vivified by keen attention, or by some appropriate association, but I
strongly suspect that ideas which have long since ceased to fleet through the
brain, owing to the absence of current associations to call them up, disappear
wholly. A comparison of old memories with a newly-met friend of one’s
boyhood, about the events we then witnessed together, show how much we had each
of us forgotten. Our recollections do not tally. Actors and incidents that seem
to have been of primary importance in those events to the one have been utterly
forgotten by the other. The recollection of our earlier years are, in truth,
very scanty, as any one will find who tries to enumerate them.

140        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

My associated ideas were for the most part due to my own unshared
experiences, and the list of them would necessarily differ widely from that
which another person would draw up who might repeat my experiments. Therefore
one sees clearly, and I may say, one can see measurably, how impossible it is in a general way for two grown-up
persons to lay their minds side, by side together in perfect accord. The same
sentence cannot produce precisely the same effect on both, and the first quick
impressions that any given word in it may convey, will differ widely in the two
minds.

I took pains to determine as far as feasible the dates of my life at
which each of the associated ideas was first attached to the word. There were
124 cases in which identification was satisfactory, and they were distributed
as in Table II.

TABLE II.

RELATIVE NUMBER OF ASSOCIATIONS FORMED AT
DIFFERENT PERIODS OF LIFE.

Total number of different Associations

Occurring

Whose first formation was in

four times

three times

twice.

once.

Per cent

Per cent

Per cent

Per cent

Per cent

48

39

12

10

11

9

9

7

16

13

boyhood and youth

57

46

10

8

8

7

6

5

33

26

subsequent manhood

19

15

—

—

4

3

1

1

14

11

quite recent events.

124

100

22

18

23

19

16

13

63

50

Totals

It will be seen from the Table that out of the 48 earliest associations
no less than 12, or one quarter of them, occurred in each of the four trials;
of the associations first formed in manhood, 10, or about one-sixth of them,
had a similar recurrence, but as to the 19 other associations first formed in
quite recent times, not one of them occurred in the whole of the four trials.
Hence we may see the greater fixity of the earlier associations, and might
measurably determine

Psychometric Experiments            141

the
decrease of fixity as the date of their first formation becomes less remote.

The largeness of the number 33 in the middle entry of the last column but
one, which disconcerts the run of the series, is wholly due to a visual memory
of places seen in manhood. I will not speak about this now, as I shall have to
refer to it farther on. Neglecting, for the moment, this unique class of
occurrences, it will be seen that one-half of the associations date from the
period of life before leaving college; and it may easily be imagined that many
of these refer to common events in an English education. Nay further, on
looking through the list of all the associations it was easy to see how they
are pervaded by purely English ideas, and especially such as are prevalent in
that stratum of English society in which I was born and bred, and have
subsequently lived. In illustration of this, I may mention an anecdote of a
matter which greatly impressed me at the time. I was staying in a country house
with a very pleasant party of young and old, including persons whose education
and versatility were certainly not below the social average. One evening we
played at a round game, which consisted in each of us drawing as absurd a
scrawl as he or she could, representing some historical event; the pictures
were then shuffled and passed successively from hand to hand, every one writing
down independently their interpretation of the picture, as to what the
historical event was that the artist intended to depict by the scrawl. I was
astonished at the sameness of our ideas. Cases like Canute and the waves, the
Babes in the Tower, and the like, were drawn by two and even three persons at
the same time, quite, independently of one another, showing how narrowly we are
bound by the fetters of our early education. If the figures in the above Table
may be accepted as fairly correct for the world generally, it shows, still in a
measurable degree, the large effect of early education in fixing our
associations. It will of course be understood that I make no absurd profession
of being able by these very few experiments to lay down statistical constants
of universal application, but that my principal object is to show that a large
class of mental phenomena, that have hitherto been too vague to lay hold of
admit of being caught by the firm grip, of genuine statistical inquiry.

142        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

The results that I have thus far given are hotch-pot results. It is
necessary to sort the materials somewhat before saying more about them.

After several trials I found that the associated ideas admitted of being
divided into three main groups. First there is the imagined sound of words, as
in verbal quotations or names of persons. This was frequently a mere parrot-like
memory which acted instantaneously and in a meaningless way, just as a machine
might act. In the next group there was every other kind of sense imagery; the
chime of imagined bells, the shiver of remembered cold, the scent of some
particular locality, and, much more frequently than all the rest put together,
visual imagery. The last of the three groups contains what I will venture, for
the want of a better name, to call “histrionic” representations. It
includes those cases where I either act a part in. imagination, or see in
imagination a part acted, or, most commonly by far, where I am both spectator
and all the actors at once, in an imaginary mental theatre. Thus I feel a
nascent sense of some muscular action while I simultaneously witness a puppet of
my brain—a part of myself-perform that action, and I assume a mental
attitude appropriate to the occasion. This, in my case, is a very frequent way
of generalising, indeed I rarely feel that I have secure hold of a general idea
until I have translated it somehow into this form. Thus the word
“abasement” presented itself to me, in one of my experiments, by my
mentally placing myself in a pantomimic attitude of humiliation with
half-closed eyes, bowed head, and uplifted palms, while at the same time I was
aware of myself as of a mental puppet, in that position. This same word will
serve to illustrate the other groups also. It so happened in connection with
“abasement” that the word “David” or “King
David” occurred to me on one occasion in each of three out of the four
trials; also that an accidental misreading, or perhaps the merely punning
association of the words “a basement,” brought up on all four
occasions the image of the foundations of a house that the builders had begun
upon.

So much for the character of the association; next as to that of the
words. I found, after the experiments were

Psychometric
Experiments            143

over, that
the words were divisible into three distinct groups. The first contained
“abbey,” “aborigines,” “abyss,” and others
that admitted of being presented under some mental image. The second group
contained “abasement,” “abhorrence,”
“ablution,” etc., which admitted excellently of histrionic
representation. The third group contained the more abstract words, such as
“afternoon,” “ability,” “abnormal,” which
were variously and imperfectly dealt with by my mind. I give the results in the
upper part of Table III., and, in order to save trouble, I have reduced them to
percentages in the lower lines of the Table.

TABLE III.

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE QUALITY
OF THE WORDS AND THAT OF THE IDEAS IN IMMEDIATE ASSOCIATION WITH THEM.

Number of words in each series.

Sense Imagery

Histrionic

Purely Verbal.

Total

Names of persons

Phrases and Quotations

26

"Abbey" series

46

12

32

17

107

20

“Abasement”,,

25

26

11

17

79

29

“Afternoon” ,,

23

27

16

38

104

75

290

“Abbey” Series

43

11

30

16

100

“Abasement” ,,

32

33

13

22

100

“Afternoon” ,,

22

25

16

37

100

We see from this that the associations of the
“abbey” series are nearly half of them in sense imagery, and these
were almost always visual. The names of persons also more frequently occurred
in this series than in any other. It will be recollected that in Table II. I
drew attention to the exceptionally large number, 33, in the last column. It
was perhaps 20 in excess of what would have been expected

144        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

from the
general run of the other figures. This was wholly due to visual imagery of
scenes with which I was first acquainted after reaching manhood, and shows, I
think, that the scenes of childhood and youth, though vividly impressed on the
memory, are by no means numerous, and may be quite thrown into the background
by the abundance of after experiences; but this, as we have seen, is not the
case with the other forms of association. Verbal memories of old date, such as
Biblical scraps, family expressions, bits of poetry, and the like, are very
numerous, and rise to the thoughts so quickly, whenever anything suggests them,
that they commonly outstrip all competitors. Associations connected with the
“abasement” series are strongly characterised by histrionic ideas,
and by sense imagery, which to a great degree merges into a histrionic
character. Thus the word “abhorrence” suggested to me, on three out
of the four trials, an image of the attitude of Martha in the famous picture of
the raising of Lazarus by Sebastian del Piombo in the National Gallery. She
stands with  averted head, doubly
sheltering her face by her hands from even a sidelong view of the opened grave.
Now I could not be sure how far I saw the picture as such, in my mental view,
or how far I had thrown my own personality into the picture, and was acting it
as actors might act a mystery play, by the puppets of my own brain, that were
parts of myself. As a matter of fact, I entered it under the heading of sense
imagery, but it might very properly have gone to swell the number of the
histrionic entries.

The “afternoon” series suggested a great, preponderance of
mere catch-words, showing how slowly I was able to realise the meaning of
abstractions; the phrases intruded themselves before the thoughts became
defined. It occasionally occurred that I puzzled wholly over a word, and made
no entry at all; in thirteen cases either this happened, or else after one idea
had occurred the second was too confused and. obscure to admit of record, and
mention of it had to be omitted in the foregoing Table. These entries have
forcibly shown to me the great imperfection in my generalising powers; and I am
sure that most persons would find the same if they made similar trials. Nothing
is a surer sign of high intellectual capacity

Psychometric
Experiments            145

than the
power of quickly seizing and easily manipulating ideas of a very abstract
nature. Commonly we grasp them very imperfectly, and cling to their skirts with
great difficulty.

In comparing the order in which the ideas presented themselves, I find
that a decided precedence is assumed by the histrionic ideas, wherever they
occur; that verbal associations occur first and with great quickness on many
occasions, but on the whole that they are only a little more likely to occur
first than second; and that imagery is decidedly more likely to be the second
than the first of the associations called up by a word. In short, gesture-language
appeals the most quickly to my feelings.

It would be very instructive to print the actual records at length, made
by many experimenters, if the records could be clubbed together and thrown into
a statistical form; but it would be too absurd to print one’s own singly.
They lay bare the foundations of a man’s thoughts with curious
distinctness, and exhibit his mental anatomy with more vividness and truth than
he Would probably care to publish to the world.

It remains to summarise what has been said in the foregoing memoir. I
have desired to show how whole strata of mental operations that have lapsed out
of ordinary consciousness, admit of being dragged into light, recorded and
treated statistically, and how the obscurity that attends the initial steps of
our thoughts can thus be pierced and dissipated. I then showed measurably the
rate at which associations sprung up, their character, the date of their first
formation, their tendency to recurrence, and their relative precedence. Also I
gave an instance showing how the phenomenon of a long-forgotten scene, suddenly
starting into consciousness, admitted in many cases of being explained. Perhaps
the strongest of the impressions left by these experiments regards the
multifariousness of the work done by the mind in a state of
half-unconsciousness, and the valid reason they afford for believing in the
existence of still deeper strata of mental operations, sunk wholly below the
level of consciousness, which may account for such mental phenomena as cannot otherwise
be explained. We gain an insight by these experiments into the marvellous

146        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

number and
nimbleness of our mental associations, and we also learn that they are very far
indeed from being infinite in their variety. We find that our working stock of
ideas is narrowly limited and that the mind continually recurs to the same
instruments in conducting its operations, therefore its tracks necessarily
become more defined and its flexibility diminished as age advances.

ANTECHAMBER
OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

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 that are lying close at hand, but imperfectly within the
range of my consciousness. There seems to be a presence-chamber 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 mechanically 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 finds nothing to cling to, it
is unable to hold its place in the antechamber, and slides back again. An
animal absorbed in a favourite occupation shows no sign of painful effort of
attention; on the contrary, he resents interruption that solicits his attention
elsewhere.

The consequence of all this is that the mind frequently

Antechamber
of Consciousness         147

does good
work without the slightest exertion. In composition it will often produce a
better effect than if it acted with effort, because the essence of good
composition is that the ideas should be connected by the easiest possible transitions.
When a man has been thinking hard and long upon a subject, he becomes
temporarily familiar with certain steps of thought, certain short cuts, and
certain far-fetched associations, that do not commend themselves to the minds
of other persons, nor indeed to his own at other times; therefore, it is better
that his transitory familiarity with them should have come to an end before he
begins to write or speak. When he returns to the work after a sufficient pause
he is conscious that his ideas have settled; that is, they have lost their
adventitious relations to one another, and stand in those in which they are
likely to reside permanently in his own mind, and to exist in the minds of
others.

Although the brain is able to do very fair work fluently in an automatic
way, and though it will of its own accord strike out sudden and happy ideas, it
is questionable if it is capable of working thoroughly and profoundly without
past or present effort. The character of this effort seems to me chiefly to lie
in bringing the contents of the antechamber more nearly within the ken of
consciousness, which then takes comprehensive note of all its contents, and
compels the logical faculty to test them seriatim
before selecting the fittest for a summons to the presence-chamber.

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 it. 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
emotions. The fluency of a vulgar scold is extraordinary.

In preparing to write or speak upon a subject of which the details have
been mastered, I gather, after some inquiry,

148        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

that the
usual method among persons who have the gift of fluency is to think cursorily
on topics connected with it, until what I have called the antechamber is well
filled with cognate ideas. Then, to allow the ideas to link themselves in their
own way, breaking the linkage continually and recommencing afresh until some
line of thought has suggested itself that appears from a rapid and light glance
to thread the chief topics together. After this the connections are brought
step by step fully into consciousness, they are short-circuited here and
extended there, as found advisable until a firm connection is found to be
established between all parts of the subject. After this is done the mental
effort is over, and the composition may proceed fluently in an automatic way.
Though this, I believe, is a usual way, it is by no means universal, for there
are very great differences in the conditions under which different persons
compose most readily. They seem to afford as good evidence of the variety of
mental and bodily constitutions as can be met with in any other line of
inquiry.

It is very reasonable to think that part at least of the inward response
to spiritual yearnings is of similar origin to the visions, thoughts, and
phrases that arise automatically when the mind has prepared itself to receive
them. The devout man attunes his, mind to holy ideas, he excludes alien
thoughts, and he waits and watches in stillness. Gradually the darkness is
lifted, the silence of the mind is broken, and the spiritual responses are
heard in the way so often described by devout men of all religions. This seems
to me precisely analogous to the automatic presentation of ordinary ideas to
orators and literary men, and to the visions of which I spoke in the chapter on
that subject. Dividuality replaces individuality, and one portion of the mind
communicates with another portion as with a different person.

Some persons and races are naturally more imaginative than others, and
show their visionary tendency in every one of the respects named. They are
fanciful, oratorical, poetical, and credulous. The “enthusiastic”
faculties all seem to hang together; I shall recur to this in the chapter on
enthusiasm.

I have already pointed, out the existence of a morbid

Early Sentiments                    149

form of
piety: there is also a morbid condition of apparent inspiration to which
imaginative women are subject, especially those who suffer more or less from
hysteria. It is accompanied in a very curious way, familiar to medical men, by
almost incredible acts of deceit. It is found even in ladies of position
apparently above the suspicion of vulgar fraud, and seems associated with a
strange secret desire to attract notice. Ecstatics, seers of visions, and
devout fasting girls who eat on the sly, often belong to this category.

EARLY
SENTIMENTS.

The child is passionately attached to his home, then to his school, his
country, and religion; yet how entirely the particular home, school, country,
and religion are a matter of accident! He is born prepared to attach himself as
a climbing plant is naturally disposed to climb, the kind of stick being of
little importance. 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 learned 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. If a mixed marriage should have taken
place, and the father should die while the children are yet young, and if a
question arise between the executors of his will and the mother as to the
religious education of the children, application is made as a matter of course
to the Court of Chancery, who decide that the children shall be brought up as
Protestants or as Catholics as the case may be, or the sons one way and the
daughters the other; and they are, and usually remain so afterwards when free
to act for themselves.

It is worthy of note that many of the deaf-mutes who are first taught to
communicate freely with others after they had passed the period of boyhood, and
are asked about their religious feelings up to that time, are reported to tell
the same story. They say that the meaning of the church service whither they
had accompanied their parents,

150        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

and of the
kneeling to pray, had been absolutely unintelligible, and a standing puzzle to
them. The ritual touched no chord in their untaught natures that responded in
unison. Very much of what we fondly look upon as a natural religious sentiment
is purely traditional.

The word religion may fairly be applied to any group of sentiments or persuasions
that are strong enough to bind us to do that which we intellectually may
acknowledge to be our duty, and the possession of some form of religion in this
larger sense of the word is of the utmost importance to moral stability. The
sentiments must be strong enough to make us ashamed at the mere thought of
committing, and distressed during the act of committing any untruth, or any
uncharitable act, or of neglecting what we feel to be right, in order to
indulge in laziness or gratify some passing desire. So long as experience shows
the religion to be competent to produce this effect, it seems reasonable to
believe that the particular dogma is comparatively of little importance. But as
the dogma or sentiments, whatever they be, if they are not naturally
instinctive, must be ingrained in the character to produce their full effect,
they should be instilled early in life and allowed to grow unshaken until their
roots are firmly fixed. The consciousness of this fact makes the form of
religious teaching in every church and creed identical in one important
particular though its substance may vary in every respect. In subjects
unconnected with sentiment, the freest inquiry and the fullest deliberation are
required before it is thought decorous to form a final opinion; but wherever
sentiment is involved, and especially in questions of religious dogma, about
which there is more sentiment and more difference of opinion among wise,
virtuous, and truth-seeking men than about any other subject whatever, free
inquiry is peremptorily discouraged. The religious instructor in every creed is
one who makes it his profession to saturate his pupils with prejudice. A vast
and perpetual clamour arises from the pulpits of endless proselytising sects
throughout this great empire, the priests of all of them crying with one
consent, “This is the way, shut your ears to the words of those who teach
differently; don’t look at their books, do not even mention their names
except to scoff at them;

Early Sentiments                    151

they are
damnable. Have faith in what I tell you, and save your souls !“ In which
of these conflicting doctrines are we to place our faith if we are not to hear
all sides, and to rely upon our own judgment in the end? Are we to understand
that it is the duty of man to be credulous in accepting whatever the priest in
whose neighbourhood he happens to reside may say? Is it to believe whatever his
parents may have lovingly taught him? There are a vast number of foolish men
and women in the world who marry and have children, and because they deal
lovingly with their children it does not at all follow that they can instruct
them wisely. Or is it to have faith in what the wisest men of all ages have
found peace in believing? The Catholic phrase, “quod semter quod ubique quod omnibus “—“that
which has been believed at all times, in all places, and by all men
“—has indeed a fine rolling sound, but where is the dogma that
satisfies its requirements? Or is it, such and such really good and wise men
with whom you are acquainted, and whom, it may be, you have the privilege of
knowing, have lived consistent lives through the guidance of these dogmas, how
can you who are many grades their inferior in good works, in capacity and in
experience, presume to set up your opinion against theirs? There ply is, that
it is a matter of history and notoriety that other very good, capable, and
inexperienced men have led and are leading consistent lives under the guidance
of totally different dogmas, and that some of them a few generations back would
have probably burned your modern hero as a heretic if he had lived in their
times and they could have got hold of him. Also, that men, however eminent in
goodness, intellect, and experience, may be deeply prejudiced, and that their
judgment in matters where their prejudices are involved cannot thenceforward be
trusted. Watches as electricians know to their cost, are liable to have their
steel work accidentally magnetised, and the best chronometer under those
conditions can never again be trusted to keep correct time.

Lastly, we are told to have faith in our conscience? well we know now a
great deal more about conscience than formerly. Ethnologists have studied the
manifestations of conscience in different people, and do not find that they

152        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

are
consistent. Conscience is now known to be partly transmitted by inheritance in
the way and under the conditions clearly explained by Mr. Darwin, and partly to
be an unsuspected result of early education. The value of inherited conscience
lies in its being the organised result of the social experiences of many
generations, but it fails in so far as it expresses the experience of
generations whose habits differed from our own. The doctrine of evolution shows
that no race can be in perfect harmony with its surroundings; the latter are
continually changing, while the organism of the race hobbles after, vainly
trying to overtake them. Therefore the inherited part of conscience cannot be
an infallible guide, and the acquired part of it may, under the influence of
dogma, be a very bad one.  The
history of fanaticism shows too clearly that this is not only a theory but a
fact. Happy the child, especially in these inquiring days, who has been taught
a religion that mainly rests on the moral obligations between man and man in
domestic and national life, and which, so far as it is necessarily dogmatic,
rests chiefly upon the proper interpretation of facts about which there is no
dispute,— namely, on those habitual occurrences which are always open to
observation, and which form the basis of so-called natural religion.

It would be instructive to make a study of the working religion of good
and able men of all nations, in order to discover the real motives by which
they were severally animated,—men, I mean, who had been tried by both
prosperity and adversity, and had borne the test; who, while they led lives
full of interest to themselves, were beloved by their own family, noted among
those with whom they had business relations for their probity and conciliatory
ways, and honoured by a wider circle for their unselfish furtherance of the
public good. Such men exist of many faiths and in many races.

Another interesting and cognate inquiry would be into the motives that
have sufficed to induce men who were leading happy lives, to meet death
willingly at a time when they were not particularly excited. Probably the
number of instances to be found, say among Mussulmans, who are

Early Sentiments                    153

firm
believers in the joys of Mahomet’s Paradise,
would not be more numerous than among the Zulus, who have no belief in any
paradise at all, but are influenced by martial honour and patriotism. There is
an Oriental phrase, as I have been told, that the fear of the inevitable death
is a European malady.  Approach of
Terror at any object is quickly taught if it is taught consistently, whether
the terror be reasonable or not. There are few more stupid creatures than fish,
but they notoriously soon learn to be frightened at any newly-introduced method
of capture, say by an artificial fly, which, at first their comrades took
greedily. Some one fish may have seen others caught, and have learned to take
fright at the fly. Whenever he saw it again he would betray his terror by some
instinctive gesture, which would be seen and understood by others, and so
instruction in distrusting the fly appears to spread.

All gregarious animals are extremely quick at learning terrors from one
another. It is a condition of their existence that they should do so, as was
explained at length in a previous chapter. Their safety lies in mutual
intelligence and support. When most of them are browsing a few are always
watching, and at the least signal of alarm the whole herd takes fright
simultaneously. Gregarious animals are quickly alive to their mutual signals;
it is beautiful to watch great flocks of birds as they wheel in their flight
and suddenly show the flash of all their wings against the sky, as they
simultaneously and suddenly change their direction.

Much of the tameness or wildness of an animal’s character is
probably due to the placidity or to the frequent starts of alarm of the mother
while she was rearing it. I was greatly struck with some evidence I happened to
meet with, of the pervading atmosphere of alarm and suspicion in which the
children of criminal parents are brought up, and which, in combination with
their inherited disposition, makes them, in the opinion of many observers, so
different to other children. The evidence of which I speak lay in the tone of
letters sent by criminal parents to their children, who were inmates of the
Princess Mary Village Homes, from which I had the opportunity, thanks to the
kindness

154        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

of the
Superintendent, Mrs. Meredith, of hearing and seeing extracts. They were full
of such phrases as “Mind you do not say anything about this,”
though the matters referred to were, to all appearance, unimportant.

The writings of Dante on the horrible torments of the damned, and the
realistic pictures of the same subject in frescoes and other pictures of the
same date, showing the flames and the flesh hooks and the harrows, indicate the
transforming effect of those cruel times, fifteen generations ago, upon the
disposition of men. Revenge and torture had been so commonly practised by
rulers that they seemed to be appropriate attributes of every high authority,
and the artists of those days saw no incongruity in supposing that a supremely
powerful master, however beneficent he might be, would make the freest use of
them.

Aversion is taught as easily as terror, when the object of it is neutral
and not especially attractive to an unprejudiced taste. I can testify in my own
person to the somewhat rapidly-acquired and long-retained fancies concerning
the clean and unclean, upon which Jews and Mussulmans lay such curious stress.
It was the result of my happening to spend a year in the East, at an age when
the brain is very receptive of new ideas, and when I happened to be much
impressed by the nobler aspects of Mussulman civilisation, especially, I may
say, with the manly conformity of their every-day practice to their creed,
which contrasts sharply with what we see among most Europeans, who profess
extreme unworldliness and humiliation on one day of the week, and act in a
worldly and masterful manner during the remaining six. Although many years have
passed since that time, I still find the old feelings in existence—for
instance, that of looking on the left hand as unclean.

It is difficult to an untravelled Englishman, who has not had an
opportunity of throwing himself into the spirit of the East, to credit the
disgust and detestation that numerous every-day acts, which appear perfectly
harmless to his countrymen, excite in many Orientals.

To conclude, the power of nurture is very great in implanting sentiments
of a religious nature, of terror and of

History of Twins                    155

aversion,
and in giving a fallacious sense of their being natural instincts. But it will
be observed that the circumstances from which these influences proceed, affect
large classes simultaneously, forming a kind of atmosphere in which every
member of them passes his life. They produce the cast of mind that
distinguishes an Englishman from a foreigner, and one class of Englishman from
another, but they have little influence in creating the differences that exist
between individuals of the same class.

HISTORY OF TWINS.

The exceedingly close resemblance attributed to twins has been the
subject of many novels and plays, and most persons have felt a desire to know
upon what basis of truth those works of fiction may rest. But twins have a
special claim upon our attention; it is, that their history affords means of
distinguishing between the effects of tendencies received at birth, and of
those that were imposed by the special circumstances of their after lives. The
objection to statistical evidence in proof of the inheritance of peculiar
faculties has always been: “The persons whom you compare may have lived
under similar social conditions and have had similar advantages of education,
but such prominent conditions are only a small part of those that determine the
future of each man’s life. It is to trifling accidental circumstances
that the bent of his disposition and his success are mainly due, and these you
leave wholly out of account—in fact, they do not admit of being
tabulated, and therefore your statistics, however plausible at first sight, are
really of very little use.” No method of inquiry which I had previously
been able to carry out—and I have tried many methods—is wholly free
from this objection. I have therefore attacked the problem from the opposite
side, seeking for some new method by which it would be possible to weigh in
just scales the effects of Nature and Nurture, and to ascertain their
respective shares in framing the disposition and intellectual ability of men.
The life-history of twins supplies what I wanted. We may begin by inquiring
about twins who were closely alike in boyhood and youth, and who were educated
together for many years, and learn

156        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

whether
they subsequently grew unlike, and, if so, what the main causes were which, in
the opinion of the family, produced the dissimilarity. In this way we can
obtain direct evidence of the kind we want. Again, we may obtain yet more
valuable evidence by a converse method. We can inquire into the history of
twins who were exceedingly unlike in childhood, and learn how far their
characters became assimilated under the influence of identical nurture, is as
much as they had the same home, the same teachers, the same associates, and in
every other respect the same surroundings.

My materials were obtained by sending circulars of inquiry to persons who
were either twins themselves or near relations of twins. The printed questions
were in thirteen groups; the last of them asked for the addresses of other
twins known to the recipient, who might be likely to respond if I wrote to
them. This happily led to a continually widening circle of correspondence,
which I pursued until enough material was accumulated for a general
reconnaisance of the subject.

There is a large literature relating to twins in their purely surgical
and physiological aspect. The reader interested in this should consult Die Lehre von den Zwillingen, von L.
Kleinwächter, Prag. 1871. It is full of references, but it is also
unhappily disfigured by a number of numerical misprints, especially in page 26.
I have not found any book that treats of twins from my present point of view.

The reader will easily understand that the word “twins” is a
vague expression, which covers two very dissimilar events—the one
corresponding to the progeny of animals that usually bear more than one at a
birth, each of the progeny being derived from a separate ovum, while the other
event is due to the development of two germinal spots in the same ovum. In the
latter case they are-enveloped in the same membrane, and all such twins are
found invariably to be of the same sex. The consequence of this is, that I find
a curious discontinuity in my results. One would have expected that twins would
commonly be found to possess a certain average likeness to one another; that a
few would greatly exceed that average likeness, and a few would greatly fall
short of it. But this is not at all the case. Extreme

History of Twins                    157

similarity
and extreme dissimilarity between twins of the same sex are nearly as common as
moderate resemblance. When the twins are a boy and a girl, they are never
closely alike; in fact, their origin is never due to the development of two
germinal spots in the same ovum.

I received about eighty returns of cases of close similarity, thirty-five
of which entered into many instructive details. In a few of these not a single
point of difference could be specified. In the remainder, the colour of the
hair and eyes were almost always identical; the height, weight, and strength
were nearly so. Nevertheless, I have a few cases of a notable difference in
height, weight, and strength, although the resemblance was otherwise very near.
The manner and personal address of the thirty-five pairs of twins are usually
described as very similar, but accompanied by a slight difference of
expression, familiar to near relatives, though unperceived by strangers. The
intonation of the voice when speaking is commonly the same, but it frequently
happens that the twins sing in different keys. Most singularly, the one point
in which similarity is rare is the handwriting. I cannot account for this,
considering how strongly handwriting runs in families, but I am sure of the
fact. I have only one case in which nobody, not even the twins themselves,
could distinguish their own notes of lectures, etc.; barely two or three in
which the handwriting was undistinguishable by others, and only a few in which
it was described as closely alike. On the other hand, I have many in which it
is stated to be unlike, and some in which it is alluded to as the only point of
difference. It would appear that the handwriting is a very delicate test of
difference in organisation—a conclusion which I commend to the notice of
enthusiasts in the art of discovering character by the handwriting.

One of my inquiries was for anecdotes regarding mistakes made between the
twins by their near relatives. The replies are numerous, but not very varied in
character. When the twins are children, they are usually distinguished by
ribbons tied round the wrist or neck; nevertheless the one is sometimes fed,
physicked, and whipped by mistake for the other, and the description of these
little domestic catastrophes was usually given by the mother, in a phraseology
that is some-

158        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

what
touching by reason of its seriousness. I have one case in which a doubt remains
whether the children were not changed in their bath, and the presumed A is not
really B, and vice versâ. In
another case, an artist was engaged on the portraits of twins who were between
three and four years of age; he had to lay aside his work for three weeks, and,
on resuming it, could not tell to which child the respective likenesses he had
in hand belonged. The mistakes become less numerous on the part of the mother
during the boyhood and girlhood of the twins, but are almost as frequent as
before on the part of strangers. I have many instances of tutors being unable
to distinguish their twin pupils. Two girls used regularly to impose on their
music teacher when one of them wanted a whole holiday; they had their lessons
at separate hours, and the one girl sacrificed herself to receive two lessons
on the same day, while the other one enjoyed herself from morning to evening.
Here is a brief and comprehensive account

“Exactly
alike in all, their schoolmasters never could tell them apart; at dancing
parties they constantly changed partners without discovery; their close
resemblance is scarcely diminished by age.”

The following is a typical schoolboy anecdote

“Two
twins were fond of playing tricks, and complaints were frequently made; but the
boys would never own which was the guilty one, and the complainants were never
certain which of the two he was. One head master used to say he would never
flog the innocent for the guilty, and another used to flog both.”

No less than nine anecdotes have reached me of a twin seeing his or her
reflection in a looking-glass, and addressing it in the belief it was the other
twin in person.

I have many anecdotes of mistakes when the twins were nearly grown up.
Thus

“Amusing
scenes occurred at college when one twin came to visit the other; the porter on
one occasion refusing to let the visitor out of the college gates, for, though
they stood side by side, he professed ignorance as to which he ought to allow
to depart.”

Children are usually quick in distinguishing between their

History of Twins                    159

parent and
his or her twin; but I have two cases to the contrary. Thus, the daughter of a
twin says

“Such
was the marvellous similarity of their features, voice, manner, etc., that I
remember, as a child, being very much puzzled, and I think, had my aunt lived
much with us, I should have ended by thinking I had two mothers.”

In the other case, a father who was a twin, remarks of himself and his
brother

“We
were extremely alike, and are so at this moment, so much so that our children
up to five and six years old did not know us apart.”

I have four or five instances of doubt during an engagement of marriage.
Thus:

“A
married first, but both twins met the lady together for the first time, and
fell in love with her there and then. A managed to see her home and to gain her
affection, though B went sometimes courting in his place, and neither the lady
nor her parents could tell which was which.”

I have also a German letter, written in quaint terms, about twin brothers
who married sisters, but could not easily be distinguished by them.[1] In the
well-known novel by Mr. Wilkie Collins of Poor
Miss Finch the blind girl distinguishes the twin she loves by the touch of
his hand, which gives her a thrill that the touch of the other brother does
not. Philosophers have not, I believe, as yet investigated the conditions of
such thrills; but I have a case in which Miss Finch’s test would have
failed. Two persons, both friends of a certain twin lady, told me that she had
frequently remarked to them that “kissing her twin sister was not like
kissing her other sisters, but like kissing herself—her own hand, for
example.”

It would be an interesting experiment for twins who were closely alike to
try how far dogs could distinguish them by scent.

[1] I
take this opportunity of withdrawing an anecdote, happily of no great
importance, published in Men of Science, p.
14, about a man personating his twin brother for a joke at supper, and not
being discovered by his wife. It was told me on good authority; hut I have
reason to doubt the fact, as the story is not known to the son of one of the
twins. However, the twins in question were extraordinarily alike, and I have
many anecdotes about them sent me by the latter gentleman.

160        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

I have a few anecdotes of strange mistakes made between twins in adult
life. Thus, an officer writes

“On
one occasion when I returned from foreign service my father turned to me and
said, ‘I thought you were in London,’ thinking I was my
brother—yet he had not seen me for nearly four years—our
resemblance was so great.”

The next and last anecdote I shall give is, perhaps, the most remarkable
of those I have; it was sent me by the brother of the twins, who were in middle
life at the time of its occurrence

“A was
again coming home from India,
on leave; the ship did not arrive for some days after it was due; the twin brother
B had come up from his quarters to receive A, and their old mother was very
nervous. One morning A rushed in saying, ‘Oh, mother, how are you?’
Her answer was, ‘No, B, it’s a bad joke; you know how anxious I
am!’ and it was a little time before A could persuade her that he was the
real man.”

Enough has been said to prove that an extremely close personal
resemblance frequently exists between twins of the same sex; and that, although
the resemblance usually diminishes as they grow into manhood and womanhood,
some cases occur in which the diminution of resemblance is hardly perceptible.
It must be borne in mind that it is not necessary to ascribe the divergence of
development, when it occurs, to the effect of different nurtures, but it is
quite possible that it may be due to the late appearance of qualities inherited
at birth, though dormant in- early life, like gout. To this I shall recur.

There is a curious feature in the character of the resemblance between
twins, which has been alluded to by a few correspondents; it is well
illustrated by the following quotations. A mother of twins says

“There
seemed to be a sort of interchangeable likeness in expression, that often gave
to each the effect of being more like his brother than himself.”

Again, two twin brothers, writing to me, after analysing their points of
resemblance, which are close and numerous, and pointing out certain shades of
difference, add—

“These
seem to have marked us through life, though for a while, when we were first
separated, the one to go to business,

History of Twins                    161

and the
other to college, our respective characters were inverted; we both think that
at that time we each ran into the character of the other. The proof of this
consists in our own recollections, in our correspondence by letter, and in the
views which we then took of matters in which we were interested.”

In explanation of this apparent interchangeableness, we must recollect
that no character is simple, and that in twins who strongly resemble each
other, every expression in the one may be matched by a corresponding expression
in the other, but it does not follow that the same expression should be the
prevalent one in both cases. Now it is by their prevalent expressions that we
should distinguish between the twins consequently when one twin has temporarily
the expression which is the prevalent one in his brother, he is apt to be
mistaken for him. There are also cases where the development of the two twins
is not strictly pari passu; they
reach the same goal at the same time, but not by identical stages. Thus: A is
born the larger, then B overtakes and surpasses A, and is in his turn overtaken
by A, the end being that the twins, on reaching adult life, are of the same
size. This process would aid in giving an interchangeable likeness at certain
periods of their growth, and is undoubtedly due to nature more frequently than
to nurture.

Among my thirty-five detailed cases of close similarity, there are no
less than seven in which both twins suffered from some special ailment or had
some exceptional peculiarity. One twin writes that she and her sister
“have both the defect of not being able to come downstairs quickly,
which, however, was not born with them, but came on at the age of
twenty.” Three pairs of twins have peculiarities in their fingers; in one
case it consists in a slight congenital flexure of one of the joints of the
little finger; it was inherited from a grandmother, but neither parents, nor
brothers, nor sisters show the least trace of it. In another case the twins
have a peculiar way of bending the fingers, and there was a faint tendency to
the same peculiarity in the mother, but in her alone of all the family. In a
third case, about which I made a few inquiries, which is given by Mr. Darwin,
but is not included in my returns, there was no known family tendency to the
peculiarity which was observed in the twins of having a crooked little finger.
In another

162        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

pair of
twins, one was born ruptured, and the other became so at six months old. Two
twins at the age of twenty-three were attacked by toothache, and the same tooth
had to be extracted in each case. There are curious and close correspondences
mentioned in the falling off of the hair. Two cases are mentioned of death from
the same disease; one of which is very affecting. The outline of the story was
that the twins were closely alike and singularly attached, and had identical
tastes; they both obtained Government clerkships, and kept house together, when
one sickened and died of Bright’s disease, and the other also sickened of
the same disease and died seven months later.

Both twins were apt to sicken at the same time in no less than nine out
of the thirty-five cases. Either their illnesses, to which I refer, were
non-contagious, or, if contagious, the twins caught them simultaneously; they
did not catch them the one from the other. This implies so intimate a
constitutional resemblance, that it is proper to give some quotations in
evidence. Thus, the father of two twins says

“Their
general health is closely alike; whenever one of them has an illness, the other
invariably has the same within a day or two, and they usually recover in the
same order. Such has been the case with whooping-cough, chicken-pox, and
measles also with slight bilious attacks, which they have successively.
Latterly, they had a feverish attack at the same time.”

Another parent of twins says

“If
anything ails one of them, identical symptoms nearly always appear in the other; this has been singularly visible
in two instances during the last two months. Thus, when in London, one fell ill with a violent attack of
dysentery, and within twenty-four hours the other had precisely the same
symptoms.”

A medical man writes of twins with whom he is well acquainted

“Whilst
I knew them, for a period of two years, there was not the slightest tendency
towards a difference in body or mind; external influences seemed powerless to
produce any dissimilarity.”

The mother of two other twins, after describing how they were ill
simultaneously up to the age of fifteen, adds, that

History of Twins                    163

they shed
their first milk-teeth within a few hours of each other.

Trousseau has a very remarkable case (in the chapter on Asthma) in his
important work Clinique Médicale (In
the edition of 1873 it is in vol. ii. p. 473.) It was quoted at length in the
original French, in Mr. Darwin’s Variation
under Domestication, vol. ii. p. 252. The following is a translation

“I
attended twin brothers so extraordinarily alike, that it was impossible for me
to tell which was which, without seeing them side by side. But their physical
likeness extended still deeper, so to speak, a yet more remarkable pathological
Thus, one of them, whom I saw at the Néothermes at Paris, suffering from
rheumatic ophthalmia, said to me, ‘At this instant my brother must be
having an ophthalmia like mine;’ and, as I had exclaimed against such an
assertion, he showed me a few days afterwards a letter just received by him
from his brother, who was at that time at Vienna, and who expressed himself in
these words—’ I have my ophthalmia; you must be having
yours.’ However singular this story may appear, the fact is none the less
exact; it has not been told to me by others, but I have seen it myself; and I
have seen other analogous cases in my practice. These twins were also
asthmatic, and asthmatic to a frightful degree. Though born in Marseilles, they were never able to stay in
that town, where their business affairs required them to go, without having an
attack. Still more strange, it was sufficient for them to get away only as far
as Toulon in
order to be cured of the attack caught at Marseilles.
They travelled continually, and in all countries, on business affairs, and they
remarked that certain localities were extremely hurtful to them, and that in
others they were free from all asthmatic symptoms.”

I do not like to pass over here a most dramatic tale in the Psychologie Morbide of Dr. J. Moreau (de
Tours), Médecin de l’Hospice de Bicêtre. Paris, 1859, p. 172. He speaks “of two
twin brothers who had been confined, on account of monomania, at
Bicêtre”

“Physically
the two young men are so nearly alike that the one is easily mistaken for the
other. Morally, their resemblance is no less complete, and is most remarkable
in its details. Thus, their dominant ideas are absolutely the same. They both
consider themselves subject to imaginary persecutions; the same enemies have
sworn their destruction, and employ the same means to

164        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

effect it.
Both have hallucinations of hearing. They are both of them melancholy and
morose; they never address a word to anybody, and will hardly answer the
questions that others address to them. They always keep apart, and never
communicate with one another. An extremely curious fact which has been
frequently noted by the superintendents of their section of the hospital, and
by myself, is this: From time to time, at very irregular intervals of two,
three, and many months, without appreciable cause, and by the purely
spontaneous effect of their illness, a. very marked change takes place in the
condition of the two brothers. Both of them, at the same time, and often on the
same day, rouse themselves from their habitual stupor and prostration; they
make the same complaints, and they come of their own accord to the physician,
with an urgent request to be liberated. I have seen this strange thing occur,
even when they were some miles apart, the one being at Bicêtre, and the
other living at Saint-Anne.”

I sent a copy of this passage to the principal authorities among the
physicians to the insane in England,
asking if they had ever witnessed any similar case. In reply, I have received
three noteworthy instances, but none to be coin-pared in their exact
parallelism with that just given. The details of these three cases are painful,
and it is not necessary to my general purpose that I should further allude to
them.

There is another curious French case of insanity in twins, which was
pointed out to me by Sir James Paget, described by Dr. Baume in the Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 4 série,
vol. 1., 1863, p. 312, of which the following is an abstract. The original
contains a few more details, but is too long to quote: François and
Martin, fifty years of age, worked as railroad contractors between Quimper and
Châteaulin. Martin had twice slight attacks of insanity. On January 15 a
box was robbed in which the twins had deposited their savings. On the night of
January 23—24 both François (who lodged at Quimper) and Martin
(who lived with his wife and children at St. Lorette, two leagues from Quimper)
had the same dream at the same hour, three a.m., and both awoke with a violent
start, calling out, “I have caught the thief! I have caught the thief!
they are doing mischief to my brother !" They were both of them extremely
agitated, and gave way to similar extravagances, dancing and leaping.

History of Twins                    165

Martin sprang on his grandchild, declaring that he was the thief, and
would have strangled him if he had not been prevented; he then became steadily
worse, complained of violent pains in his head, went out of doors on some
excuse, and tried to drown himself in the river Steir, but was forcibly stopped
by his son, who had watched and followed him. He was then taken to an asylum by
gendarmes, where he died in three hours. François, on his part, calmed
down on the morning of the 24th, and employed the day in. inquiring about the
robbery. By a strange chance, he crossed his brother’s path at the moment
when the latter was struggling with the gendarmes; then he himself became
maddened, giving way to extravagant gestures and using incoherent language
(similar to that of his brother). He then asked to be bled, which was done, and
afterwards, declaring himself to be better, went out on the pretext of
executing some commission, but really to drown himself in the River Steir,
which he actually did, at the very spot where Martin had attempted to do the
same thing a few hours previously.

The next point which I shall mention in illustration of the extremely
close resemblance between certain twins is the similarity in the association of
their ideas. No less than eleven out of the thirty-five cases testify to this.
They make the same remarks on the same occasion, begin singing the same song at
the same moment, and so on; or one would commence a sentence, and the other
would finish it. An observant friend graphically described to me the effect
produced on her by two such twins whom she had met casually. She said:
“Their teeth grew alike, they spoke alike and together, and said the same
things, and seemed just like one person.” One of the most curious
anecdotes that I have received concerning this similarity of ideas was that one
twin, A, who happened to be at a town in Scotland, bought a set of champagne
glasses which caught his attention, as a surprise for his brother B; while, at
the same time, B, being in England, bought a similar set of precisely the same
pattern as a surprise for A. Other anecdotes of a like kind have reached me
about these twins.

The last point to which I shall allude regards the tastes and
dispositions of the thirty-five pairs of twins. In sixteen

166        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

cases—that
is, in nearly one-half of them—these were described as closely similar;
in the remaining nineteen they were much alike, but subject to certain named
differences. These differences belonged almost wholly to such groups of
qualities as these: The one was the more vigorous, fearless, energetic; the
other was gentle, clinging, and timid; or the one was more ardent, the other
more calm and placid; or again, the one was the more independent, original, and
self-contained; the other the more generous, hasty, and vivacious. In short,
the difference was that of intensity or energy in one or other of its protean
forms; it did not extend more deeply into the structure of the characters. The
more vivacious might be subdued by ill health, until he assumed the character
of the other; or the latter might be raised by excellent health to that of the
former. The difference was in the key-note, not in the melody.

It follows from what has been said concerning the similar dispositions of
the twins, the similarity in the associations of their ideas, of their special
ailments, and of their illnesses generally, that the resemblances are not superficial,
but extremely intimate. I have only two cases of a strong bodily resemblance
being accompanied by mental diversity, and one case only of the converse kind.
It must be remembered that the conditions which govern extreme likeness between
twins are not the same as those between ordinary brothers and sisters, and that
it would be incorrect to conclude from what has just been said about the twins
that mental and bodily likeness are invariably co-ordinate, such being by no
means the case.

We are now in a position to understand that the phrase “close
similarity” is no exaggeration, and to realise the value of the evidence
I am about to adduce. Here are thirty-five cases of twins who were.”
closely alike” in body and mind when they were young, and who have been
reared exactly alike up to their early manhood and womanhood. Since then the
conditions of their lives have changed; what change of Nurture has produced the
most variation?

It was with no little interest that I searched the records of the
thirty-five cases for an answer; and they gave an answer that was not
altogether direct, but it was distinct, and not at all what I had expected.
They showed me that

History of Twins                    167

in some
cases the resemblance of body and mind had continued unaltered up to old age,
notwithstanding very different conditions of life; and they showed in the other
cases that the parents ascribed such dissimilarity as there was, wholly or
almost wholly to some form of illness. In four cases it was scarlet fever; in a
fifth, typhus; in a sixth, a slight effect was ascribed to a nervous fever; in
a seventh it was the effect of an Indian climate; in an eighth, an illness
(unnamed) of nine months duration; in a ninth, varicose veins; in a tenth, a
bad fracture of the leg, which prevented all active exercise afterwards; and
there were three additional instances of undefined forms of ill health. It will
be sufficient to quote one of the returns; in this the father writes:

“At
birth they were exactly alike, except
that one was born with a bad varicose affection, the effect of which had been
to prevent any violent exercise, such as dancing or running, and, as she has
grown older, to make her more serious and thoughtful. Had it not been for this
infirmity, I think the two would have been as exactly alike as it is possible
for two women to be, both mentally and physically; even now they are constantly
mistaken for one another.”

In only a very few cases is some allusion made to the dissimilarity being
partly due to the combined action of many small influences, and in none of the
thirty-five cases is it largely, much less wholly, ascribed to that cause. In
not a single instance have I met with a word about the growing dissimilarity
being due to the action of the firm freewill of one or both of the twins, which
had triumphed over natural tendencies; and yet a large proportion of my
correspondents happen to be clergymen, whose bent of mind is opposed, as I feel
assured from the tone of their letters, to a necessitarian view of life.

It has been remarked that a growing diversity between twins may be
ascribed to the tardy development of naturally diverse qualities; but we have a
right, upon the evidence I have received, to go farther than this. We have seen
that a few twins retain their close resemblance through life; in other words,
instances do exist of an apparently thorough similarity of nature, in which
such difference of external circumstances as may be consistent with the
ordinary conditions of the same social rank and country do not create

168        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

dissimilarity.
Positive evidence, such as this, cannot be outweighed by any amount of negative
evidence.  Therefore, in those cases
where there is a growing diversity, and where no external cause can be assigned
either by the twins themselves or by their family for it, we may feel sure that
it must be chiefly or altogether due to a want of thorough similarity in their
nature. Nay, further, in some cases it is distinctly affirmed that the growing
dissimilarity can be accounted for in no other way. We may, therefore, broadly
conclude that the only circumstance, within the range of those by which persons
of similar conditions of life are affected, that is capable of producing a
marked effect on the character of adults, is illness or some accident which
causes physical infirmity. The twins who closely resembled each other in
childhood and early youth, and were reared under not very, dissimilar
conditions, either grow unlike through the development of natural
characteristics which had lain dormant at first, or else they continue their
lives, keeping time like two watches, hardly to be thrown out of accord except
by some physical jar. Nature is far stronger than Nurture within the limited
range that I have been careful to assign to the latter.

The effect of illness, as shown by these replies, is great, and well
deserves further consideration. It appears that the constitution of youth is
not so elastic as we are apt to think, but that an attack, say of scarlet
fever, leaves a permanent mark, easily to be measured by the present method of
comparison. This recalls an impression made strongly on my mind several years
ago, by the sight of some curves drawn by a mathematical friend. He took
monthly measurements of the circumference of his children’s heads during
the first few years of their lives, and he laid down the successive
measurements on the successive lines of a piece of ruled paper, by taking the
edge of the paper as a base. He then joined the free ends of the lines, and so
obtained a curve of growth. These curves had, on the whole, that regularity of
sweep that might have been expected, but each of them showed occasional halts,
like the landing-places on a long flight of stairs. The development had been
arrested by something, and was not made up for by after growth. Now, on the
same piece of paper my friend had also registered

History of Twins                    169

the various
infantine illnesses of the children, and corresponding to each illness was one
of these halts. There remained no doubt in my mind that, if these illnesses had
been warded off, the development of the children would have been increased by
almost the precise amount lost in these halts. In other words, the disease had
drawn largely upon the capital, and not only on the income, of their constitutions.
I hope these remarks may induce some men of science to repeat similar
experiments on their children of the future. They may compress two years of a
child’s history on one side of a ruled half-sheet of foolscap paper, if
they cause each successive line to stand for a successive month, beginning from
the birth of the child; and if they economise space by laying, not the o-inch
division of the tape against the edge of the pages, but, say, the 10-inch
division.

The steady and pitiless march of the hidden weaknesses in our
constitutions, through illness to death, is painfully revealed by these
histories of twins. We are too apt to look upon illness and death as capricious
events, and there are some who ascribe them to the direct effect of supernatural
interference, whereas the fact of the maladies of two twins being continually
alike shows that illness and death are necessary incidents in a regular
sequence of constitutional changes beginning at birth, and upon which external
circumstances have, on the whole, very small effect. In cases where the
maladies of the twins are continually alike, the clocks of their two lives move
regularly on at the same rate, governed by their internal mechanism. When the
hands approach the hour, there are sudden clicks, followed by a whirring of
wheels; the moment that they touch it, the strokes fall. Necessitarians may
derive new arguments from the life-histories of twins.

We will now consider the converse side of our subject, which appears to
me even the more important of the two. Hitherto we have investigated cases
where the similarity at first was close, but afterwards became less; now we
will examine those in which there was great dissimilarity at first, and will
see how far an identity of nurture in childhood and youth tended to assimilate
them. As has been already

170        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

mentioned,
there is a large proportion of cases of sharply-contrasted characteristics,
both of body and mind, among twins. I have twenty such cases, given with much
detail. It is a fact that extreme dissimilarity, such as existed between Esau
and Jacob, is a no less marked peculiarity in twins of the same sex than
extreme similarity. On this curious point, and on much else in the history of
twins, I have many remarks to make, but this is not the place to make them.

The evidence given by the twenty cases above mentioned is absolutely
accordant, so that the character of the whole may be exactly conveyed by a few
quotations.

(1.) One parent says :—“ They have had
exactly the same nurture from their
birth up to the present time; they are both perfectly healthy and strong, yet
they are otherwise as dissimilar as two boys could be, physically, mentally,
and in their emotional nature.”

(2.) “I can answer most decidedly that the
twins have been perfectly dissimilar in character, habits, and likeness from
the moment of their birth to the present time, though they were nursed by the
same woman, went to school together, and were never separated till the age of
fifteen.”

(3.) “They have never been separated, never
the least differently treated in food, clothing, or education; both teethed at
the same time, both had measles, whooping-cough, and scarlatina at the same
time, and neither had had any other serious illness. Both are and have been
exceedingly healthy, and have good abilities, yet they differ as much from each
other in mental cast as any one of my family differs from another.”

(4.) “Very dissimilar in body and mind: the
one is quiet, retiring, and slow but sure; good-tempered, but disposed to be
sulky when provoked;—the other is quick, vivacious, forward, acquiring
easily and forgetting soon; quick-tempered and choleric, but quickly forgiving
and forgetting. They have been educated together and never separated.”

(5.) “They were never alike either in body
or mind, and their dissimilarity increases daily. The external influences have
been identical; they have never been separated.”

(6.) “The two sisters are very different in
ability and disposition. The one is retiring, but firm and determined; she has
no taste for music or drawing. The other is of an active, excitable temperament
: she displays an unusual amount of quickness and talent, and is passionately
fond of music and drawing. From infancy, they have been rarely separated even

History of Twins                    171

at school, and as children visiting their friends, they always went
together.”

(7.) “They have been treated exactly alike;
both were brought up by hand; they have been under the same nurse and governess
from their birth, and they are very fond of each other. Their increasing
dissimilarity must be ascribed to a natural difference of mind and character,
as there has been nothing in their treatment to account for it.”

(8.) “They are as different as possible. [A
minute and unsparing analysis of the characters of the two twins is given by
their father, most instructive to read, but impossible to publish without the
certainty of wounding the feelings of one of the twins, if these pages should
chance to fall under his eyes.] They were brought up entirely by hand, that is,
on cow’s milk, and treated by one nurse in precisely the same
manner.”

(9.) “The home-training and influence were
precisely the same, and therefore I consider the dissimilarity to be accounted
for almost entirely by innate disposition and by causes over which we have no
control.”

(10.) “This case is, I should think,
somewhat remarkable for dissimilarity in physique as well as for strong
contrast in character. They have been unlike in body and mind throughout their
lives. Both were reared in a country house, and both were at the same schools
till aet. 16."

(11). “Singularly unlike in body and mind
from babyhood; in looks, dispositions, and tastes they are quite different. I
think I may say the dissimilarity was innate, and developed more by time than
circumstance.”

(12.) “We were never in the least degree
alike. I should say my sister’s and my own character are diametrically
opposed, and have been utterly different from our birth, though a very strong
affection subsists between us.”

(13.) The father remarks :—“ They were
curiously different in body and mind from their birth.” The surviving
twin (a senior wrangler of Cambridge)
adds “A fact struck all our school contemporaries, that my brother and I
were complementary so to speak, in point of ability and disposition. He was
contemplative, poetical, and literary to a remarkable degree, showing great
power in that line. I was practical, mathematical, and linguistic. Between us
we should have made a very decent sort of a man.”

I could quote others just as strong as these, in some of which the above
phrase “complementary” also appears, while I have not a single case
in which my correspondents speak of originally dissimilar characters having
become assim

172
Inquiries into Human Faculty

ilated
through identity of nurture. However, a somewhat exaggerated estimate of
dissimilarity may be due to the tendency of relatives to dwell unconsciously on
distinctive peculiarities, and to disregard the far more numerous points of
likeness that would first attract the notice of a stranger. Thus in case 11 I
find the remark, “Strangers see a strong likeness between them, but none
who knows them well can perceive it.” Instances are common of slight
acquaintances mistaking members, and especially daughters of a family, for one
another, between whom intimate friends can barely discover a resemblance.
Still, making reasonable allowance for unintentional exaggeration, the
impression that all this evidence leaves on the mind is one of some wonder
whether nurture can do anything at all, beyond giving instruction and
professional training. It emphatically corroborates and goes far beyond the
conclusions to which we had already been driven by the cases of similarity. In
those, the causes of divergence began to act about the period of adult life,
when the characters had become somewhat fixed; but here the causes conducive to
assimilation began to act from the earliest moment of the existence of the
twins, when the disposition was most pliant, and they were continuous until the
period of adult life. There is no escape from the conclusion that nature
prevails enormously over nurture when the differences of nurture do not exceed
what is commonly to be found among persons of the same rank of society and in
the same country. My fear is, that my evidence may seem to prove too much, and
be discredited on that account, as it appears contrary to all experience that
nurture should go for so little. But experience is often fallacious in
ascribing great effects to trifling circumstances. Many a person has amused
himself with throwing bits of stick into a tiny brook and watching their
progress; how they are arrested, first by one chance obstacle, then by another;
and again, how their onward course is facilitated by a combination of
circumstances. He might ascribe much importance to each of these events, and
think how largely the destiny of the stick had been governed by a series of
trifling accidents. Nevertheless all the sticks succeed in passing down the
current, and in the long-run, they travel at nearly the same rate. So it is
with life, in respect to the several accidents which seem

Domestication of Animals             173

to have had
a great effect upon our careers. The one element, that varies in different
individuals, but is constant in each of them, is the natural tendency; it
corresponds to the current in the stream, and inevitably asserts itself.

Much stress is laid on the persistence of moral impressions made in
childhood, and the conclusion is drawn, that the effects of early teaching must
be important in a corresponding degree. I acknowledge the fact, so far as has
been explained in the chapter on Early Sentiments, but there is a considerable
set-off on the other side. Those teachings that conform to the natural
aptitudes of the child leave much more enduring marks than others. Now both the
teachings and the natural aptitudes of the child are usually derived from its
parents. They are able to understand the ways of one another more intimately
than is possible to persons not of the same blood, and the child instinctively
assimilates the habits and ways of thought of its parents. Its disposition is
“educated” by them, in the true sense of the word; that is to say,
it is evoked, not formed by them. On these grounds I ascribe the persistence of
many habits that date from early home education, to the peculiarities of the
instructors rather than to the period when the instruction was given. The marks
left on the memory by the instructions of a foster-mother are soon sponged
clean away. Consider the history of the cuckoo, which is reared exclusively by
foster-mothers. It is probable that nearly every young cuckoo, during a series
of many hundred generations, has been brought up in a family whose language is
a chirp and a twitter. But the cuckoo cannot or will not adopt that language,
or any other of the habits of its foster-parents. It leaves its birthplace as
soon as it is able, and finds out its own kith and kin, and identifies itself
henceforth with them. So utterly are its earliest instructions in an alien
bird-language neglected, and so completely is its new education successful,
that the note of the cuckoo tribe is singularly correct.

DOMESTICATION
OF ANIMALS.[1]

Before leaving the subject of Nature and Nurture,
I would direct attention to evidence bearing on the conditions under

[1] This
memoir is reprinted from the Transactions
of the Ethnological

174
Inquiries into Human Faculty

which
animals appear first to have been domesticated. It clearly shows the small
power of nurture against adverse natural tendencies.

The few animals that we now possess in a state of domestication were
first reclaimed from wildness in prehistoric times. Our remote barbarian
ancestors must be credited with having accomplished a very remarkable feat,
which no subsequent generation has rivalled. The utmost that we of modern times
have succeeded in doing, is to improve the races of those animals that we
received from, our forefathers in an already domesticated condition.

There are only two reasonable solutions of this exceedingly curious fact.
The one is, that men of highly original ideas, like the mythical Prometheus,
arose from time to time in the dawn of human progress, and left their
respective marks on the world by being the first to subjugate the camel, the llama,
the reindeer, the horse, the ox, the sheep, the hog, the dog, or some other
animal to the service of man. The other hypothesis is that only a few species
of animals are fitted by their nature to become domestic, and that these were
discovered long ago through the exercise of no higher intelligence than is to
be found among barbarous tribes of the present day. The failure of civilised
man to add to the number of domesticated species would on this supposition be
due to the fact that all the suitable material whence domestic animals could be
derived has been long since worked out.

I submit that the latter hypothesis is the true one for the reasons about
to be given; and if so, the finality of the process of domestication must be
accepted as one of the most striking instances of the inflexibility of natural
disposition, and of the limitations thereby imposed upon the

Society, 1865, with an alteration in the
opening and concluding paragraphs, and with a few verbal emendations. If I had
discussed the subject now for the first time I should have given extracts from
the works of the travellers of the day, but it seemed needless to reopen the
inquiry merely to give it a more modern air. I have also preferred to let the
chapter stand as it was written, because considerable portions of it have been
quoted by various authors (e.g. Bagehot,
Economic Studies, pp. 161 to 166:
Longman, 1880), and the original memoir is not easily accessible.

Domestication of Animals             175

choice of
careers for animals, and by analogy for those of men.

My argument will be this :—All savages maintain pet animals, many
tribes have sacred ones, and kings of ancient states have imported captive
animals on a vast scale, for purposes of show, from neighbouring countries. I
infer that every animal, of any pretensions, has been tamed over and over
again, and has had numerous opportunities of becoming domesticated. But
the  cases are rare in which these
opportunities have led to any result. No animal is fitted for domestication
unless it fulfils certain stringent conditions, which I will endeavour to state
and to discuss. My conclusion is, that all domesticable animals of any note
have long ago fallen under the yoke of man. In short, that the animal creation
has been pretty thoroughly, though half unconsciously, explored, by the
every-day habits of rude races and simple civilisations.

It is a fact familiar to all travellers, that savages frequently capture
young animals of various kinds, and rear them as favourites; and sell or
present them as curiosities. Human nature is generally akin: savages may be
brutal, but they are not on that account devoid of our taste for taming and
caressing young animals; nay, it is not improbable that some races may possess
it in a more marked degree than ourselves, because it is a childish taste with
us; and the motives of an adult barbarian are very similar to those of a.
civilised child.

In proving this assertion, I feel embarrassed with the multiplicity of my
facts. I have only space to submit a few typical instances, and must,
therefore, beg it will be borne in mind that the following list could be
largely reinforced. Yet even if I inserted all I have thus far been able to
collect, I believe insufficient justice would be done to the real truth of the
case. Captive animals do not commonly fall within the observation of
travellers, who mostly confine themselves to their own encampments, and abstain
from entering the dirty dwellings of the natives; neither do the majority of
travellers think tamed animals worthy of detailed mention. Consequently the
anecdotes of their existence are scattered sparingly among a large number of
volumes. It is

176        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

when those
travellers are questioned who have lived long and intimately with savage tribes
that the plenitude of available instances becomes most apparent.

I proceed to give anecdotes of animals being tamed in various parts of
the world, at dates when they were severally beyond the reach of civilised
influences, and where, therefore, the pleasure taken by the natives in taming
them must be ascribed to their unassisted mother-wit. It will be inferred that
the same rude races who were observed to be -capable of great fondness towards
animals in particular instances, would not unfrequently show it in others.

[North America.]—The traveller
Hearne, who wrote towards the end of the last century, relates the following
story of moose or elks in the more northern parts of North
America. He says

“I
have repeatedly seen moose at Churchill as tame as sheep and even more so. . .
. The same Indian that brought them to the Factory had, in the year 1770, two
others so tame that when on his passage to Prince of Wales’s Fort in a
canoe, the moose always followed him along the bank of the river; and at night,
or on any other occasion when the Indians landed, the young moose generally
came and fondled on them, as the most domestic animal would have done, and
never offered to stray from the tents.”

Sir John Richardson, in an obliging answer to my inquiries about the
Indians of North America, after mentioning the bison calves, wolves, and other
animals that they frequently - capture and keep, said

“It is
not unusual, I have heard, for the Indians to bring up young bears, the women
giving them milk from their own breasts.”

He mentions that he himself purchased a young bear, and adds

“The
red races are fond of pets and treat them kindly; and in purchasing them there
is always the unwillingness of the women and children to overcome, rather than
any dispute about price. My young bear used to rob the women of the berries
they had gathered, but the loss was borne with good nature.”

I will again quote Hearne, who is unsurpassed for his

Domestication of Animals             177

minute and
accurate narratives of social scenes among the Indians and Esquimaux. In
speaking of wolves he says

“They
always burrow underground to bring forth their young, and though it is natural
to suppose them very fierce at those times, yet I have frequently seen the
Indians go to their dens and take out the young ones and play with them. I
never knew a Northern Indian hurt one of them; on the contrary, they always put
them carefully into the den again; and I have sometimes seen them paint the
faces of the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.”

[South America.]—Ulloa, an ancient
traveller, says

“Though
the Indian women breed fowl and other domestic animals in their cottages, they
never eat them: and even conceive such a fondness for them, that they will not
sell them, much less kill them with their own hands. So that if a stranger who
is obliged to pass the night in one of their cottages, offers ever so much
money for a fowl, they refuse to part with it, and he finds himself under the
necessity of killing the fowl himself. At this his landlady shrieks, dissolves
into tears, and wrings her hands, as if it had been an only son, till seeing
the mischief past mending, she wipes her eyes and quietly takes what the
traveller offers her.”

The care of the South American Indians, as Quiloa truly states, is by no
means confined to fowls. Mr. Bates, the distinguished traveller and naturalist
of the Amazons, has favoured me with a list of twenty-two species of quadrupeds
that he has found tame in the encampments of the tribes of that valley. It
includes the tapir, the agouti, the guinea-pig, and the peccari. He has also
noted five species of quadrupeds that were in captivity, but not tamed. These
include the jaguar, the great ant-eater, and the armadillo. His list of tamed
birds is still more extensive.

[North Africa.]—The ancient Egyptians
had a positive passion for tamed animals, such as antelopes, monkeys,
crocodiles, panthers, and hyenas. Mr. Goodwin, the eminent Egyptologist,
informed me that “they anticipated our zoological tastes
completely,” and that some of the pictures referring to tamed animals are
among their very earliest monuments, viz. 2000 or 3000 years B.C. Mr. Mansfield
Parkyns, who passed many years in Abyssinia

178        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

and the
countries of the Upper Nile, writes me word in
answer to my inquiries

“I am
sure that negroes often capture and keep alive wild animals. I have bought them
and received them as presents— wild cats, jackals, panthers, the wild
dog, the two best lions now in the Zoological Gardens, monkeys innumerable and
of all sorts, and mongoos. I cannot say that I distinctly recollect any pets
among the lowest orders of men that I
met with, such as the Denkas, but I am sure they exist, and in this way. When I
was on the White Nile and at Khartoum, very few merchants went up the White Nile; none had stations. They were little known to
the natives; but none returned without some live animal or bird which they had
procured from them. While I was at Khartoum,
there came an Italian wild beast showman, after the Wombwell style. He made a
tour of the towns up to Doul and Fazogly, Kordofan and the peninsula, and
collected a large number of animals. Thus my opinion distinctly is, that
negroes do keep wild animals alive. I am
sure of it; though I can only vaguely recollect them in one or two cases. I
remember some chief in Abyssinia who had a pet
lion which he used to tease, and I have often seen monkeys about huts.”

[Equatorial Africa.]—The most
remarkable instance I have met with in modern Africa
is the account of a menagerie that existed up to the beginning of the reign of
the present king of the Wahumas, on the shores of Lake Nyanza.
Suna, the great despot of that country, reigned till 1857. Captains Burton and
Speke were in the neighbourhood in the following year, and Captain Burton thus
describes (Journal R. G. Soc., xxix.
282) the report he received of Suna’s collection: —

“He
had a large menagerie of lions, elephants, leopards, and similar beasts of
disport; he also kept for amusement fifteen or sixteen albinos; and so greedy
was he of novelty, that even a cock of peculiar form or colour would have been
forwarded by its owner to feed his eyes." -

Captain Speke, in his subsequent journey to the Nile,
passed many months at Uganda,
as the guest of Suna’s youthful successor, M’tese. The fame of the
old menagerie was fresh when Captain Speke was there. He wrote to me as follows
concerning it: —

“I was
told Suna kept buffaloes, antelopes, and animals of all colours (meaning
‘sorts’), and in equal quantities. M’tese,

Domestication
of Animals
179

his son, no
sooner came to the throne, than he indulged in shooting them down before his
admiring wives, and now he has only one buffalo and a few parrots left.”

In Kouka, near Lake
Tchad, antelopes and
ostriches are both kept tame, as I was informed by Dr. Barth.

[South Africa.]—The
instances are very numerous in South
Africa where the Boers and half-castes amuse
themselves with rearing zebras, antelopes, and the like; but I have not found
many instances among the native races. Those that are best known to us are
mostly nomad and in a chronic state of hunger, and therefore disinclined to
nurture captured animals as pets; nevertheless, some instances can be adduced.
Livingstone alludes to an extreme fondness for small tame singing-birds (pp. 324
and 453). Dr. (now Sir John) Kirk, who accompanied him in later years, mentions
guinea-fowl—that do not breed in confinement, and are merely kept as
pets—in the Shiré valley, and Mr. Oswell has furnished me with one
similar anecdote. I feel, however, satisfied that abundant instances could be
found if properly sought for. It was the frequency with which I recollect to
have heard of tamed animals when I myself was in South Africa, though I never
witnessed any instance, that first suggested to me the arguments of the present
paper. Sir John Kirk informs me that:

“As
you approach the coast or Portuguese settlements, pets of all kinds become very
common; but then the opportunity of occasionally selling them to advantage may
help to increase the number; still, the more settled life has much to do with
it.”

In confirmation of this view, I will quote an early writer, Pigafetta (Hakluyt Coll., ii. 562), on the South
African kingdom of Congo, who found a strange medley of animals in captivity,
long before the demands of semi-civilisation had begun to prompt their
collection: —

“The
King of Congo, on being Christianised by the Jesuit missionaries in the
sixteenth century, “signified that whoever had any idols should deliver
them to the lieutenants of the country. And within less than a month all the
idols which they worshipped were brought into court, and certainly the number
of these toys was infinite, for every man adored what he liked without any
measure or reason at all. Some kept serpents of horrible figures, some
worshipped the greatest goats they could

180
Inquiries into Human Faculty

get, some
leopards, and others monstrous creatures. Some held in veneration certain
unclean fowls, etc. Neither did they content themselves with worshipping the
said creatures when alive, but also adored the very skins of them when they
were dead and stuffed with straw.”

[Australia.]—Mr.
Woodfield records the following touching anecdote in a paper communicated to
the Ethnological Society, as occurring in an unsettled part of West Australia,
where the natives rank as the lowest race upon the earth

“During
the summer of 1858-9 the Murchison river was
visited by great numbers of kites, the native country of these birds being
Shark’s Bay. As other birds were scarce, we shot many of these kites,
merely for the sake of practice, the natives eagerly devouring them as fast as
they were killed. One day a man and woman, natives of Shark’s Bay, came
to the Murchison, and the woman immediately recognising the birds as coming
from her country, assured us that the natives there never kill them, and that
they are so tame that they will perch on the shoulders of the women and eat
from their hands. On seeing one shot she wept bitterly, and not even the offer
of the bird could assuage her grief, for she absolutely refused to eat it. No
more kites were shot while she remained among us.”

The Australian women habitually feed the puppies they intend to rear from
their own breasts, and show an affection to them equal, if not exceeding, that
to their own infants. Sir Charles Nicholson informs me that he has known an
extraordinary passion for cats to be demonstrated by Australian women at Fort Phillip.

[New Guinea Group.]—Captain Develyn is reported (Bennett, Naturalist in Australia, p. 244) to say
of the island of New Britain, near Australia, that the natives consider
cassowaries “to a certain degree sacred, and rear them as pets. They
carry them in their arms, and entertain a great affection for them.”

Professor Huxley informs me that he has seen sucking-pigs nursed at the breasts
of women, apparently as pets, in islands of the New Guinea Group.

[Polynesia.]—The savage and
cannibal Fijians were no exceptions to the general rule, for Dr. Seemann wrote
me word that they make pets of the flying fox (bat), the lizard,

Domestication of Animals             181

and
parroquet. Captain Wilkes, in his exploring expedition (ii. 122), says the
pigeon in the Samoon islands “is commonly kept as a plaything, and
particularly by the chiefs. One of our officers unfortunately on one occasion
shot a pigeon, which caused great commotion, for the bird was a king pigeon,
and to kill it was thought as great a crime as to take the life of a
man.”

Mr. Ellis, writing of these islands (Polynesian
Researches, 11. 285), says

“Eels
are great favourites, and are tamed and fed till they attain an enormous size.
Taoarii had several in different parts of the island. These pets were kept in
large holes, two or three feet deep, partially filled with water. I have been
several times with the young chief, when he has sat down by the side of the
hole, and by giving a shrill sort of whistle, has brought out an enormous eel,
which has moved about the surface of the water and eaten with confidence out of
his master’s hand.”

[Syria.]—I
will conclude this branch of my argument by quoting the most ancient allusion
to a pet that I can discover in writing though some of the Egyptian pictured
representations are considerably older. It is the parable spoken by the Prophet
Samuel to King David, that is expressed in the following words

“The
poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and
nourished up: and it grew up together with him and with his children; it did
eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to
him as a daughter.”

We will now turn to the next stage of our argument. Not only do savages
rear animals as pets, but communities maintain them as sacred. The ox of India and the
brute gods of Egypt
occur to us at once; the same superstition prevails widely. The quotation
already given from Pigafetta is in point; the fact is too well known to readers
of travel to make it necessary to devote space to its proof. I will therefore
simply give a graphic account, written by M. Jules Gérard, of Whydah in West Africa

“I
visited the Temple
of Serpents in this town,
where thirty of these monstrous deities were asleep in various attitudes. Each
day at sunset, a priest brings them a certain number of

182        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

sheep,
goats, fowls, etc., which are slaughtered in the temple and then divided among
the ‘gods.’ Subsequently during the night they (?the priests)
spread themselves about the town, entering the houses in various quarters in
search of further offerings. It is forbidden under penalty of death to kill,
wound, or even strike one of these sacred serpents, or any other of the same
species, and only the priests possess the privilege of taking hold of them, for
the purpose of reinstating them in the temple should they be found
elsewhere.”

It would be tedious and unnecessary to adduce more instances of wild
animals being nurtured in the encampments of savages, either as pets or as
sacred animals. It will be found on inquiry that few travellers have failed
altogether to observe them. If we consider the small number of encampments they
severally visited in their line of march, compared with the vast number that
are spread over the whole area, which is or has been inhabited by rude races,
we may obtain some idea of the thousands of places at which half-unconscious
attempts at domestication are being made in each year. These thousands must
themselves be multiplied many thousandfold, if we endeavour to calculate the
number of similar attempts that have been made since men like ourselves began
to inhabit the world.

My argument, strong as it is, admits of being considerably strengthened
by the following consideration: —

The natural inclination of barbarians is often powerfully reinforced by
an enormous demand for captured live animals on the part of their more
civilised neighbours. A desire to create vast hunting-grounds and menageries
and amphitheatrical shows, seems naturally to occur to the monarchs who preside
over early civilisations, and travellers continually remark that, whenever
there is a market for live animals, savages will supply them in any quantities.
The means they employ to catch game for their daily food readily admits of
their taking them alive. Pit-falls, stake-nets, and springes do not kill. If
the savage captures an animal unhurt, and can make more by selling it alive
than dead, he will doubtless do so. He is well fitted by education to keep a
wild animal in captivity. His mode of pursuing game

Domestication of Animals             183

requires a
more intimate knowledge of the habits of beasts than is ever acquired by
sportsmen who use more perfect weapons. A savage is obliged to steal upon his
game, and to watch like a jackal for the leavings of large beasts of prey. His
own mode of life is akin to that of the creatures he hunts. Consequently, the
savage is a good gamekeeper; captured animals thrive in his charge, and he
finds it remunerative to take them a long way to market. The demands of ancient
Rome appear to
have penetrated Northern Africa as far or
farther than the steps of our modern explorers. The chief centres of import of
wild animals were Egypt,
Assyria (and other Eastern monarchies), Rome, Mexico,
and Peru.
I have not yet been able to learn what were the habits of Hindostan or China. The
modern menagerie of Lucknow
is the only considerable native effort in those parts with which I am
acquainted.

[Egypt.
]—The mutilated statistical tablet of Karnak
(Trans. R. Soc. Lit., 1847, p. 369,
and 1863, p. 65) refers to an armed invasion of Armenia by Thothmes III., and the
payment of a large tribute of antelopes and birds. When Ptolemy Philadelphus
fêted the Alexandrians (Athenaeus, v.),
the Ethiopians brought dogs, buffaloes, bears, leopards, lynxes, a giraffe, and
a rhinoceros. Doubtless this description of gifts was common. Live beasts are
the one article of curiosity and amusement that barbarians can offer to
civilised nations.

[Assyria.]—Mr. Fox Talbot thus
translates (Journal Asiatic Soc., xix.
124) part of the inscription on the black obelisk of Ashurakbal found in Nineveh and now in the British Museum

“He
caught in hunter’s toils (a blank number) of armi, turakhi, nali, and
yadi. Every one of these animals he placed in separate enclosures. He brought
up their young ones and counted them as carefully as young lambs. As to the
creatures called burkish, utrati (dromedaries ?), tishani, and dagari, he wrote
for them and they came. The dromedaries he kept in enclosures, where he brought
up their young ones. He entrusted each kind of animal to men of their own
country to tend them. There were also curious animals of the Mediterranean
Sea, which the King of Egypt sent as a gift and entrusted to the
care of men of their own land. The very choicest animals were there in
abundance, and birds of heaven with

184        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

beautiful
wings. It was a splendid menagerie, and all the work of his own hands. The
names of the animals were placed beside them.”

[Rome.]—The
extravagant demands for the amphitheatre of ancient Rome must have stimulated the capture of wild
animals in Asia, Africa,
and the then wild parts of Europe, to an
extraordinary extent. I will quote one instance from Gibbon:

“By
the order of Probus, a vast quantity of large trees torn up by the roots were
transplanted into the midst of the circus. The spacious and shady forest was
immediately filled with a thousand ostriches, a thousand stags, a thousand
fallow-deer, and a thousand wild boars, and all this variety of game was
abandoned to the riotous impetuosity of the multitude. The tragedy of the
succeeding day consisted in the massacre of a hundred lions, an equal number of
lionesses, two hundred leopards, and three hundred bears.”

Farther on we read of a spectacle by the younger Gordian of “twenty
zebras, ten elks, ten giraffes, thirty African hyenas, ten Indian tigers, a
rhinoceros, an hippopotamus, and thirty-two elephants.”

[Mexico.]—Gomara,
the friend and executor of Herman Cortes, states

“There
were here also many cages made of stout beams, in some of which there were
lions (pumas); in others, tigers (jaguars); in others, ounces; in others,
wolves; nor was there any animal on four legs that was not there. They had for
their rations deer and other animals of the chase. There were also kept in
large jars or tanks, snakes, alligators, and lizards. In another court there
were cages containing every kind of birds of prey, such as vultures, a dozen
sorts of falcons and hawks, eagles, and owls. The large eagles received turkeys
for their food. Our Spaniards were astonished at seeing such a diversity of
birds and beasts; nor did they find it pleasant to hear the hissing of the
poisonous snakes, the roaring of the lions, the shrill cries of the wolves, nor
the groans of the other animals given to them for food.”

[Peru.]—Garcilasso
de la Vega (Commentarios Reales, v. 1
o), the son of a Spanish conqueror by an Indian princess, born and bred in Peru, writes

“All
the strange birds and beasts which the chiefs presented to the Inca were kept
at court, both for grandeur and also to

Domestication of Animals             185

please the
Indians who presented them. When I came to Cuzco, I remember there were some remains of
places where they kept these creatures. One was the serpent conservatory, and
another where they kept the pumas, jaguars, and bears.”

[Syria
and Greece.]—I
could have said something on Solomon’s apes and peacocks, and could have
quoted at length the magnificent order given by Alexander the Great (Pliny, Nat. Hist., viii. 1 6) towards supplying
material for Aristotle’s studies in natural history; but enough has been
said to prove what I maintained, namely, that numerous cases occur, year after
year, and age after age, in which every animal of note is captured and its
capabilities of domestication unconsciously tested.

I would accept in a more stringent sense than it was probably intended to
bear, the text of St. James, who wrote at a time when a vast variety and
multitude of animals were constantly being forwarded to Rome and to Antioch for amphitheatrical shows. He says
(James 7), “Every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of
things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind.”

I conclude from what I have stated that there is no animal worthy of
domestication that has not frequently been captured, and might ages ago have
established itself as a domestic breed, had it not been deficient in certain
necessary particulars which I shall proceed to discuss. These are numerous and
so stringent as to leave no ground for wonder that out of the vast abundance of
the animal creation, only a few varieties of a few species should have become
the companions of man.

It by no means follows that because a savage cares to take home a young
fawn to amuse himself his family, and his friends, that he will always continue
to feed or to look after it. Such attention would require a steadiness of
purpose foreign to the ordinary character of a savage. But herein lie two
shrewd tests of the eventual destiny of the animal as a domestic species.

Hardiness.—It must be able to shift for itself and to thrive,
although it is neglected; since, if it wanted much care, it would never be worth
its keep.

The hardiness of our domestic animals is shown by the

186        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

rapidity
with which they establish themselves in new lands. The goats and hogs left on
islands by the earlier navigators throve excellently on the whole. The horse
has taken possession of the Pampas, and the
sheep and ox of Australia.
The dog is hardly repressible in the streets of an Oriental town.

Fondness of Man.—Secondly, it must cling to man,
notwithstanding occasional hard usage and frequent neglect. If the animal had
no natural attachment to our species, it would fret itself to death, or escape
and revert to wildness. -It is easy to find cases where the partial or total
non-fulfilment of this condition is a corresponding obstacle to domestication.
Some kinds of cattle are too precious to be discarded, but very troublesome to
look after. Such are the reindeer to the Lapps. Mr. Campbell of Islay informed me that the tamest of certain herds of
them look as if they were wild; they have to be caught with a lasso to be
milked. If they take fright, they are off to the hills; consequently the Lapps
are forced to accommodate themselves to the habits of their beasts, and to
follow them from snow to sea and from sea to snow at different seasons. The
North American reindeer has never been domesticated, owing, I presume, to this
cause. The Peruvian herdsmen would have had great trouble to endure had the
llama and alpaca not existed, for their cogeners, the huanacu and the vicuna,
are hardly to be domesticated.

Zebras, speaking broadly, are unmanageable. The Dutch Boers constantly
endeavour to break them to harness, and though they occasionally succeed to a
degree, the wild mulish nature of the animal is always breaking out, and liable
to balk them.

It is certain that some animals have naturally a greater fondness for man
than others; and as a proof of this, I will again quote Hearne about the moose,
who are considered by him to be the easiest to tame and domesticate of any of
the deer tribe. Formerly the closely-allied European elks were domesticated in Sweden, and
used to draw sledges, as they are now occasionally in Canada; but
they have been obsolete for many years. Hearne says

“The
young ones are so simple that I remember to have seen an Indian paddle his
canoe up to one of them, and take it by

Domestication of Animals             187

the poll,
without experiencing the least opposition, the poor harmless animal seeming at
the same time as contented alongside the canoe as if swimming by the side of
its dam, and looking up in our faces with the same fearless innocence that a
house lamb would.”

On the other hand, a young bison will try to dash out its brains against
the tree to which it is tied, in terror and hatred of its captors.

It is interesting to note the causes that conduce to a decided attachment
of certain animals to man, or between one kind of animal and another. It is
notorious that attachments and aversions exist in nature. Swallows, rooks, and
storks frequent dwelling houses; ostriches and zebras herd together; so do
bisons and elks. On the other hand, deer and sheep, which are both gregarious,
and both eat the same food and graze within the same enclosure, avoid one
another. The spotted Danish dog, the Spitz dog, and the cat, have all a strong
attachment to horses, and horses seem pleased with their company; but dogs and
cats, are proverbially discordant. I presume that two species of animals do not
consider one another companionable, or clubable, unless their behaviour and
their persons are reciprocally agreeable. A phlegmatic animal would be
exceedingly disquieted by the close companionship of an excitable one. The
movements of one beast may have a character that is unpleasing to the eyes of
another; his cries may sound discordant; his smell may be repulsive. Two herds
of animals would hardly intermingle, unless their respective languages of
action and of voice were mutually intelligible. The animal which above all
others is a companion to man is the dog, and we observe how readily their
proceedings are intelligible to each other. Every whine or bark of the dog,
each of his fawning, savage, or timorous movements is the exact counterpart of
what would have been the man’s behaviour, had he felt similar emotions.
As the man understands the thoughts of the dog, so the dog understands the
thoughts of the man, by attending to his natural voice, his countenance, and
his actions. A man irritates a dog by an ordinary laugh, he frightens him by an
angry look, or he calms him by a kindly bearing; but he has less spontaneous hold
over an ox or a sheep.  He must
study their ways and tutor his behaviour

188        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

before he
can either understand the feelings of those animals or make his own
intelligible to them. He has no natural power at all over many other creatures.
Who for instance, ever succeeded in frowning away a mosquito, or in pacifying
an angry wasp by a smile?

Desire of Comfort. —This is
a motive which strongly attaches certain animals to human habitations, even
though they are unwelcome: it is a motive which few persons who have not had an
opportunity of studying animals in savage lands are likely to estimate at its
true value. The life of all beasts in their wild state is an exceedingly
anxious one. From my own recollection, I believe that every antelope in South Africa
has to run for its life every one or two days upon an average, and that he
starts or gallops under the influence of a false alarm many times in a day.
Those who have crouched at night by the side of pools in the desert, in order
to have a shot at the beasts that frequent them, see strange scenes of animal
life; how the creatures gambol at one moment and fight at another; how a herd
suddenly halts in strained attention, and then breaks into a maddened rush, as
one of them becomes conscious of the stealthy movements or rank scent of a
beast of prey. Now this hourly life-and-death excitement is a keen delight to
most wild creatures, but must be peculiarly distracting to the comfort-loving
temperament of others. The latter are alone suited to endure the crass habits
and dull routine of domesticated life. Suppose that an animal which has been
captured and half-tamed, received ill-usage from his captors, either as
punishment or through mere brutality, and that he rushed indignantly into the forest
with his ribs aching from blows and stones. If a comfort-loving animal, he will
probably be no gainer by the change, more serious alarms and no less ill-usage
awaits him; he hears the roar of the wild beasts and the headlong gallop of the
frightened herds, and he finds the buttings and the kicks of other animals
harder to endure than the blows from which he fled. He has the disadvantage of
being a stranger, for the herds of his own species which he seeks for
companionship constitute so many cliques, into which he can only find admission
by more fighting with their strongest members than he has spirit to undergo. As
a set-off against these miseries, the

Domestication of Animals             189

freedom of
savage life has no charms for his temperament; so the end of it is, that with a
heavy heart he turns back to the habitation he had quitted. When animals
thoroughly enjoy the excitement of wild life, I presume they cannot be
domesticated, they could only be tamed, for they would never return from the
joys of the wilderness after they had once tasted them through some accidental
wandering.

Gallinas, or guinea-fowl, have so little care for comfort, or indeed for
man, that they fall but a short way within the frontier of domestication. It is
only in inclement seasons that they take contentedly to the poultry-yards.

Elephants, from their size and power, are not dependent on man for
protection; hence, those that have been reared as pets from the time they were
calves, and have never learned to dread and obey the orders of a driver, are
peculiarly apt to revert to wildness if they once are allowed to wander and
escape to the woods. I believe this tendency, together with the cost of
maintenance and the comparative uselessness of the beasts, are among the chief
causes why Africans never tame them now; though they have not wholly lost the
practice of capturing them when full-grown, and of keeping them imprisoned for
some days alive. Mr. Winwood Reade’s account of captured elephants, seen
by himself near Glass
Town in Equatorial Western
Africa, is very curious.

Usefulness to Man.—To proceed
with the list of requirements which a captured animal must satisfy before it is
possible he could be permanently domesticated: there is the very obvious
condition that he should be useful to man; otherwise, in growing to maturity,
and losing the pleasing youthful ways which had first attracted his captors and
caused them to make a pet of him, he would be repelled. As an instance in
point, I will mention seals. Many years ago I used to visit Shetland, when
those animals were still common, and I heard many stories of their being tamed:

One will suffice :—A fisherman caught a young seal; it was very
affectionate, and frequented his hut, fishing for itself in the sea. At length
it grew self-willed and unwieldy; it used to push the children and snap at
strangers, and it was voted a nuisance, but the people could not bear to kill
it on account of its human ways. One day the fisherman took

190        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

it with him
in his boat, and dropped it in a stormy sea, far from home; the stratagem was
unsuccessful; in a day or two the well-known scuffling sound of the seal, as it
floundered up to the hut, was again heard; the animal had found its way home.
Some days after the poor creature was shot by a sporting stranger, who saw it
basking and did not know it was tame. Now had the seal been a useful animal and
not troublesome, the fisherman would doubtless have caught others, and set a
watch over them to protect them; and then, if they bred freely and were easy to
tend, it is likely enough he would have produced a domestic breed.

The utility of the animals as a store of future food is undoubtedly the
most durable reason for maintaining them; but I think it was probably not so
early a motive as the chief’s pleasure in possessing them. That was the
feeling under which the menageries, described above, were established. Whatever
the despot of savage tribes is pleased with becomes invested with a sort of
sacredness. His tame animals would be the care of all his people, who would
become skilful herdsmen under the pressure of fear. It would be as much as
their lives were worth if one of the creatures were injured through their
neglect. I believe that the keeping of a herd of beasts, with the sole motive of
using them as a reserve for food, or as a means of barter, is a late idea in
the history of civilisation. It has now become established among the pastoral
races of South Africa,
owing to the traffickings of the cattle-traders, but it was by no means prevalent
in Damara-Land when I travelled there in 1852. I then was surprised to observe
the considerations that induced the chiefs to take pleasure in their vast herds
of cattle. They were valued for their stateliness and colour, far more than for
their beef. They were as the deer of an English squire, or as the stud of a man
who has many more horses than he can ride. An ox was almost a sacred beast in
Damara-Land, not to be killed except on momentous occasions, and then as a sort
of sacrificial feast, in which all bystanders shared. The payment of two oxen
was hush-money for the life of a man. I was considerably embarrassed by finding
that I had the greatest trouble in buying oxen for my own use, with the
ordinary articles of barter. The possessor would

Domestication of Animals             191

hardly part
with them for any remuneration; they would never sell their handsomest beasts.

One of the ways in which the value of tamed beasts would be soon
appreciated would be that of giving milk to children. It is marvellous how soon
goats find out children and tempt them to suckle. I have had the milk of my
goats, when encamping for the night in African travels, drained dry by small
black children, who had not the strength to do more than crawl about, but
nevertheless came to some secret understanding with the goats and fed
themselves. The records of many nations have legends like that of Romulus and Remus, who
are stated to have been suckled by wild beasts. These are surprisingly
confirmed by General Sleeman’s narrative of six cases where children were
nurtured for many years by wolves in Oude. (Journey
through Oude in 1849—50, 1. 206.)

Breeding freely.—Domestic
animals must breed freely under confinement. This necessity limits very
narrowly the number of species which might otherwise have been domesticated. It
is one of the most important of all the conditions that have to be satisfied.
The North American turkey, reared from the eggs of the wild bird, is stated to
be unknown in the third generation, in captivity. Our turkey comes from Mexico, and was
abundantly domesticated by the ancient Mexicans.

The Indians of the Upper Amazon took turtle and placed them in lagoons
for use in seasons of scarcity. The Spaniards who first saw them called these
turtle “Indian cattle.” They would certainly have become
domesticated like cattle, if they had been able to breed in captivity.

Easy to tend.—They must be
tended easily. When animals reared in the house are suffered to run about in
the companionship of others like themselves, they naturally revert to much of
their original wildness. It is therefore essential to domestication that they
should possess some quality by which large numbers of them may be controlled by
a few herdsmen. The instinct of gregariousness is such a quality. The herdsman
of a vast troop of oxen grazing in a forest, so long as he is able to see one
of them, knows pretty surely that they are all within reach. If oxen are
frightened and gallop off, they do not scatter, but remain in

192        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

a single body.
When animals are not gregarious, they are to the herdsman like a falling
necklace of beads whose string is broken, or as a handful of water escaping
between the fingers.

The cat is the only non-gregarious domestic animal. It is retained by its
extraordinary adhesion to the comforts of the house in which it is reared.

An animal may be perfectly fitted to be a domestic animal, and be
peculiarly easy to tend in a general way, and yet the circumstances in which
the savages are living may make it too troublesome for them to maintain a
breed. The following account, taken from Mr. Scott Nind’s paper on the
Natives of King George’s Sound in Australia, and printed in the first
volume of the Journal of the Geographical
Society, is particularly to the point. He says

“In
the chase the hunters are assisted by dogs, which they take when young and
domesticate; but they take little pains to train them to any particular mode of
hunting. After finding a litter of young, the natives generally carry away one
or two to rear; in this case, it often occurs that the mother will trace and
attack them; and, being large and very strong, she is rather formidable. At
some periods, food is so scanty as to compel the dog to leave his master and
provide for himself; but in a few days he generally returns.”

I have also evidence that this custom is common to the wild -natives of
other parts of Australia.

The gregariousness of all our domestic species is, I think, the primary
reason why some of them are extinct in a wild state. The wild herds would
intermingle with the tame ones, some would become absorbed, the others would be
killed by hunters, who used the tame cattle as a shelter to approach the wild.
Besides this, comfort-loving animals would be less suited to fight the battle
of life with the rest of the brute creation; and it is therefore to be expected
that those varieties which are best fitted for domestication, would be the
soonest extinguished in a wild state. For instance, we could hardly fancy the
camel to endure in a land where there were large wild beasts.

Selection.—The irreclaimably
wild members of every flock would escape and be utterly lost; the wilder of
those that

Domestication of Animals             193

remained
would assuredly be selected for slaughter, whenever it was necessary that one
of the flock should be killed. The tamest cattle—those that seldom ran
away, that kept the flock together and led them homewards—would be
preserved alive longer than any of the others. It is therefore these that
chiefly become the parents of stock, and bequeath their domestic aptitudes to
the future herd. I have constantly witnessed this process of selection among
the pastoral savages of South
Africa. I believe it to be a very important
one, on account of its rigour and its regularity. It must have existed from the
earliest times, and have been in continuous operation, generation after
generation, down to the present day.

Exceptions.—I have already
mentioned the African elephant, the North American reindeer, and the apparent,
but not real exception of the North American turkey. I should add the ducks and
geese of North America, but I cannot consider
them in the light of a very strong case, for a savage who constantly changes
his home is not likely to carry aquatic birds along with him. Beyond these few,
I know of no notable exceptions to my theory.

Summary.

I see no reason to suppose that the first domestication of any animal,
except the elephant, implies a high civilisation among the people who
established it. I cannot believe it to have been the result of a preconceived
intention, followed by elaborate trials, to administer to the comfort of man.
Neither can I think it arose from one successful effort made by an individual,
who might thereby justly claim the title of benefactor to his race; but, on the
contrary, that a vast number of half-unconscious attempts have been made
throughout the course of ages, and that ultimately, by slow degrees, after many
relapses, and continued selection, our several domestic breeds became firmly
established.

I will briefly restate what appear to be the conditions under which wild
animals may become domesticated :—1, they should be hardy; 2, they should
have an inborn liking for man; 3, they should be comfort-loving; 4, they should
be found useful to the savages; 5, they should breed freely; 6, they should be
easy to tend.

194        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

It would
appear that every wild animal has had its chance of being domesticated, that
those few which fulfilled the above conditions were domesticated long ago, but
that the large remainder, who fail sometimes in only one small particular, are
destined to perpetual wildness so long as their race continues. As civilisation
extends they are doomed to be gradually destroyed off the face of the earth as useless
consumers of cultivated produce. I infer that slight differences in natural
dispositions of human races may in one case lead irresistibly to some
particular career, and in another case may make that career an impossibility.

THE
OBSERVED ORDER OF EVENTS.

There is nothing as yet observed in the order of events to make us doubt
that the universe is bound together in space and time, as a single entity, and
there is a concurrence of many observed facts to induce us to accept that view.
We may, therefore, not unreasonably profess faith in a common and mysterious
whole, and of the laborious advance, under many restrictions, of that
infinitely small part of it which falls under our observation, but which is in
itself enormously large, and behind which lies the awful mystery of the origin
of all existence.

The conditions that direct the order of the whole of the living world
around us, are marked by their persistence in improving the birthright of
successive generations. They determine, at much cost of individual comfort,
that each plant and animal shall, on the general average, be endowed at its
birth with more suitable natural faculties than those of its representative in
the preceding generation. They ensure, in short, that the inborn qualities of
the terrestrial tenantry shall become steadily better adapted to their homes
and to their mutual needs. This effect, be it understood, is not only
favourable to the animals who live long enough to become parents, but is also
favourable to those who perish in earlier life, because even they are on the
whole better off during their brief career than if they had been born still
less adapted to the conditions of their existence. If we summon before our
imagination in a single mighty host, the whole number of living - things from
the earliest date at which

The Observed Order of Events         195

terrestrial
life can be deemed to have probably existed, to the latest future at which we
may think it can probably continue, and if we cease to dwell on the
miscarriages of individual lives or of single generations, we shall plainly
perceive that the actual tenantry of the world progresses in a direction that
may in some sense be described as the greatest happiness of the greatest
number.

We also remark that while the motives by which individuals in the lowest
stages are influenced are purely self regarding, they broaden as evolution goes
on. The word “self” ceases to be wholly personal, and begins to
include subjects of affection and interest, and these become increasingly
numerous as intelligence and depth of character develop, and as civilisation
extends. The sacrifice of the personal desire for repose to the performance of
domestic and social duties is an everyday event with us, and other sacrifices
of the smaller to the larger self are by no means uncommon. Life in general may
be looked upon as a republic where the individuals are for the most part
unconscious that while they are working for themselves they are also working
for the public good.

We may freely confess ignorance of the outcome in the far future of that
personal life to which we each cling passionately in the joyous morning of the
affections, but which, as these and other interests fail, does not seem so
eminently desirable in itself. We know that organic life can hardly be expected
to flourish on this earth of ours for so long a time as it has already existed,
because the sun will in all probability have lost too much of its heat and
light by then, and will have begun to grow dark and therefore cold, as other
stars have done. The conditions of existence here, which are now apparently in
their prime, will have become rigorous and increasingly so, and there will be
retrogression towards lower types, until the simplest form of life shall have
wholly disappeared from the ice-bound surface. The whole living world will then
have waxed and waned like an individual life.

Neither can we discover whether organisms here are capable of attaining
the average development of organisms in other of the planets that are probably
circling round most

196        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

of the
myriads of stars, whose physical constitution, where-ever it has as yet been
observed spectroscopically, does not differ much from that of our sun. But we
perceive around us a countless number of abortive seeds and germs; we find out
of any group of a thousand men selected at random, some who are crippled,
insane, idiotic, and otherwise born incurably imperfect in body or mind, and it
is possible that this world may rank among other worlds as one of these.

We as yet understand nothing of the way in which our conscious selves are
related to the separate lives of the billions of cells of which the body of
each of us is composed. We only know that the cells form a vast nation, some
members of which are always dying and others growing to supply their places,
and that the continual sequence of these multitudes of little lives has its
outcome in the larger and conscious life of the man as a whole. Our part in the
universe may possibly in some distant way be analogous to that of the cells in
an organised body, and our personalities may be the transient but essential
elements of an immortal and cosmic mind.

Our views of the object of life have to be framed so as not to be
inconsistent with the observed facts from which these various possibilities are
inferred; it is safer that they should not exclude the possibilities
themselves. We must look on the slow progress of the order of evolution, and
the system of routine by which it has thus far advanced, as due to antecedents
and to inherent conditions of which we have not as yet the slightest
conception. It is difficult to withstand a suspicion that the three dimensions
of space and the fourth dimension of time may be four independent variables of
a system that is neither space nor time, but something else wholly unconceived
by us. Our present enigma as to how a First Cause could itself have been
brought into existence—how the tortoise of the fable, that bears the
elephant that bears the world, is itself supported—may be wholly due to
our necessary mistranslation of the four or more variables of the universe,
limited by inherent conditions, into the three unlimited variables of Space and
the one of Time.

Our ignorance of the goal and purport of human life, and the mistrust we
are apt to feel of the guidance of the

The
Observed Order of Events         197

spiritual
sense, on account of its proved readiness to accept illusions as realities,
warn us against deductive theories of conduct. Putting these, then, at least
for the moment, to one side, we find ourselves face to face with two great and
indisputable facts that everywhere force themselves on the attention and compel
consideration. The one is that the whole of the living world moves steadily and
continuously towards the evolution of races that are progressively more and
more adapted to their complicated mutual needs and to their external
circumstances. The other is that the process of evolution has been hitherto
apparently carried out with, what we should reckon in our ways of carrying out
projects, great waste of opportunity and of life, and with little if any
consideration for individual mischance. Measured by our criterion of
intelligence and mercy, which consists in the achievement of result without
waste of time or opportunity, without unnecessary pain, and with equitable
allowance for pure mistake, the process of evolution on this earth, so far as
we can judge, has been carried out neither with intelligence nor ruth, but
entirely through the routine of various sequences, commonly called “laws,”
established or necessitated we know not how.

An incalculable amount of lower life has been certainly passed through
before that human organisation was attained, of which we and our generation are
for the time the holders and transmitters. This is no mean heritage, and I
think it should be considered as a sacred trust, for, together with man,
intelligence of a, sufficiently high order to produce great results appears, so
far as we can infer from the varied records of the prehistoric past, to have
first dawned upon the tenantry of the earth. Man has already shown his large
power in the modifications he has made on the surface of the globe, and in the
distribution of plants and animals. He has cleared such vast regions of forest
that his work that way in North America alone,
during the past half century, would be visable to an observer as far off as the
moon. He has dug and drained; he has exterminated plants and animals that were
mischievous to him; he has domesticated those that serve his purpose, and
transplanted them to great distances from their native places. Now that this
new animal, man, finds himself somehow in existence, endowed

198        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

with a
little power and intelligence, he ought, I submit, to awake to a fuller
knowledge of his relatively great position, and begin to assume a deliberate
part in furthering the great work of evolution. He may infer the course it is
bound to pursue, from his observation of that which it has already followed,
and he might devote his modicum of power, intelligence, and kindly feeling to
render its future progress less slow and painful. Man has already furthered
evolution very considerably, half unconsciously, and for his own personal
advantages, but he has not yet risen to the conviction that it is his religious
duty to do so deliberately and systematically.

SELECTION
AND RACE.

The fact of an individual being naturally gifted with high qualities, may
be due either to his being an exceptionally good specimen of a poor race, or an
average specimen of a high one. The difference of origin would betray itself in
his descendants; they would revert towards the typical centre of their race,
deteriorating in the first case but not in the second. The two cases, though
theoretically distinct, are confused in reality, owing to the frequency with
which exceptional personal qualities connote the departure of the entire nature
of the individual from his ancestral type, and the formation of a new strain
having its own typical centre. It is hardly necessary to add that it is in this
indirect way that natural selection improves a race. The two events of
selection and difference of race ought, however, to be carefully distinguished
in broad practical considerations, while the frequency of their concurrence is
borne in mind and allowed for.

So long as the race remains radically the same, the stringent selection
of the best specimens to rear and breed from, can never lead to any permanent
result. The attempt to raise the standard of such a race is like the labour of
Sisyphus in rolling his stone uphill; let the effort be relaxed for a moment,
and the stone will roll back.
Whenever a new typical centre appears, it is as though there was a facet
upon the lower surface of the stone, on which it is capable of resting without
rolling back. It affords a temporary sticking-point in the forward progress of
evolution.

Selection and Race                   199

The causes
that check the unlimited improvement of highly-bred animals, so long as the
race remains unchanged, are many and absolute.

In the first place there is an increasing delicacy of constitution; the
growing fineness of limb and structure end, after a few generations, in
fragility. Overbred animals have little stamina; they resemble in this respect
the “weedy” colts so often reared from first-class racers. One can
perhaps see in a general way why this should be so. Each individual is the
outcome of a vast number of organic elements of the most various species, just
as some nation-might be the outcome of a vast number of castes of individuals, each
caste monopolising a special pursuit. Banish a number of the humbler
castes—the bakers, the bricklayers, and the smiths, and the nation would
soon come to grief. This is what is done in high breeding; certain qualities
are bred for, and the rest are diminished as far as possible, but they cannot
be dispensed with entirely.

The next difficulty lies in the diminished fertility of highly-bred
animals. It is not improbable that its cause is of the same character as that
of the delicacy of their constitution. Together with infertility is combined
some degree of sexual indifference, or when passion is shown, it is not
unfrequently for some specimen of a coarser type. This is certainly the case
with horses and with dogs.

It will be easily understood that these difficulties, which are so
formidable in the case of plants and animals, which we can mate as we please
and destroy when we please, would make the maintenance of a highly-selected
breed of men an impossibility.

Whenever a low race is preserved under conditions of life that exact a
high level of efficiency, it must be subjected to rigorous selection. The few
best specimens of that race can alone be allowed to become parents, and not
many of their descendants can be allowed to live. On the other hand; if a higher
race be substituted for the low one, all this terrible misery disappears. The
most merciful form of what I ventured to call “eugenics” would
consist in watching for the indications of superior strains or races, and in so
favoring them that their progeny shall outnumber and gradually

200        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

replace
that of the old one. Such strains are of no infrequent occurrence. It is easy
to specify families who are characterised by strong resemblances, and whose
features and character are usually prepotent over those of their wives or
husbands in their joint offspring, and who are at the same time as prolific as
the average of their class. These strains can be conveniently studied in the
families of exiles, which, for obvious reasons, are easy to trace in their
various branches.

The debt that most countries owe to the race of men whom they received
from one another as immigrants, whether leaving their native country of their
own free will, or as exiles on political or religious grounds, has been often
pointed out, and may, I think, be accounted for as follows :—The fact of
a man leaving his compatriots, or so irritating them that they compel him to
go, is fair evidence that either he or they, or both, feel that his character
is alien to theirs. Exiles are also on the whole men of considerable force of
character; a quiet man would endure and succumb, he would not have energy to
transplant himself or to become so conspicuous as to be an object of general
attack. We may justly infer from this, that exiles are on the whole men of
exceptional and energetic natures, and it is especially from such men as these
that new strains of race are likely to proceed.

INFLUENCE
OF MAN UPON RACE.

The influence of man upon the nature of his own race has already been
very large, but it has not been intelligently directed, and has in many
instances done great harm. Its action has been by invasions and migration of
races, by war and massacre, by wholesale deportation of population, by
emigration, and by many social customs which have a silent but widespread
effect.

There exists a sentiment, for the most part quite unreasonable, against
the gradual extinction of an inferior race. It rests on some confusion between
the race and the individual, as if the destruction of a race was equivalent to
the destruction of a large number of men. It is nothing of the kind when the
process of extinction works silently and slowly through

Influence of Man upon Race           201

the earlier
marriage of members of the superior race, through their greater vitality under
equal stress, through their better chances of getting a livelihood, or through
their prepotency in mixed marriages. That the members of an inferior class
should dislike being elbowed out of the way is another matter; but it may be
somewhat brutally argued that whenever two individuals struggle for a single
place, one must yield, and that there will be no more unhappiness on the whole,
if the inferior yield to the superior than conversely, whereas the world will
be permanently enriched by the success of the superior. The conditions of
happiness are, however, too complex to be disposed of by à priori argument; it is safest to appeal
to observation. I think it could be easily shown that when the differences
between the races is not so great as to divide them into obviously different
classes, and where their language, education, and general interests are the
same, the substitution may take place gradually without any unhappiness. Thus
the movements of commerce have introduced fresh and vigorous blood into various
parts of England:
the new-corners have intermarried with the residents, and their characteristics
have been prepotent in the descendants of the mixed marriages. I have referred
in the earlier part of the book to the changes of type in the English nature
that have occurred during the last few hundred years. These have been effected
so silently that we only know of them by the results.

One of the most misleading of words is that of “aborigines.”
Its use dates from the time when the cosmogony was thought to be young and life
to be of very recent appearance. Its usual meaning seems to be derived from the
supposition that nations disseminated themselves like colonists from a common
centre about four thousand years, say 120 generations ago, and thenceforward
occupied their lands undisturbed until the very recent historic period with
which the narrator deals, when some invading host drove out the
“aborigines.” This idyllic view of the march of events is
contradicted by ancient sepulchral remains, by language, and by the habits of
those modern barbarians whose history we know. There are probably hardly any
spots on the earth that have not, within the last few thousand years, been
tenanted by very

202        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

different races;
none hardly that have not been tenanted by very different tribes having the
character of at least sub-races.

The absence of a criterion to distinguish between races and sub-races,
and our ethnological ignorance generally, makes it impossible to offer more
than a very off-hand estimate of the average variety of races in the different
countries of the world. I have, however, endeavoured to form one, which I give
with much hesitation, knowing how very little it is worth. I registered the
usually recognised races inhabiting each of upwards of twenty countries, and
who at the same time formed at least half per cent of the population. It was, I
am perfectly aware, a very rough proceeding, so rough that for the United Kingdom
I ignored the prehistoric types and accepted only the three headings of
British, Low Dutch, and Norman-French. Again, as regards India I
registered as follows :—Forest tribes (numerous), Dravidian (three
principal divisions), Early Arian, Tartar (numerous, including Afghans), Arab,
and lastly European, on account of their political importance, notwithstanding
the fewness of their numbers. Proceeding in this off-hand way, and after
considering the results, the broad conclusion to which I arrived was that on
the average at least three different recognised races were to be found in every
moderately-sized district on the earth’s surface. The materials were far
too scanty to enable any idea to be formed of the rate of change in the
relative numbers of the constituent races in each country, and still less to
estimate, the secular changes of type in those races.

It may be well to take one or two examples of intermixture. Spain was
occupied in the earliest historic times by at least two races, of whom we know
very little; it was afterwards colonised here and there by Phoenicians in its
southern ports, and by Greeks in its eastern. In the third century B.C. it was
invaded by the Carthaginians, who conquered and held a large part of it, but
were afterwards supplanted by the Romans, who ruled it more or less completely
for 700 years. It was invaded in the fifth century A.D. by a succession of
German tribes, and was finally completely overrun by the Visigoths, who ruled
it

Influence
of Man upon Race           203

for more
than 200 years. Then came the invasion of the Moors, who rapidly conquered the
whole of the Peninsula up to the mountains of Asturias, where
the Goths still held their own, and whence they issued from time to time and
ultimately recovered the country. The present population consists of the remnants
of one or more tribes of ancient Iberians, of the still more ancient Basques,
and of relics of all the invaders who have just been named. There is, besides,
a notable proportion of Gypsies and not a few Jews.

This is obviously a most heterogeneous mixture, but to fully appreciate
the diversity of its origin the several elements should be traced farther back
towards their sources. Thus, the Moors are principally descendants of Arabs,
who flooded the northern provinces of Africa in successive waves of emigration
eastwards, both before and after the Hegira, partly combining with the Berbers
as they went, and partly displacing them from the littoral districts and
driving them to the oases of the Sahara, whence they in their turn displaced
the Negro population, whom they drove down to the Soudan. The Gypsies,
according to Sir Henry Rawlinson,[1] came from the
Indo-Scythic tribes who inhabited the mouths of the Indus,
and began to migrate northward, from the fourth century onward. They settled in
the Chaldean marshes, assumed independence and defied the caliph. In A.D. 831
the grandson of Haroun al-Raschid sent a large expedition against them, which,
after slaughtering ten thousand, deported the whole of the remainder first to Baghdad and thence
onwards to Persia.
They continued unmanageable in their new home, and were finally transplanted to
the Cilician frontier in Asia Minor, and
established there as a military colony to guard the passes of the Taurus. In
A.D. 962 the Greeks, having obtained some temporary successes, drove the
Gypsies back more into the interior, whence they gradually moved towards the Hellespont under the pressure of the advancing
Seljukians, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They then crossed over
to Europe

[1] Proceedings of the Royal Geographical
Society, vol. i. This account of the routes of the Gypsies is by no means
universally accepted, nor, indeed, was offered as a complete solution of the
problem of their migration, but it will serve to show how complex that problem
is.

204        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

and
gradually overspread it, where they are now estimated to number more than three
millions.

It must not be supposed that emigration on a large scale implies even a
moderate degree of civilisation among those who emigrate, because the process
has been frequently traced among the more barbarous tribes, to say nothing of
the evidence largely derived from ancient burial-places. My own impression of
the races in South Africa
was one of a continual state of ferment and change, of the rapid development of
some clan here and of the complete or almost complete suppression of another
clan there. The well-known history of the rise of the Zulus and the destruction
of their neighbours is a case in point. In the country with which I myself was
familiar the changes had been numerous and rapid in the preceding few years,
and there were undoubted signs of much more important substitutions of race in
bygone times. The facts were briefly these: Damara Land
was inhabited by pastoral tribes of the brown Bantu race who were in continual
war with various alternations of fortune, and the several tribes had special
characteristics that were readily appreciated by themselves. On the tops of the
escarped hills lived a fugitive black people speaking a vile dialect of
Hottentot, and families of yellow Bushmen were found in the lowlands wherever
the country was unsuited for the pastoral Damaras. Lastly, the steadily
encroaching Namaquas, a superior Hottentot race, lived on the edge of the
district. They had very much more civilisation than the Bushmen, and more than
the Damaras, and they contained a large infusion of Dutch blood.

The interpretation of all this was obviously that the land had been
tenanted a long time ago by Negroes, that an invasion of Bushmen drove the
Negroes to the hills, and that the supremacy of these lasted so long that the
Negroes lost their own language and acquired that of the Bushmen. Then an
invasion of a tribe of Bantu race supplanted the Bushmen, and the Bantus, after
endless struggles among themselves, were being pushed aside at the time I
visited them by the incoming Namaquas, who themselves are a mixed race. This is
merely a sample of Africa; everywhere there
are evidences of changing races.

Influence
of Man upon Race           205

The last 300 or 400 years, say the last ten generations of mankind, have
witnessed changes of population on the largest scale, by the extension of races
long resident in Europe to the temperate regions of Asia, Africa, America, and
Australasia.

Siberia was barely known to the
Russians of nine generations ago, but since that time it has been continuously
overspread by their colonists, soldiers, political exiles, and transported
criminals; already some two-thirds of its population are Slaves.

In South Africa
the settlement at the Cape of Good Hope is
barely six generations old, yet during that time a curious and continuous
series of changes has taken place, resulting in the substitution of an alien
population for the Hottentots in the south and the Bantus in the north.
One-third of it is white, consisting of Dutch, English, descendants of French
Huguenot refugees, some Germans and Portuguese, and the remainder is a strange
medley of Hottentot, Bantu, Malay, and Negro elements. In North
Africa Egypt
has become infiltrated with Greeks, Italians, Frenchmen, and Englishmen during
the last two generations, and Algeria
with Frenchmen.

In North America the change has been most striking, from a sparse Indian
population of hunters into that of the present inhabitants of the United States
and Canada; the former of these, with its total of fifty millions inhabitants,
already contains more than forty-three millions of whites, chiefly of English
origin; that is more of European blood than is to be found in any one of the
five great European kingdoms of England, France, Italy, Germany, and Austria,
and less than that of Russia alone. The remainder are chiefly black, the
descendants of slaves imported from Africa. In
the Dominion of Canada, with its much smaller population of four millions,
there has been a less, but still a complete, swamping of the previous Indian
element by incoming whites.

In South America, and thence upwards to Mexico inclusive, the population
has been infiltrated in some parts and transformed in others, by Spanish blood
and by that of the Negroes whom they introduced, so that not one half of its
population can be reckoned as of pure Indian descent.

206
Inquiries into Human Faculty

The West Indian Islands
have had their population absolutely swept away since the time of the Spanish
Conquest, except in a few rare instances, and African Negroes have been
substituted for them.

Australia and New Zealand
tell much the same tale as Canada.
A native population has been almost extinguished in the former and is swamped in
the latter, under the pressure of an immigrant population of Europeans, which
is now twelve times as numerous as the Maories. The time during which this
great change has been effected is less than that covered by three generations.

To this brief -sketch of changes of population in very recent periods, I
might add the wave of Arab admixture that has extended from Egypt and the
northern provinces of Africa into the Soudan, and that of the yellow races of
China, who have already made their industrial and social influence felt in many
distant regions, and who bid fair hereafter, when certain of their peculiar
religious fancies shall have fallen into decay, to become one of the most
effective of the colonising nations, and who may, as I trust, extrude hereafter
the coarse and lazy Negro from at least the metaliferous regions of tropical
Africa.

It is clear from what has been said, that men of former generations have
exercised enormous influence over the human stock of the present day, and that
the average humanity of the world now and in future years is and will be very
different to what it would have been if the action of our forefathers had been
different. The power in man of varying the future human stock vests a great
responsibility in the hands of each fresh generation, which has not yet been
recognised at its just importance, nor deliberately employed. It is foolish to
fold the hands and to say that nothing can be done, inasmuch as social forces
and self-interests are too strong to be resisted. They need not be resisted;
they can be guided. It is one thing to check the course of a huge steam vessel
by the shock of a sudden encounter when she is going at full speed in the wrong
direction, and another to cause her to change her course slowly and gently by a
slight turn of the helm.

Population                         207

Nay, a ship
may be made to describe a half circle, and to end by following a course exactly
opposite to the first, without attracting the notice of the passengers.

POPULATION.

Over-population and its attendant miseries may not improbably become a
more serious subject of consideration than it ever yet has been, owing to
improved sanatation and consequent diminution of the mortality of children, and
to the filling up of the spare places of the earth which are still void and
able to receive the overflow of Europe. There
are no doubt conflicting possibilities which I need not stop to discuss.

The check to over-population mainly advocated by Malthus is a prudential
delay in the time of marriage; but the practice of such a doctrine would
assuredly be limited, and if limited it would be most prejudicial to the race,
as I have pointed out in Hereditary
Genius but may be permitted to do so again. The doctrine would only be
followed by the prudent and self-denying; it would be neglected by the
impulsive and self-seeking. Those whose race we especially want to have, would
leave few descendants, while those whose race we especially want to be quit of,
would crowd the vacant space with their progeny, and the strain of population
would thenceforward be just as pressing as before. There would have been a
little relief during one or two generations, but no permanent increase of the
general happiness, while the race of the nation would have deteriorated. The
practical application of the doctrine of deferred marriage would therefore lead
indirectly to most mischievous results, that were overlooked owing to the
neglect of considerations bearing on race. While criticising the main
conclusion to which Malthus came, I must take the opportunity of paying my
humble tribute of admiration to his great and original work, which seems to me
like the rise of a morning star before a day of free social investigation.
There is nothing whatever in his book that would be in the least offensive to
this generation, but he wrote in advance of his time and consequently roused
virulent attacks,

208        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

notably from his fellow-clergymen, whose doctrinaire notions upon the
paternal dispensation of the world were rudely shocked.

The misery check, as Malthus called all those influences that are not
prudential, is an ugly phrase not fully justified. It no doubt includes death
through inadequate food and shelter, through pestilence from overcrowding,
through war, and the like; but t also includes many causes that do not deserve
so hard a name. Population decays under conditions that cannot be charged to
the presence or absence of misery, in the common sense of the word. These exist
when native races disappear before the presence of the incoming white man, when
after making the fullest allowances for imported disease, for brandy drinking,
and other assignable causes, there is always a large residuum of effect not
clearly accounted for. It is certainly not wholly due to misery, but rather to
listlessness, due to discouragement, and acting adversely in many ways.

One notable result of dulness and apathy is to make a person unattractive
to the opposite sex and to be unattracted by them. It is antagonistic to sexual
affection, and the result is a diminution of offspring. There exists strong
evidence that the decay of population in some parts of South
America under the irksome tyranny of the Jesuits, which crushed
what little vivacity the people possessed, was due to this very cause. One
cannot fairly apply the term “misery” to apathy; I should rather
say that strong affections restrained from marriage by prudential
considerations more truly deserved that name.

EARLY
AND LATE MARRIAGES.

It is important to obtain a just idea of the relative effects of early
and late marriages. I attempted this in Hereditary
Genius, but I think the following is a better estimate. We are unhappily
still deficient in collected data as regards the fertility of the upper and
middle classes at different ages; but the facts collected by Dr. Matthews
Duncan as regards the lower orders will serve our purpose approximately, by
furnishing the required ratios, though
not the absolute

Early
and Late Marriages              209

values. The following are his results,[1] from returns kept at the Lying-in Hospital of St.
Georges-in-the-East

Age of
Mother at her

Marriage.

Average
Fertility.

15—19

9.12

20—24

7.92

25—29

6.30

30—34

4.60

The meaning of this Table will be more clearly grasped
after a little modification of its contents. We may consider the fertility of
each group to refer to the medium age of that group, as by writing 17 instead
of 15—19, and we may slightly smooth the figures, then we have—

Age of Mother at her

Marriage.

Approximate average

Fertility.

17

9.00=6x1.5

22

7.50=5x1.5

27

6.00=4x1.5

32

4.50=3x1.5

which shows that the relative fertility of mothers married at the ages
of 17, 22, 27, and 32 respectively is as 6, 5, 4, and 3 approximately.

The increase in population by a habit of early marriages is further
augmented by the greater rapidity with which the generations follow each other.
By the joint effect of these two causes, a large effect is in time produced.

Let us compute a single example. Taking a group of 100 mothers married at
the age of 20, whom we will designate as A, and another group of 100 mothers
married at the age of 29, whom we will call B, we shall find by interpolation
that the fertility of A and B respectively would be about 82 and 5.4. We need
not, however, regard their absolute fertility, which would differ in different
classes of society, but will only consider their relative production of such
female children as may live and become mothers, and we will suppose the number
of such descendants in the first generation to be the same as that of the A and
B mothers together

[1]
Fecundity, Fertility, Sterility, etc., by Dr. Matthews Duncan A. & C.
Black: Edinburgh,
1871, p. 143.

210        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

—namely,
200. Then the number of such children in the A and B classes respectively,
being in the proportion of 82 to 5.4, will be 115 and 85.

We have next to determine the average lengths of the A and B generations,
which may be roughly done by basing it on the usual estimate of an average
generation, irrespectively of sex, at a third of a century, or say of an
average female generation at 31. 5 years. We will further take 20 years as
being 45 years earlier than the average time of marriage, and 29 years as 4.5 years
later than it, so that the length of each generation of the A group will be 27
years, and that of the B group will be 36 years. All these suppositions appear
to be perfectly fair and reasonable, while it may easily be shown that any
other suppositions within the bounds of probability would lead to results of
the same general order.

After
Number of Years as below

Number
of Female Descendants who themselves become Mothers

A

Of
100 Mothers whose Marriages and those of their Daughters all take place at,
the Age of 20 Years

B

Of 100 Mothers whose Marriages and those of
their Daughters all take place at the Age of 29 Years

(Ratio
of increase in each successive Generation being 1.15)

(Ratio of Decrease in each successive
Generation being 0.85)

108

175

61

216

299

38

324

535

23

The least common multiple
of 27 and 36 is 108, at the end of which term of years A will have been
multiplied four times over by the factor and B three times over by the factor
0.85. The results are given in the following Table :—

The general result is that the group B gradually disappears, and the
group A more than supplants it. Hence if the races best fitted to occupy the
land are encouraged to marry early, they will breed down the others in a - very
few generations.

Marks for Family Merit               211

MARKS
FOR FAMILY MERIT.

It may seem very reasonable to ask how the result proposed in the last
paragraph is to be attained, and to add that the difficulty of carrying so
laudable a proposal into effect lies wholly in the details, and therefore that
until some working plan is suggested, the consideration of improving the human
race is Utopian. But this requirement is not altogether fair, because if a
persuasion of the importance of any end takes possession of men’s minds,
sooner or later means are found by which that end is carried into effect. Some
of the objections offered at first will be discovered to be sentimental, and of
no real importance—the sentiment will change and they will disappear;
others that are genuine are not met, but are in some way turned or eluded; and
lastly, through the ingenuity of many minds directed for a long time towards
the achievement of a common purpose, many happy ideas are sure to be hit upon
that would not have occurred to a single individual.

This being premised, it will suffice to faintly sketch out some sort of
basis for eugenics, it being now an understanding that we are provisionally
agreed, for the sake of argument, that the improvement of race is an object of
first-class importance, and that the popular feeling has been educated to
regard it in that light.

The final object would be to devise means for favouring individuals who
bore the signs of membership of a superior race, the proximate aim would be to
ascertain what those signs were, and these we will consider first.

The indications of superior breed are partly personal, partly ancestral.
We need not trouble ourselves about the personal part, because full weight is
already given to it in the competitive careers; energy, brain, morale, and
health being recognised factors of success, while there can hardly be a better
evidence of a person being adapted to his circumstances than that afforded by
success. It is the ancestral part that is neglected, and which we have yet to
recognise at its just value. A question that now continually arises is this: a
youth is a candidate for permanent employment,

212        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

his present
personal qualifications are known, but how will he turn out in later years? The
objections to competitive examinations are notorious, in that they give undue
prominence to youths whose receptive faculties are quick, and whose intellects
are precocious. They give no indication of the directions in which the health,
character, and intellect of the youth will change through the development, in
their due course, of ancestral tendencies that are latent in youth, but will manifest
themselves in after life.
Examinations deal with the present, not with the future, although it is
in the future of the youth that we are especially interested. Much of the
needed guidance may be derived from his family history. I cannot doubt, if two
youths were of equal personal merit, of whom one belonged to a thriving and
long-lived family, and the other to a decaying and short-lived family, that
there could be any hesitation in saying that the chances were greater of the
first-mentioned youth becoming the more valuable public servant of the two.

A thriving family may be sufficiently defined or inferred by the
successive occupations of its several male members in the previous generation,
and of the two grandfathers. These are patent facts attainable by almost every
youth, which admit of being verified in his neighbourhood and attested in a
satisfactory manner.

A healthy and long-lived family may be defined by the patent facts of
ages at death, and number and ages of living relatives, within the degrees
mentioned above, all of which can be verified and attested. A knowledge of the
existence of longevity in the family would testify to the stamina of the
candidate, and be an important addition to the knowledge of his present health
in forecasting the probability of his performing a large measure of experienced
work.

Owing to
absence of data and the want of inquiry of the family antecedents of those who
fail and of those who succeed in life, we are much more ignorant than we ought
to be of their relative importance. In connection with this, I may mention some
curious results published by Mr. F. M. Holland[1] of Boston, U.S.,
as to the antecedent family history of persons who were reputed to be more
moral than the average, and of those who were the reverse. He has

[1] Index Newspaper, Boston, U.S. July 27, 1882.

Marks
for Family Merit               213

been good
enough to reply to questions that I sent to him concerning his criterion of
morality, and other points connected with the statistics, in a way that seems
satisfactory, and he has very obligingly furnished me with additional MS.
materials. One of his conclusions was that morality is more often found among
members of large families than among those of small ones. It is reasonable to
expect this would be the case owing to the internal discipline among members of
large families, and to the wholesome sustaining and restraining effects of
family pride and family criticism. Members of small families are apt to be
selfish, and when the smallness of the family is due to the deaths of many of
its members at early ages, it is some evidence either of weakness of the family
constitution, or of deficiency of common sense or of affection on the part of
the parents in not taking better care of them. Mr. Holland quotes in his letter
to me a piece of advice by Franklin
to a young man in search of a wife, “to take one out of a bunch of
sisters,” and a popular saying that kittens brought up with others make
the best pets, because they have learned to play without scratching. Sir William
Gull[1] has remarked that those candidates for
the Indian Civil Service who are members of large families are on the whole the
strongest.

Far be it from
me to say that any scheme of marks for family merit would not require a great
deal of preparatory consideration. Careful statistical inquiries have yet to be
made into the family antecedents of public servants of mature age in connection
with their place in examination lists at the earlier age when they first gained
their appointments. This would be necessary in order to learn the amount of
marks that should be assigned to various degrees of family merit. I foresee no
peculiar difficulty in conducting such an inquiry; indeed, now that competitive
examinations have been in general use for many years, the time seems ripe for
it, but of course its conduct would require much confidential inquiry and a
great deal of trouble in verifying returns. Still, it admits of being done, and
if the results, derived from different sources, should confirm one another, they
could be depended on.

[1] Blue Book C—1446, 1876. On the Selection and
Training of Candidates for the Indian Civil Service.

214        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

Let us now suppose that a way was seen for carrying some such idea as
this into practice, and that family merit, however defined, was allowed to
count, for however little, in competitive examinations. The effect would be
very great:

it would show that ancestral qualities are of present current value; it
would give an impetus to collecting family histories; it would open the eyes of
every family and of society at large to the importance of marriage alliance
with a good stock; it would introduce the subject of race into a permanent
topic of consideration, which (on the supposition of its bonâ fide importance that has been assumed for the sake of
argument) experience would show to be amply justified. Any act that first gives
a guinea stamp to the sterling guinea’s worth of natural nobility might
set a great social avalanche in motion.

ENDOWMENTS.

Endowments and bequests have been freely and largely made for various
social purposes, and as a matter of history they have frequently been made to
portion girls in marriage. It so happens that the very day that I am writing
this, I notice an account in the foreign newspapers (September 19, 1882) of an
Italian who has bequeathed a sum to the corporation of London to found small
portions for three poor girls to be selected by lot.  And again, a few weeks ago I read also in
the French papers of a trial, in reference to the money adjudged to the
“Rosière” of a certain village. Many cases in which
individuals and states have portioned girls may be found in Malthus. It is
therefore far from improbable that if the merits of good race became widely recognised
and its indications were rendered more surely intelligible than they now are,
that local endowments, and perhaps adoptions, might be made in favour of those
of both sexes who showed evidences of high race and of belonging to prolific
and thriving families. One cannot forecast their form, though we may reckon
with some assurance that in one way or another they would be made, and that the
better races would be given a better chance of marrying early.

A curious relic of the custom which was universal three or

Endowments                       215

four
centuries ago, of entrusting education to celibate priests, forbade Fellows of
Colleges to marry, under the penalty of losing their fellowships. It is as
though the winning horses at races were rendered ineligible to become sires,
which I need hardly say is the exact reverse of the practice. Races were
established and endowed by “Queen’s plates” and otherwise at
vast expense, for the purpose of discovering the swiftest horses, who are
thence-forward exempted from labour and reserved for the sole purpose of
propagating their species. The horses who do not win races, or who are not
otherwise specially selected for their natural gifts, are prevented from
becoming sires. Similarly, the mares who win races as fillies, are not allowed
to waste their strength in being ridden or driven, but are tended under
sanatory conditions for the sole., purpose of bearing offspring. It is better
economy, in the long-run, to use the best mares as breeders than as workers,
the loss through their withdrawal from active service being more than recouped
in the next generation through what is gained by their progeny.

The college statutes to which I referred were very recently relaxed at Oxford, and have been
just reformed at Cambridge.
I am told that numerous marriages have ensued in consequence, or are ensuing.
In Hereditary Genius I showed that
scholastic success runs strongly in families; therefore, in all seriousness, I
have no doubt, that the number of Englishmen naturally endowed with high
scholastic faculties, will be sensibly increased in future generations by the
repeal of these ancient statutes.

The English race has yet to be explored and their now unknown wealth of
hereditary gifts recorded, that those who possess such a patrimony should know
of it. The natural impulses of mankind would then be sufficient to ensure that
such wealth should no more continue to be neglected than the existence of any
other possession suddenly made known to a man. Aristocracies seldom make
alliances out of their order, except to gain wealth. Is it less to be expected
that those who become aware that they are endowed with the power of
transmitting valuable hereditary gifts should abstain from squandering their
future children’s patrimony by

216        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

marrying
persons of lower natural stamp? The social consideration that would attach
itself to high races would, it may be hoped, partly neutralise a social cause
that is now very adverse to the early marriages of the most gifted, namely, the
cost of living in cultured and refined society. A young man with a career
before him commonly feels it would be an act of folly to hamper himself by too
early a marriage. The doors of society that are freely open to a bachelor are
closed to a married couple with small means, unless they bear patent
recommendations such as the public recognition of a natural nobility would
give. The attitude of mind that I should expect to predominate among those who
had undeniable claims to rank as members of an exceptionally gifted race, would
be akin to that of the modern possessors of ancestral property or hereditary
rank. Such persons feel it a point of honour not to alienate the old place or
make misalliances, and they are respected for their honest family pride. So a
man of good race would shrink from spoiling it by a lower marriage, and every
one would sympathise with his sentiments.

CONCLUSION.

It remains to sketch in outline the principal conclusions to which we
seem to be driven by the results of the various inquiries contained in this
volume, and by what we know on allied topics from the works of others.

We cannot but recognise the vast variety of natural faculty, useful and
harmful, in members of the same race, and much more in the human family at
large, all of which tend to be transmitted by inheritance. Neither can we fail
to observe that the faculties of men generally, are unequal to the requirements
of a high and growing civilisation. This is principally owing to their entire
ancestry having lived up to recent times under very uncivilised conditions, and
to the somewhat capricious distribution in late times of inherited wealth,
which affords various degrees of immunity from the usual selective agencies.

In solution of the question whether a continual improvement in education
might not compensate for a stationary or

Conclusion                         217

even
retrograde condition of natural gifts, I made inquiry into the life history of
twins, which resulted in proving the vastly preponderating effects of nature
over nurture.

The fact that the very foundation and outcome of the human mind is
dependent on race, and that the qualities of races vary, and therefore that
humanity taken as a whole is not fixed but variable, compels us to reconsider
what may be the true place and function of man in the order of the world. I have
examined this question freely from many points of view, because whatever may be
the vehemence with which particular opinions are insisted upon, its solution is
unquestionably doubtful. There is a wide and growing conviction among
truth-seeking, earnest, humble-minded, and thoughtful men, both in this country
and abroad, that our cosmic relations are by no means so clear and simple as
they are popularly supposed to be, while the worthy and intelligent teachers of
various creeds, who have strong persuasions on the character of those
relations, do not concur in their several views.

The results of the inquiries I have made into certain alleged forms of
our relations with the unseen world do not, so far as they go, confirm the
common doctrines. One, for example, on the objective efficacy of prayer[1] was decidedly
negative. It showed that while contradicting the commonly expressed doctrine,
it concurred with the almost universal practical opinion of the present day.
Another inquiry into visions showed that, however ill explained they may still
be, they belong for the most part, if not altogether, to an order of phenomena
which no one dreams in other cases of calling supernatural. Many investigations
concur in showing the vast multiplicity of mental operations that are in
simultaneous action, of which only a minute part falls within the ken of
consciousness, and suggest that much of what passes for supernatural is due to
one portion of our mind being contemplated by another portion of it, as if it
had been that of another person. The term “individuality” is in
fact a most misleading word.

I do not for a
moment wish to imply that the few inquiries published in this volume exhaust
the list of those that might be made, for I distinctly hold the contrary, but

[1] Not
reprinted in this edition.

218        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

I refer to
them in corroboration of the previous assertion that our relations with the
unseen world are different to those we are commonly taught to believe.

In our doubt as to the character of our mysterious relations with the
unseen ocean of actual and potential life by which we are surrounded, the
generally accepted fact of the solidarity of the universe—that is, of the
intimate connections between distant parts that bind it together as a whole—justifies
us, I think, in looking upon ourselves as members of a vast system which in one
of its aspects resembles a cosmic republic.

On the one hand, we know that evolution has proceeded during an enormous
time on this earth, under, so far as we can gather, a system of rigorous
causation, with no economy of time or of instruments, and with no show of
special ruth for those who may in pure ignorance have violated the conditions
of life.

On the other hand, while recognising the awful mystery of conscious existence
and the inscrutable background of evolution, we find that as the foremost
outcome of many and long birth-throes, intelligent and kindly man finds himself
in being. He knows how petty he is, but he also perceives that he stands here
on this particular earth, at this particular time, as the heir of untold ages
and in the van of circumstance. He ought therefore, I think, to be less
diffident than he is usually instructed to be, and to rise to the conception
that he has a considerable function to perform in the order of events, and that
his exertions are needed. It seems to me that he should look upon himself more
as a freeman, with power of shaping the course of future humanity, and that he
should look upon himself less as the subject of a despotic government, in which
case it would be his chief merit to depend wholly upon what had been regulated
for him, and to render abject obedience.

The question then arises as to the way in which man can assist in the
order of events. I reply, by furthering the course of evolution. He may use his
intelligence to discover and expedite the changes that are necessary to adapt
circumstance to race and race to circumstance, and his kindly sympathy will
urge him to effect them mercifully.

Conclusion                         219

When we
begin to inquire, with some misgiving perhaps, as to the evidence that man has
present power to influence the quality of future humanity, we soon discover
that his past influence in that direction has been very large indeed. It has
been exerted hitherto for other ends than that which is now contemplated, such
as for conquest or emigration, also through social conditions whose effects
upon race were imperfectly foreseen. There can be no doubt that the hitherto
unused means of his influence are also numerous and great. I have not cared to
go much into detail concerning these, but restricted myself to a few broad
considerations, as by showing how largely the balance of population becomes
affected by the earlier marriages of some of its classes, and by pointing out
the great influence that endowments have had in checking the marriage of monks
and scholars, and therefore the yet larger influence they might be expected to
have if they were directed not to thwart but to harmonise with natural
inclination, by promoting early marriages in the classes to be favoured. I also
showed that a powerful influence might flow from a public recognition in early
life of the true value of the probability of future performance, as based on
the past performance of the ancestors of the child. It is an element of
forecast, in addition to that of present personal merit, which has yet to be
appraised and recognised. Its recognition would attract assistance in various
ways, impossible now to specify, to the young families of those who were most likely
to stock the world with healthy, moral, intelligent, and fair-natured citizens.
The stream of charity is not unlimited, and it is requisite for the speedier
evolution of a more perfect humanity that it should be so distributed as to
favour the best-adapted races. I have not spoken of the repression of the rest,
believing that it would ensue indirectly as a matter of course; but I may add
that few would deserve better of their country than those who determine to live
celibate lives, through a reasonable conviction that their issue would probably
be less fitted than the generality to play their part as citizens.

It would be easy to add to the number of possible agencies by which the
evolution of a higher humanity might be furthered, but it is premature to do so
until the

220        Inquiries
into Human Faculty

importance
of attending to the improvement of our race shall have been so well established
in the popular mind that a discussion of them would be likely to receive
serious consideration.

It is hardly necessary to insist on the certainty that our present
imperfect knowledge of the limitations and conditions of hereditary
transmission will be steadily added to; but I would call attention again to the
serious want of adequate materials for study in the form of life-histories. It
is fortunately the case that many of the rising medical practitioners of the
foremost rank are become strongly impressed with the necessity of possessing
them, not only for the better knowledge of the theory of disease, but for the
personal advantage of their patients, whom they now have to treat less
appropriately than they otherwise would, through ignorance of their hereditary
tendencies and of their illnesses in past years, the medical details of which
are rarely remembered by the patient, even if he ever knew them. With the help
of so powerful a personal motive for keeping life-histories, and of so
influential a body as the medical profession to advocate its being done,[1] and to show how to do it, there is considerable hope
that the want of materials to which I have alluded will gradually be supplied.

To sum up in a few words. The chief result of these Inquiries has been to
elicit the religious significance of the doctrine of evolution. It suggests an
alteration in our mental attitude, and imposes a new moral duty. The new mental
attitude is one of a greater sense of moral freedom, responsibility, and
opportunity; the new duty which is supposed to be exercised concurrently with,
and not in opposition to the old ones upon which the social fabric depends, is
an endeavour to further evolution, especially that of the human race.

[1] See an address on the Collective Investigation
of Disease, by Sir William Gull, British
Medical Journal; January
27, 1883, p. 143; also the following address by Sir James Paget, p.
144.

APPENDIX

A.—COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE.

THE object and methods of Composite
Portraiture will be best explained by the following extracts from memoirs
describing its successive stages, published in 1878, 1879, and 1881
respectively

I. COMPOSITE
PORTRAITS, MADE BY COMBINING THOSE OF MANY DIFFERENT PERSONS INTO A SINGLE
RESULTANT FIGURE.

[Extract from Memoir read before the Anthropological Institute, in 1878.]

I submit to the Anthropological
Institute my first results in carrying out a process that I suggested last
August [1877] in my presidential address to the Anthropological Subsection of
the British Association at Plymouth, in the following words

“Having
obtained drawings or photographs of several persons alike in most respects, but
differing in minor details, what sure method is there of extracting the typical
characteristics from them? I may mention a plan which had occurred both to Mr.
Herbert Spencer and myself, the principle of which is to superimpose optically
the various drawings, and to accept the aggregate result. Mr. Spencer suggested
to me in conversation that the drawings reduced to the same scale might be
traced on separate pieces of transparent paper and secured one upon another,
and then held between the eye and the light. I have attempted this with some
success. My own idea was to throw faint images of the several portraits, in
succession, upon the same sensitised photographic plate. I may add that it is
perfectly easy to superimpose optically two portraits by means of a stereoscope,
and that a person who is used to handle instruments will find a common double
eyeglass fitted with stereoscopic lenses to be almost as effectual and far
handier than the boxes sold in shops.”

Mr. Spencer, as he informed me, had
actually devised an instrument, many years ago, for tracing mechanically,
longitudinal, transverse, and horizontal sections of heads on transparent
paper, intending to superimpose them, and to obtain an average result by
transmitted light.

Since, my address was published, I
have, caused trials to be made, and have found as a matter of fact, that the
photographic

221

222                        Appendix

process of which I there spoke
enables us to obtain with mechanical precision a generalised picture; one that
represents no man in particular, but portrays an imaginary figure possessing
the average features of any given group of men. These ideal faces have a
surprising air of reality. Nobody who glanced at one of them for the first time
would doubt its being the likeness of a living person, yet, as I have said, it
is no such thing; it is the portrait of a type and not of an individual.

I begin by collecting photographs of
the persons with whom I propose to deal. They must be similar in attitude and
size, but no exactness is necessary in either of these respects. Then, by a
simple contrivance, I make two pinholes in each of them, to enable me to hang
them up one in front of the other; like a

pack of cards, upon the same pair
of pins, in such a way that the eyes of all the portraits shall be as nearly as
possible superimposed; in which case the remainder of the features will also be
superimposed nearly enough. These pinholes correspond to what are technically
known to printers as “register marks.” They are easily made: A slip
of brass or card has an aperture cut out of its middle, and threads are
stretched from opposite sides, making a cross.[1] Two small
holes are drilled in the plate, one on either side of the aperture. The slip of
brass is laid on the portrait with the aperture over its face. It is turned
about until one of the cross threads cuts the pupils of both the eyes, and it
is further adjusted until the other thread divides the interval between the
pupils in two equal parts. Then it is held firmly, and a prick is made through
each of the holes.

The portraits being thus arranged, a
photographic camera is directed upon them. Suppose there are eight portraits in
the pack, and that under existing circumstances it would require an

[1] I am indebted for the woodcuts to the Editor of Nature, in which journal this memoir first appeared.

Composite Portraiture    223

exposure of eighty seconds to give
an exact photographic copy of any one of them. The general principle of
proceeding is this, subject in practice to some variations of detail, depending
on the different brightness of the several portraits. We throw the image of
each of the eight portraits in turn upon the same part of the sensitised plate
for ten seconds. Thus, portrait No. 1 is in the front of the pack; we take the
cap off the object glass of the camera for ten seconds, and afterwards replace
it. We then remove No. 1 from the pins, and No. 2 appears in the front; we take
off the cap a second time for ten seconds, and. again replace it. Next we
remove No. 2, and No. 3 appears in the front, which we treat as its
predecessors, and so we go on to the last of the pack. The sensitised plate
will now have had its total exposure of eighty seconds; it is then developed,
and. the print taken from it is the generalised picture of which  I speak. It is a composite of eight
component portraits. Those of its outlines are sharpest and darkest that are
common to the largest number of the components; the purely individual
peculiarities leave little or no visible trace. The latter

being necessarily disposed equally
on both sides of the average, the outline of the composite is the average of
all the components. It is a band and not a fine line, because the outlines of
the components are seldom exactly superimposed. The band will be darkest in its
middle whenever the component portraits have the same general type of features,
and its breadth, or amount of blur, will measure the tendency of the components
to deviate from the common type. This is so for the very same reason that the
shot-marks on a target are more thickly disposed near the bull’s-eye than
away from it, and in a greater degree as the marksmen are more skilful. All
that has been said of the outlines is equally true as regards the shadows; the
result being that the composite represents an averaged figure, whose lineaments
have been softly drawn. The eyes come out with appropriate distinctness, owing
to the mechanical conditions under which the components are hung.

A composite portrait represents the
picture that would rise before the mind’s eye of a man who had the gift
of pictorial

224                        Appendix

imagination in an exalted degree. But
the imaginative power even of the highest artists is far from precise, and is
so apt to be biassed by special cases that may have struck their fancies, that
no two artists agree in any of their typical forms. The merit of the
photographic composite is its mechanical precision, being subject to no errors
beyond those incidental to all photographic productions.

I submit several composites made for
me by Mr. H. Reynolds. The first set of portraits are those of criminals
convicted of murder, manslaughter, or robbery accompanied with violence. It
will be observed that the features of the composites are much better looking
than those of the components. The special villainous irregularities in the
latter have disappeared, and the common humanity that underlies them has
prevailed. They represent, not the criminal, but the man who is liable to fall
into crime. All composites are better looking than their components, because
the averaged portrait of many persons is free from the irregularities that
variously blemish the looks of each of them.

I selected these for my first trials
because I happened to possess a large collection of photographs of criminals,
through the kindness of Sir Edmund Du Cane, the Director-General of Prisons,
for the purpose of investigating criminal types. They were peculiarly adapted
to my present purpose, being all made of about the same size, and taken in much
the same attitudes. It was while endeavouring to elicit the principal criminal
types by methods of optical superimposition of the portraits, such as I had
frequently employed with maps and meteorological traces,[1] that the idea of composite figures first occurred
to me.

The other set of composites are made
from pairs of components. They are selected to show the extraordinary facility
of combining almost any two faces whose proportions are in any way similar.

It will, I am sure, surprise most
persons to see how well defined these composites are. When we deal with faces
of the same type, the points of similarity far outnumber those of
dissimilarity, and there is a much greater resemblance between faces generally
than we who turn our attention to individual differences are apt to appreciate.
A traveller on his first arrival among people of a race very different to his
own thinks them closely alike, and a Hindu has much difficulty in
distinguishing one Englishman from another.

The fairness with which photographic
composites represent

[1] Conference at the Loan Exhibition of
Scientific Instruments, 1878. Chapman and Hall. Physical Geography Section,
p. 312, On Means of Combining Various
Data in Maps and Diagrams, by Francis Galton, F.R.S.

Composite Portraiture                     225

their components is shown by six of
the specimens. I wished to learn whether the order in which the components were
photographed made any material difference in the result, so I had three of the
portraits arranged successively in each of their six possible combinations. It
will be observed that four at least of the six composites are closely alike. I
should say that in each of this set (which was made by the wet process) the
last of the three components was always allowed a longer exposure

The
accompanying woodcut is as fair a representation of one of the composites as is
practicable in ordinary printing. It was photographically transferred to the
wood, and the engraver has used his best endeavour to translate the shades into
line engraving. This composite is made out of only three components, and its
threefold origin is to he traced in the ears, and in the buttons to the vest.
To the best of my judgment, the original photograph is a very exact average of
its components; not one feature in it appears identical with that of any one of
them, hut it contains a resemblance to all, and is not more like to one of them
than to another. However, the judgment of the wood engraver is different. His
rendering of the composite has made it exactly like one of its components,
which it must he borne in mind he had never seen. It is just as though an
artist drawing a child had produced a portrait closely resembling its deceased
father, having overlooked an equally strong likeness to its deceased mother,
which was apparent to its relatives. This is to me a most striking proof that
the composite is a true combination.

[Ed.: a proper reproduction of the photograph
has been substituted for the woodcut]

than the second, and the second
than the first, but it is found better to allow an equal time to all of them.

226                        Appendix

The stereoscope, as I stated last
August in my address at Plymouth,
affords a very easy method of optically superimposing two portraits, and I have
much pleasure in quoting the following letter, pointing out this fact as well
as some other conclusions to which I also had arrived. The letter was kindly
forwarded to me by Mr. Darwin; it is dated last November, and was written to
him by Mr. A. L. Austin, from New
Zealand, thus affording another of the many
curious instances of two persons being independently engaged in the same novel
inquiry at nearly the same time, and coming to similar results

“INVERCARGILL,
NEW ZEALAND,

“November 6th, 1877.

“To CHARLES DARWIN, Esq.

“SIR,—Although a perfect stranger to you,
and living on the reverse side of the globe, I have taken the liberty of
writing to you on a small discovery I have made in binocular vision in the
stereoscope. I find by taking two ordinary carte-de-visite photos of two
different persons’ faces, the portraits being about the same sizes, and
looking about the same direction, and placing them in a stereoscope, the faces
blend into one in a most remarkable manner, producing in the case of some
ladies’ portraits, in every instance, a decided improvement in beauty. The pictures were not taken in a
binocular camera, and therefore do not stand out well, but by moving one or
both until the eyes coincide in the stereoscope the pictures blend perfectly.
If taken in a binocular camera for the purpose, each person being taken on one
half of the negative, I am sure the results would be still more striking.
Perhaps something might be made of this in regard to the expression of emotions
in man and the lower animals, &c. I have not time or opportunities to make
experiments, but it seems to me something might be made of this by
photographing the faces of different animals, different races of mankind,
&c. I think a stereoscopic view of one of the ape tribe and some low-caste
human face would make a very curious mixture; also in the matter of crossing of
animals and the resulting offspring. It seems to me something also might result
in photos of husband and wife and children, &c. In any case, the results
are curious, if it leads to nothing else. Should this come to anything you will
no doubt acknowledge myself as suggesting the experiment, and perhaps send me
some of the results. If not likely to come to anything, a reply would much
oblige me.

“Yours
very truly,

“A. L. AUSTIN, C.E., F.R.A.S.”

Dr. Carpenter informs me that the late
Mr. Appold, the mechanician, used to combine two portraits of himself under the
stereoscope. The one had been taken with an assumed stern expression, the other
with a smile, and this combination produced a curious and effective blending of
the two.

Convenient as the stereoscope is,
owing to its accessibility, for determining whether any two portraits are
suitable in size and attitude to form a good composite, it is nevertheless a
makeshift

Composite Portraiture                     227

and imperfect way of attaining the
required result. It cannot of itself combine two images; it can only place them
so that the office of attempting to combine them may be undertaken by the
brain. Now the two separate impressions received by the brain through the
stereoscope do not seem to me to be relatively constant in their vividness, but
sometimes the image seen by the left eye prevails over that seen by the right,
and vice versâ All the other
instruments I am about to describe accomplish that which the stereoscope fails
to do; they create true optical combinations. As regards other points in Mr.
Austin’s letter, I cannot think that the use of a binocular camera for
taking the two portraits intended to be combined into one by the stereoscope
would be of importance. All that is wanted is that the portraits should be
nearly of the same size. In every other respect I cordially agree with Mr.
Austin.

The best instrument I have as yet
contrived and used for optical superimposition is a “double-image
prism” of Iceland spar (see Fig., p. 228), formerly procured for me by
the late Mr. Tisley, optician, Brompton
Road. They have a clear aperture of a square, half
an inch in the side, and when held at right angles to the line of sight will
separate the ordinary and extraordinary images to the amount of two inches,
when the object viewed is held at seventeen inches from the eye. This is quite
sufficient for working with carte-de-visite portraits. One image is quite
achromatic, the other shows a little colour. The divergence may be varied and
adjusted by inclining the prism to the line of sight. By its means the ordinary
image of one component is thrown upon the extraordinary image of the other, and
the composite may be viewed by the naked eye, or through a lens of long focus,
or through an opera-glass (a telescope is not so good) fitted with a
sufficiently long draw-tube to see an object at that short distance with
distinctness. Portraits of somewhat different sizes may be combined by placing
the larger one farther from the eye, and a long face may be fitted to a short
one by inclining and foreshortening the former. The slight fault of focus
thereby occasioned produces little or no sensible ill effect on the appearance
of the composite.

The front, or the profile, faces of
two living persons sitting side by side or one behind the other, can be easily
superimposed by a double-image prism. Two such prisms set one behind the other
can be made to give four images of equal brightness, occupying the four corners
of a rhombus whose acute angles are 450 Three prisms will give eight images,
but this is practically not a good combination; the images fail in
distinctness, and are too near together for use. Again, each lens of a
stereoscope of long focus can have one or a pair of these prisms attached to
it, and four or eight images may be thus combined.

228                        Appendix

Another instrument I have made
consists of a piece of glass inclined at a very acute angle to the line of
sight, and of a

Fig. 1 shows the simple apparatus which carries the
prism and on which the photograph is mounted. The former is set in a round box
which can he rotated in the ring at the end of the arm and can be clamped when
adjusted. The arm can be rotated and can also be pulled out or in if desired,
and clamped. The floor of the instrument is overlaid with cork covered with
black cloth, on which the components can easily be fixed by drawing-pins. When
using it, one portrait is pinned down and the other is moved near to it,
overlapping its margin if necessary, until the eye looking through the prism
sees the required combination; then the second portrait is pinned down also. It
may now receive its register-marks from needles fixed in a hinged arm, and this
is a more generally applicable method than the plan with cross threads, already
described, as any desired feature—the nose, the ear, or the hand, may
thus be selected for composite purposes. Let A, B, c, … , y z, be the
components. A is pinned down, and B, c, … y, z, are successfully combined
with A, and registered. Then before removing z, take away A and substitute any
other of the already registered portraits, say a, by combining it with z;
lastly, remove z and substitute A by combining it with a, and register it. Fig.
2 shows one of three similarly jointed arms, which clamp on to the vertical
rod. Two of these carry a light frame covered with cork and cloth, and the
other carries Fig. 3, which is a frame having lenses of different powers set
into it, and on which, or on the third frame, a small mirror inclined at 450
may be laid. When a portrait requires foreshortening it can be pinned on one of
these frames and be inclined to the line of sight; when it is smaller than its
fellow it can be brought nearer to the eye and an appropriate lens interposed;
when a right-sided profile has to be combined with a left-handed one, it must
be pinned on one of the frames and viewed by reflection from the mirror in the
other. The apparatus I have drawn is roughly made, and being chiefly of wood is
rather clumsy, but it acts well.

Composite Portraiture                     229

mirror beyond it, also inclined,
but in the opposite direction to the line of sight. Two rays of light will
therefore reach the eye from each point of the glass; the one has been
reflected from its surface, and the other has been first reflected from the
mirror, and then transmitted through the glass. The glass used should be
extremely thin, to avoid the blur due to double reflections; it may be a
selected piece from those made to cover microscopic specimens. The principle of
the instrument may be yet further developed by interposing additional pieces of
glass, successively less inclined to the line of sight, and each reflecting a
different portrait.

I have tried many other plans; indeed
the possible methods of optically superimposing two or more images are very
numerous. Thus I have used a sextant (with its telescope attached); also strips
of mirrors placed at different angles, their several reflections being
simultaneously viewed through a telescope. I have also used a divided lens,
like two stereoscopic lenses brought close together, in front of the object
glass of a telescope.

II. GENERIC
IMAGES.

[Extract from Proceedings Royal
Institution, 25th April 1879.]

Our general impressions are founded
upon blended memories, and these latter will be the chief topic of the present
discourse. An analogy will be pointed out between these and the blended
portraits first described by myself a year ago under the name of”
Composite Portraits,” and specimens of the latter will be exhibited.

The physiological basis of memory is
simple enough in its broad outlines. Whenever any group of brain elements has
been excited by a sense impression, it becomes, so to speak, tender, and liable
to be easily thrown again into a similar state of excitement. If the new cause
of excitement differs from the original one, a memory is the result. Whenever a
single cause throws different groups of brain elements simultaneously into
excitement, the result must be a blended memory.

We are familiar with the fact that
faint memories are very apt to become confused. Thus some picture of mountain
and lake in a country which we have never visited, often recalls a vague sense
of identity with much we have seen elsewhere. Our recollections cannot be
disentangled, though general resemblances are recognised. It is also a fact that
the memories of persons who have great powers of visualising, that is, of
seeing well-defined images in the mind’s eye, are no less capable of
being blended together. Artists are, as a class, possessed of the

230                        Appendix

visualising power in a high degree,
and they are at the same time pre-eminently distinguished by their gifts of
generalisation. They are of all men the most capable of producing forms that
are not copies of any individual, but represent the characteristic features of
classes.

There is then, no doubt, from whatever
side the subject of memory is approached, whether from the material or from the
mental, and, in the latter case, whether we examine the experiences of those in
whom the visualising faculty is faint or in whom it is strong, that the brain
has the capacity of blending memories together. Neither can there be any doubt
that general impressions are faint and perhaps faulty editions of blended
memories. They are subject to errors of their own, and they inherit all those
to which the memories are themselves liable.

Specimens of blended portraits will
now be exhibited; these might, with more propriety, be named, according to the
happy phrase of Professor Huxley, “generic” portraits. The word
generic presupposes a genus, that is to say, a collection of individuals who
have much in common, and among whom medium characteristics are very much more
frequent than extreme ones. The same idea is sometimes expressed by the word
“typical,” which was much used by Quetelet, who was the first to give
it a rigorous interpretation, and whose idea of a type lies at the basis of his
statistical views. No statistician dreams of combining objects into the same
generic group that do not cluster towards a common centre; no more should we
attempt to compose generic portraits out of heterogeneous elements, for if we
do so the result is monstrous and meaningless.

It might be expected that when many
different portraits are fused into a single one, the result would be a mere
smudge. Such, however, is by no means the case, under the conditions just laid
down, of a great prevalence of the mediocre characteristics over the extreme
ones. There are then so many traits in common, to combine and to reinforce one
another, that they prevail to the exclusion of the rest. All that is common
remains, all that is individual tends to disappear.

The first of the composites exhibited
on this occasion is made by conveying the images of three separate portraits by
means of three separate magic-lanterns upon the same screen. The stands on
which the lanterns are mounted have been arranged to allow of nice adjustment.
The composite about to be shown is one that strains the powers of the process
somewhat too severely, the portraits combined being those of two brothers and
their sister, who have not even been photographed in precisely the same
attitudes. Nevertheless, the result is seen to be the production of a face,
neither male nor female, but more regular and handsome than any of the
component portraits, and in which

Composite Portraiture                     231

the common family traits are
clearly marked. Ghosts of portions of male and female attire, due to the
peculiarities of the separate portraits, are seen about and around the
composite, but they are not sufficiently vivid to distract the attention. If
the number of combined portraits had been large, these ghostly accessories
would have become too faint to be visible.

The next step is to compare this
portrait of two brothers and their sister which has been composed by optical
means before the eyes of the audience, and concerning the truthfulness of which
there can be no doubt, with a photographic composite of the same group. The
latter is now placed in a fourth magic-lantern with a brighter light behind it,
and its image is thrown on the screen by the side of the composite produced by
direct optical superposition. It will be observed that the two processes lead
to almost exactly the same result, and therefore the fairness of the
photographic process may be taken for granted. However, two other comparisons
will be made for the sake of verification, namely, between the optical and
photographic composites of two children, and again between those of two Roman
contadini.

The composite portraits that will next
be exhibited are made by the photographic process, and it will now be
understood that they are truly composite, notwithstanding their definition and
apparent individuality. Attention is, however, first directed to a convenient
instrument not more than 18 inches in length, which is, in fact, a photographic
camera with six converging lenses and an attached screen, on which six pictures
can be adjusted and brilliantly illuminated by artificial light. The effect of
their optical combination can thus be easily studied; any errors of adjustment
can be rectified, and the composite may be photographed at once.

It must not be supposed that any one
of the components fails to leave its due trace in the photographic composite,
much less in the optical one. In order to allay misgivings on the subject, a
small apparatus is laid on the table together with some of the results obtained
by it. It is a cardboard frame, with a spring shutter closing an aperture of
the size of a wafer, that springs open on the pressure of a finger, and shuts
again as suddenly when the pressure is withdrawn. A chronograph is held in the
other hand, whose index begins to travel the moment the finger presses a
spring, and stops instantly on lifting the finger. The two instruments are
worked simultaneously; the chronograph checking the time allowed for each
exposure and summing all the times. It appears from several trials that the
effect of 1000 brief exposures is practically identical with that of a single
exposure of 1000 times the duration of any one of them. Therefore each of a
thousand components leaves its due photographic

232                        Appendix

trace on the composite, though it
is far too faint to be visible unless reinforced by many similar traces.

The composites now to be exhibited are
made from coins or medals, and in most instances the aim has been to obtain the
best likeness attainable of historical personages, by combining various
portraits of them taken at different periods of their lives, and so to elicit
the traits that are common to each series. A few of the individual portraits
are placed in the same slide with each composite to give a better idea of the
character of these blended representatives. Those that are shown are (1)
Alexander the Great, from six components; (2) Antiochus, King of Syria, from
six; (3) Demetrius Poliorcetes, from six; (4) Cleopatra, from five. Here the
composite is as usual better looking than any of the components, none of which,
however, give any indication of her reputed beauty; in fact, her features are
not only plain, but to an ordinary English taste are simply hideous. (5) Nero,
from eleven; (6) A combination of five different Greek female faces; and (7) A
singularly beautiful combination of the faces of six different Roman ladies,
forming a charming ideal profile.

My cordial acknowledgment is due to
Mr. R. Stuart Poole, the learned curator of the coins and gems in the British Museum, for his kind selection of the
most suitable medals, and for procuring casts of them for me for the present
purpose. These casts were, with one exception, all photographed to a uniform size
of four-tenths of an inch between the pupils of the eyes and the division
between the lips, which experience shows to be the most convenient size on the
whole to work with, regard being paid to many considerations not worth while to
specify in detail. When it was necessary the photograph was reversed. These
photographs were made by Mr. H. Reynolds; I then adjusted and prepared them for
taking the photographic composite.

The next series to be exhibited
consists of composites taken from the portraits of criminals convicted of
murder, manslaughter, or crimes accompanied by violence. There is much interest
in the fact that two types of features are found much more frequently among
these than among the population at large. In one, the features are broad and massive,
like those of Henry VIII., but with a much smaller brain. The other, of which
five composites are exhibited, each deduced from a number of different
individuals, varying four to nine, is a face that is weak and certainly not a
common English face. Three of these composites, though taken from entirely
different sets of individuals, are as alike as brothers, and it is found on
optically combining any three out of the five composites, that is on combining
almost any considerable number of the individuals, the result is closely the
same. The combination of the three composites just alluded to will

Composite Portraiture                     233

now be effected by means of the
three converging magic-lanterns and the result may be accepted as generic in
respect of this particular type of criminals.

The process of composite portraiture
is one of pictorial statistics. It is a familiar fact that the average height
of even a dozen men of the same race, taken at hazard, varies so little, that
for ordinary statistical purposes it may be considered constant. The same may
be said of the measurement of every separate feature and limb, and of every
tint, whether of skin, hair, or eyes. Consequently a pictorial combination of
any one of these separate traits would lead to results no less constant than
the statistical averages. In a portrait, there is another factor to be
considered besides the measurement of the separate traits, namely, their
relative position; but this, too, in a sufficiently large group, would
necessarily have a statistical constancy. As a matter of observation, the
resemblance between persons of the same “genus” (in the sense of
“generic,” as already explained) is sufficiently great to admit of
making good pictorial composites out of even small groups, as has been abundantly
shown.

Composite pictures, are, however, much
more than averages; they are rather the equivalents of those large statistical
tables whose totals, divided by the number of cases, and entered in the bottom
line, are the averages. They are real generalisations, because they include the
whole of the material under consideration. The blur of their outlines, which is
never great in truly generic composites, except in unimportant details,
measures the tendency of individuals to deviate from the central type. My
argument is, that the generic images that arise before the mind’s eye,
and the general impressions which are faint and faulty editions of them, are
the analogues of these composite pictures which we have the advantage of
examining at leisure, and whose peculiarities and character we can investigate,
and from which we may draw conclusions that shall throw much light on the
nature of certain mental processes which are too mobile and evanescent to be
directly dealt with.

III. COMPOSITE
PORTRAITURE.

[Read before
the Photographic Society, 24th June, 1881.]

I propose to draw attention to-night
to the results of recent experiments and considerable improvements in a process
of which I published the principles three years ago, and which I have
subsequently exhibited more than once.

I have shown that, if we have the
portraits of two or more different persons, taken in the same aspect and under
the same

234                        Appendix

conditions of light and shade, and
that if we put them into different optical lanterns converging on the same
screen and carefully adjust them—first, so as to bring them to the same
scale, and, secondly, so as to superpose them as accurately as the conditions
admit—then the different faces will blend surprisingly well into a single
countenance. If they are not very dissimilar, the blended result will always
have a curious air of individuality, and will be unexpectedly well defined; it
will exactly resemble none of its components, but it will have a sort of family
likeness to all of them, and it will be an ideal and an averaged portrait. I
have also shown that the image on the screen might be photographed then and
there, or that the same result may be much more easily obtained by a method of
successive photography, and I have exhibited many specimens made on this
principle. Photo-lithographs of some of these will be found in the Proceedings of the Royal Institution, as
illustrations of a lecture I gave there “On Generic Images” in
1879.

The method I now use is much better
than those previously described; it leads to more accurate results, and is
easier to manage. I will exhibit and explain the apparatus as it stands, and
will indicate some improvements as I go on. The apparatus is here. I use it by
gaslight, and employ rapid dry plates, which, however, under the conditions of
a particularly small aperture and the character of the light, require sixty
seconds of total exposure. The apparatus is 4 feet long and 6½ inches
broad; it lies with its side along the edge of the table at which I sit, and it
is sloped towards me, so that, by bending my neck slightly, I can bring my eye
to an eye-hole, where I watch the effect of the adjustments which my hands are
free to make. The entire management of the whole of these is within an easy
arm’s length, and I complete the process without shifting my seat.

The apparatus consists of three parts,
A, B, and C. A is rigidly fixed; it contains the dark slide and the
contrivances by which the position of the image can be viewed; the eyehole, e, already
mentioned, being part of A. B is a travelling carriage that holds the lens, and
is connected by bellows-work with A. In my apparatus it is pushed out and in,
and clamped where desired, but it ought to be moved altogether by pinion and
rack-work.[1] The lens I use is a I B Dallmeyer.
Its focal length is appropriate to the size of the instrument, and I find great
convenience in a lens of wide aperture when making the adjustments, as I then
require plenty of light; but, as to the photography, the smaller the aperture
the better. The hole in my stop is only two-tenths of an inch in diameter, and
I believe one-tenth would be more suitable.

[1] I
have since had a more substantial instrument made with these and similar
improvements.

Composite Portraiture                     235

C is a travelling carriage that supports
the portraits in turn, from which the composite has to be made. I work directly
from the original negatives with transmitted light; but prints

A the body of the camera, which is fixed.

B Lens on a carriage, which can be moved to and fro.

c Frame for the transparency, on a carriage that also
supports the lantern; the whole can be moved to and fro.

r The reflector inside the camera.

m The arm outside the camera attached to the axis of
the reflector; by moving it, the reflector can be moved up or down.

g A ground-glass screen on the roof,  which receives the image when the  reflector is turned down, as in the
diagram.

e The eye-hole through which the image is viewed on g;
a thin piece of glass immediately below e, reflects the illuminated fiducial lines
in the transparency at f, and gives them the appearance of lying upon
g,—the distances f e and g c being made equal, the angle f e g being
made a right angle, and the plane of the thin piece of glass being made to
bisect f e g.

f Framework, adjustable, holding the transparency with
the fiducial lines on it.

t Framework, adjustable, holding the transparency of
the portrait.

236                        Appendix

can be used with light falling on
their face. For convenience of description I will confine myself to the first
instance only, and will therefore speak of C as the carriage that supports the
frame that holds the negative transparencies. C can be pushed along the board
and be clamped anywhere, and it has a rack and pinion adjustment; but it should
have been made movable by rack and pinion along the whole length of the board.
The frame for the transparencies has the same movements of adjustment as those
in the stage of a microscope. It rotates round a hollow axis, through which a
beam of light is thrown, and independent movements in the plane, at right
angles to the axis, can be given to it in two directions, at right angles to
one another, by turning two separate screws. The beam of light is furnished by
three gas-burners, and it passes through a condenser. The gas is supplied
through a flexible tube that does not interfere with the movements of C, and it
is governed by a stop-cock in front of the operator.

The apparatus, so far as it has been
described with any detail, and ignoring what was said about an eye-hole, is
little else than a modified copying-camera, by which an image of the
transparency could be thrown on the ordinary focusing-screen, and be altered in
scale and position until it was adjusted to fiducial lines drawn on the screen.
It is conceivable that this should be done, and that the screen should be
replaced by the dark slide, and a brief exposure given to the plate; then, that
a fresh transparency should be inserted, a fresh focusing adjustment made, and
a second exposure given, and so on. This, I say, is conceivable, but it would
be very inconvenient. The adjusting screws would be out of reach; the head of
the operator would be in an awkward position; and though these two difficulties
might be overcome in some degree, a serious risk of an occasional shift of the
plate during the frequent replacement of the dark slide would remain. I avoid
all this by making my adjustments while the plate continues in position with
its front open. I do so through the help of a reflector temporarily interposed
between it and the lens. I do not use the ordinary focusing-screen at all in
making my adjustments, but one that is flush, or nearly so, with the roof of
the camera. When the reflector is interposed, the image is wholly cut off from
the sensitised plate, and is thrown upwards against this focusing screen, g.
When the reflector is withdrawn, the image falls on the plate. It is upon this
focusing-screen in the roof that I see the fiducial lines by which I make all
the adjustments. Nothing can be more convenient than the position of this
focusing-screen for working purposes. I look down on the image as I do upon a
book resting on a sloping desk, and all the parts of the apparatus are within
an easy arm’s length.

Composite Portraiture                     237

My reflector in my present instrument is,
I am a little ashamed to confess, nothing better than a piece of looking-glass
fixed to an axle within the camera, near its top left-hand edge. One end of the
axle protrudes, and has a short arm; when I push the arm back, the mirror is
raised; when I push it forward it drops down. I used a swing-glass because the
swing action is very true, and as my apparatus was merely a provisional working
model made of soft wood, I did not like to use sliding arrangements which might
not have acted truly, or I should certainly have employed a slide with a
rectangular glass prism, on account of the perfect reflection it affords. And
let me say, that a prism of 2 inches square in the side is quite large enough
for adjustment purposes, for it is only the face of the portrait that is wanted
to be seen. I chose my looking-glass carefully, and selected a piece, that was
plane and parallel. It has not too high a polish, and therefore does not give
troublesome double reflections. In fact, it answers very respectably, especially
when we consider that perfection of definition is thrown away on composites. I
thought of a mirror silvered on the front of the glass, but this would soon
tarnish in the gaslight, so I did not try it. For safety against the admission
of light unintentionally, I have a cap to the focusing-screen in the roof, and
a slide in the fixed body of the instrument immediately behind the reflector
and before the dark slide. Neither of these would be wanted if the reflector
was replaced by a prism, set into one end of a sliding block that had a large
horizontal hole at the other end, and a sufficient length of solid wood between
the two to block out the passage of light both upwards and downwards whenever
the block is passing through the half-way position.

As regards the fiducial lines, they
might be drawn on the glass screen; but black lines are not, I find, the best.
It is far easier to work with illuminated lines; and it is important to be able
to control their brightness. I produce these lines by means of a vertical
transparency, set in an adjustable frame, connected with A, and having a
gas-light behind it. Below the eye-hole e, through which I view the
glass-screen g, is a thin piece of glass set at an angle of 450, which reflects
the fiducial lines and gives them the appearance of lying on the screen, the
frame being so adjusted that the distance from the thin piece of glass to the
transparency and to the glass-screen g is the same. I thus obtain beautiful
fiducial lines, which I can vary from extreme faintness to extreme brilliancy,
by turning the gas lower or higher, according to the brightness of the image of
the portrait, which itself depends on the density of the transparency that I am
engaged upon. This arrangement seems as good as can be. It affords a gauge of
the density of the negative, and

238                        Appendix

enables me to regulate the burners
behind it, until the image of the portrait on g is adjusted to a standard
degree of brightness.

For convenience in enlarging or
reducing, I take care that the intersection of the vertical fiducial line with
that which passes through the pupils of the eyes shall correspond to the
optical axis of the camera. Then, as I enlarge or reduce, that point in the
image remains fixed. The uppermost horizontal fiducial line continues to
intersect the pupils, and the vertical one continues to divide the face
symmetrically. The mouth has alone to be watched. When the mouth is adjusted to
the lower fiducial line, the scale is exact. It is a great help having to
attend to no more than one varying element. The only inconvenience is that the
image does not lie in the best position on the plate when the point between the
eyes occupies its centre. This is easily remedied by using a larger back with a
suitable inner frame. I have a more elaborate contrivance in my apparatus to
produce the same result, which I need not stop to explain.

For success and speed in making
composites, the apparatus should be solidly made, chiefly of metal, and all the
adjustments ought to work smoothly and accurately. Good composites cannot be
made without very careful adjustment in scale and position. An off-hand way of
working produces nothing but failures.

I will first exhibit a very simple but
instructive composite effect. I drew on a square card a circle of about
2½ inches in diameter, and two cross lines through its centre, cutting
one another at right angles. Round each of the four points, 900 apart, where
the cross cuts the circle, I drew small circles of the size of wafers and
gummed upon each a disc of different tint. Finally I made a single black dot
half-way between two of the arms of the cross. I then made a composite of the
four positions of the card, as it was placed successively with each of its
sides downwards. The result is a photograph having a sharply-defined cross
surrounded by four discs of precisely uniform tint, and between each pair of
arms of the cross there is a very faint dot. This photograph shows many things.
The fact of its being a composite is shown by the four faint dots. The equality
of the successive periods of exposure is shown by the equal tint of the four
dots. The accuracy of adjustment is shown by the sharpness of the cross being
as great in the composite as in the original card. We see the smallness of the
effect produced by any trait, such as the dot, when it appears in the same
place in only one of the components: if this effect be so small in a series of
only four components, it would certainly be imperceptible in a much larger
series. Thirdly, the uniformity of resulting tint in the composite wafer is
quite irrespective of the

Composite Portraiture                     239

order of exposure. Let us call the
four component wafers A, B, C, D, respectively, and the four composite wafers
1, 2, 3, 4 then we see, by the diagram, that the order of exposure has differed
in each case.

Composite.

Successive
places of the Components.

1  2

A  B

D  A

C  D

B  C

4  3

D  C

C  B

B  A

A  D

In

1

it has been

A, D, C, B,

,,

2

,,

B, A, D, C,

,,

3

,,

C, B, A, D,

,,

4

,,

D, C, B, A

yet the result is identical. Therefore
the order of exposure has no effect on the result.

I will next show a series consisting
of two portraits considerably unlike to one another, and yet not so very
discordant as to refuse to conform, and of two intermediate composites. In
making one of the composites I gave two-thirds of the total time of exposure to
the first portrait, and one-third to the second portrait. In making the other
composite, I did the converse. It will be seen how good is the result in both
cases, and how the likeness of the longest exposed portrait always
predominates.

The next is a series of four
composites. The first consists of 57 hospital patients suffering under one or
other of the many forms of consumption. I may say that, with the aid of Dr.
Mahomed, I am endeavouring to utilise this process to elicit the physiognomy of
disease. The composite I now show is what I call a hotch-pot composite; its use
is to form a standard whence deviations towards any particular sub-type may be
conveniently gauged. It will be observed that the face is strongly marked, and
that it - is quite idealised. I claim for composite portraiture, that it
affords a method of obtaining pictorial
averages, which effects simultaneously for every point in a picture what a
method of numerical averages would do for each point in the picture separately.
It gives, in short, the average tint of every unit of area in the picture,
measured from the fiducial lines as co-ordinates. Now every statistician knows,
by experience, that numerical averages usually begin to agree pretty fairly
when we deal with even twenty or thirty cases. Therefore we should

240                        Appendix

expect to find that any groups of
twenty or thirty men of the same class would yield composites bearing a
considerable likeness to one another. In proof that this is the case, I exhibit
three other composites: the one is made from the first 28 portraits of the 57,
the second from the last 27, and the third is made from 36 portraits taken
indiscriminately out of the 57. It will be observed that all the four
composites are closely alike.

I will now show a few typical
portraits I selected out of 82 male portraits of a different series of
consumptive male patients; they were those that had more or less of a
particular wan look, that I wished to elicit The selected cases were about 18
in number, and from these I took 12, rejecting about six as having some marked
peculiarity that did not conform well with the remaining 12. The result is a
very striking face, thoroughly ideal and artistic, and singularly beautiful. It
is, indeed most notable how beautiful all composites are. Individual
peculiarities are all irregularities, and the composite is always regular.

I show a composite of 15 female faces,
also of consumptive patients, that gives somewhat the same aspect of the
disease; also two others of only 6 in each, that have in consequence less of an
ideal look, but which are still typical. I have here several other typical
faces in my collection of composites; they are all serviceable as illustrations
of this memoir, but, medically speaking, they are only provisional results.

I am indebted to Lieutenant Leonard
Darwin, R.E., for an interesting series of negatives of officers and privates
of the Royal Engineers. Here is a composite of 12 officers; here is one of 30
privates. I then thought it better to select from the latter the men that came
from the southern counties, and to again make a further selection of 1 x from
these, on the principle already explained. Here is the result. It is very
interesting to note the stamp of culture and refinement on the composite
officer, and the honest and vigorous but more homely features of the privates.
The combination of these two, officers and privates together, gives a very
effective physiognomy.

Let it be borne in mind that existing
cartes-de-visite are almost certain to be useless. Among dozens of them it is
bard to find three that fulfil the conditions of similarity of aspect and of
shade. The negatives have to be made on purpose. I use a repeating back and a
quarter plate, and get two good-sized heads on each plate, and of a scale that
never gives less than four-tenths of an inch between the pupils of the eyes and
the mouth. It is only the head that can be used, as more distant parts, even
the ears, become blurred hopelessly.

It will be asked, of what use can all
this be to ordinary photographers, even granting that it may be of scientific
value in ethnological research, in inquiries into the physiognomy of

Town
and Country Population               241

disease, and for other special
purposes? I think it can be turned to most interesting account in the
production of family likenesses. The most unartistic productions of amateur
photography do quite as well for making composites as those of the best
professional workers, because their blemishes vanish in the blended result. All
that amateurs have to do is to take negatives of the various members of their
families in precisely the same aspect (1 recommend either perfect full-face or
perfect profile), and under precisely the same conditions of light and shade,
and to send them to a firm provided with proper instrumental appliances to make
composites from them. The result is sure to be artistic in expression and
flatteringly handsome, and would be very interesting to the members of the
family. Young amid old, and persons of both sexes can be combined into one
ideal face. I can well imagine a fashion setting in to have these pictures.

Professional skill might be exercised
very effectively in retouching composites. It would be easy to obliterate the
ghosts of stray features that are always present when the composite is made
from only a few portraits, and it would not be difficult to tone down any
irregularity in the features themselves, due to some obtrusive peculiarity in
one of the components. A higher order of artistic skill might be well bestowed
upon the composites that have been made out of a large number of components.
Here the irregularities disappear, the features are perfectly regular and
idealised, but the result is dim. It is like a pencil drawing, where many
attempts have been made to obtain the desired effect; such a drawing is smudged
and ineffective; but the artist, under its guidance, draws his final work with
clear bold touches, and then he rubs out the smudge. On precisely the same
principle the faint but beautifully idealised features of these composites are,
I believe, capable of forming the basis of a very high order of artistic work.

B.—THE RELATIVE SUPPLIES FROM TOWN AND
COUNTRY FAMILIES TO THE POPULATION OF FUTURE GENERATIONS.

[Read before the
Statistical Society in 1873.]

It is well known that the population
of towns decays, and has to be recruited by immigrants from the country, but I
am not aware that any statistical investigation has yet been attempted of the
rate of its decay. The more energetic members of our race, whose breed is the
most valuable to our nation, are attracted from the country to our towns. If
residence in towns seriously

242                        Appendix

interferes with the maintenance of
their stock, we should expect the breed of Englishmen to steadily deteriorate,
so far as that particular influence is concerned.

I am well aware that the only
perfectly trustworthy way or conducting the inquiry is by statistics derived
from numerous life-histories, but I find it very difficult to procure these
data. I therefore have had recourse to an indirect method, based on a selection
from the returns made at the census of 1871, which appears calculated to give a
fair approximation to the truth. My object is to find the number of adult male
representatives in this generation, of 1000 adult males in the previous one, of
rural and urban populations respectively. The principle on which I have
proceeded is this

I find (A) the number of children of
equal numbers of urban and of rural mothers. The census schedules contain
returns of the names and ages of the members of each “family,” by
which word we are to understand those members who are alive and resident in the
same house with their parents. When the mothers are young, the children are necessarily
very young, and nearly always (in at least those classes who are unable to send
their children to boarding schools) live at home. If, therefore, we limit our
inquiries to the census “families” of young mothers, the results
may be accepted as practically identical with those we should have obtained if
we had direct means of ascertaining the number of their living children. The
limits of age of the mothers which I adopted in my selection were, 24 and 40
years. Had I to begin the work afresh, I should prefer the period from 20 to
35, but I have reason to feel pretty well contented with my present data. I
correct the results thus far obtained on the following grounds :—(B) the
relative mortality of the two classes between childhood and maturity; (C) the
relative mortality of the rural and urban mothers during childbearing ages; (D)
their relative celibacy; and (E) the span of a rural and urban generation. It
will be shown that B is important, and C noteworthy, but that D and E may be
disregarded.

In deciding on the districts to be
investigated, it was important to choose well-marked specimens of urban and
rural populations. In the former, a town was wanted where there were various
industries, and where the population was not increasing. A town where only one
industry was pursued would not be a fair sample, because the particular
industry might be suspected of having a special influence, and a town that was
increasing would have attracted numerous immigrants from the country, who are
undistinguishable as such in the census returns. Guided by these
considerations, I selected Coventry,
where silk weaving, watch-making, and other industries are carried on, and
whose population had scarcely varied during the decade

Town and Country Population               243

preceding the census of 1871.[1] It is an open town, in which the crowded alleys of
larger places are not frequent. Its urban peculiarities are therefore
minimized, and its statistical returns would give a picture somewhat too
favourable of the average condition of life in towns. For specimens of rural
districts, I chose small agricultural parishes in Warwickshire.

By the courteous permission of Dr.
Farr, I was enabled to procure extracts from the census returns concerning 1000
“families” of factory hands at Coventry, in which the age of the
mother was neither less than 24 nor more than 40 years, and concerning another
1000 families of agricultural labourers in rural parishes of Warwickshire,
under the same limitations as to the age of the mother. When these returns were
classified (see Table I., p. 246), 1 found the figures to run in such
regular sequence as to make it certain that the cases were sufficiently
numerous to give trustworthy results. It appeared that

(A) The 1000 families of factory hands
comprised 2681 children, and the 1000 of agricultural labourers comprised 2911;
hence, the children in the urban “families,” the mothers being
between the ages of 24 and 40, are on the whole about 8 per cent, less numerous
than the rural. I see no reason why these numbers should not be accepted as
relatively correct for families, in the ordinary sense of that word, and for
mothers of all ages. An inspection of the table does indeed show that if the
selection had begun at an earlier age than 24, there would have been an
increased proportion of sterile and of small families among the factory hands,
but not sufficient to introduce any substantial modification of the above
results. It is, however, important to recollect that the small error, whatever
its amount may be, is a concession in favour of the towns.

(B) I next make an allowance for the
mortality between childhood and maturity, which will diminish the above figures
in different proportions, because the conditions of town life are more fatal to
children than those of the country. No life tables exist for Coventry and Warwickshire; I am therefore
obliged to use statistics for similarly conditioned localities, to determine
the amount of the allowance that should be made. The life tables of Manchester[2]  will
afford the data for towns, and those of the “Healthy Districts”[3] will suffice for the country. By applying these,
we could calculate the number of the children of ages specified in the census
returns who would attain maturity. I regret extremely that when I had the
copies taken, I did not give instructions to have the ages of all the children
inserted; but I did not, and it is too late now to remedy the omission.  I

[1] It has greatly changed
since this was written.

[2] “Seventh Annual
Report of Registrar-General.”

[3] Healthy Districts Life
Table, by Dr. Farr. Phil. Trans. Royal
Society, 1859

244                        Appendix

am therefore obliged to make a very
rough, but not unfair, estimate. The average age of the children was about 3
years, and 25 years may be taken as representing the age of maturity. Now it
will be found that 74 per cent, of children in Manchester, of the age of 3, reach the age of
25, while 86 per cent. of children do so in the “Healthy
Districts.” Therefore, if my rough method be accepted as approximately
fair, the number of adults who will be derived from the children of the 1000
factory families should be reckoned at (2681
x 74/100) = 1986, and those from the 1000 agricultural at (2911 x 86/100) = 2503.

(C) The comparison we seek is between
the total families produced by an equal number of urban and rural women who had
survived the age of 24. Many of these women will not marry at all; I postpone
that consideration to the next paragraph. Many of the rest will die before they
reach the age of 40, and more of them will die in the town than in the country.
It appears from data furnished by the above-mentioned tables, that if 100 women
of the age of 24 had annually been added to a population, the number of those
so added, living between the ages of 24 and 40 (an interval of seventeen years)
would be 1539 under the conditions of life in Manchester, and 1 585 under those
of the healthy districts. Therefore the small factors to be applied
respectively to the two cases, on account of this correction, are 1539/(17x100) and 1585/(17x100).

(D) I have no trustworthy data for the
relative prevalence of celibacy in town and country. All that I have learned
from the census returns is, that when searching them for the 1000 families, 131
bachelors were noted between the ages of 24 and 40, among the factory hands,
and 144 among the agricultural labourers. If these figures be accepted as
correct guides to the amount of celibacy among the women, it would follow that
I must be considered to have discussed the cases of 1131 factory, and 1144
agricultural women, when dealing with those of 1000 mothers in either class.
Consequently that the respective corrections to be applied, are given by the
factors 1000/1131 and 1000/1141, or 88.4/1000, and 87.6/1000.

This difference of less than 1 per
cent. is hardly worth applying, moreover I do not like to apply it, because it
seems to me erroneous and to act in the wrong direction, inasmuch as unmarried
women can obtain employment more readily in the town than in -the country, and
celibacy is therefore more likely to be common in the former than in the
latter.

(E) The possible difference in the
length of an urban and

Town
and Country Population               245

rural generation must not be
forgotten. We, however, have reason to believe that the correction on this
ground will be insignificant, because the length of a generation is found to be
constant under very different circumstances of race, and therefore we should
expect it to be equally constant in the same race under different conditions;
such as it is, it would probably tell against the towns.

Let us now sum up the results. The
corrections are not to be applied for (D) and (E), so we have only to regard
(A) x (B) x (C), that this—

(2681
x 74/100 x 1539/1700) / (2911 x 86/100 x 1585/1700) = 1796/2334 = 77/100.

In other words, the rate of supply in
towns to the next adult generation is only 77 per cent., or, say,
three-quarters of that in the country. This decay, if it continued constant,
would lead to the result that the representatives of the townsmen would be less
than half as numerous as those of the country folk after one century, and only
about one fifth as numerous after two centuries, the proportions being 45/100
and 21/100  respectively.

246                        Appendix

TABLE I.—Census Returns of 1000 Families of Factory Hands in Coventry, and 1000
Families of Agricultural Labourers in
Warwickshire, grouped according to the Age of the Mother and the Number of
Children in the Family [Transcription: F=Factory, A=Agricultural]

Age
of Mother

Number
of Children in Family

Age
of Mother

0.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

F

A

F

A

F

A

F

A

F

A

F

A

F

A

F

A

F

A

F

A

24
to 25

28

17

40

31

24

32

12

10

2

1

1

...

...

...

...

24
to 25

26
„ 27

19

18

36

24

36

28

23

26

8

8

...

..

.

...

...

...

...

..

..

26
„ 27

28
„ 29

18

17

32

16

20

33

36

23

14

23

6

6

4

1

2

...

...

...

...

28
„ 29

30
„ 31

13

4

23

18

24

21

28[1]

31

18

22

12

15

2

5

...

2

...

1

...

...

30
„ 31

32,,
33

18

11

16

14

19

13

22[1]

27

23

26

21

25

9

5

...

1

...

2

...

...

32
„ 33

34
,, 35

14

15

11

6

17

16

28

18

31

34

14

18

12

9

5

3

...

1

...

34
,, 35

36
,, 37

12

17

4

11

10

13

22

14

16

20

15

2,5

12

10

4

5

5

2

..

...

36
„ 37

38
,, 39

8

6

9

15

14

17

16

21

22

23

14

22

to

15

6

7

...

2

1

...

38
„ 39

40

8

7

3

10

8

9

13

14

8

10

7

11

3

9

7

7

2

1

40

Total
within outline

96

67

158

109

116

111

171

149

Total
within outline.

Total
between outlines

42

45

16

36

56

71

29

35

142

166

90

123

Total
between outlines.

Total
beyond outline .

52

54

24

25

7

9

1

...

Total
beyond outline.

[1] These three cases are anomalous, the Factory
being less than the Agricultural. In the instance of 20—33, the anomaly
is double, because the sequence of the figures shows that neither of these can
be correct; certainly not the first of them.

Note.—It will be observed to the left of the outline,
that is, in the upper and left hand of the table, where the mothers are young
and the children few, the factory families predominate, while the agricultural
are the most numerous between the outlines, that is especially in the middle of
the table, where the mothers are less young, and the families are from four to
five in number. The two are equally numerous to the right of the outlines, that
is, to the right of the table, where the families are large

[left blank]

248                        Appendix

TABLE II.

Number of Families

Number of children

Factory

Agricultural

Factory

Agricultural

Within outline

541

436

903

778

Between outlines

375

476

1233

1562

Beyond ,,

84

88

545

671

Total .

1000

1000

2681

2911

C.—AN APPARATUS FOR TESTING THE DELICACY WITH WHICH WEIGHTS CAN BE
DISCRIMINATED BY HANDLING THEM.

[Read at the
Anthropological Institute, Nov.
14, 1882.]

I submit a simple apparatus that I
have designed to measure the delicacy of the sensitivity of different persons,
as shown by their skill in discriminating weights, identical in size, form, and
colour, but different in specific gravity. Its interest lies in the accordance
of the successive test values with the successive graduations of a true scale
of sensitivity, in the ease with which the tests are applied, and the fact that
the same principle can be made use of in testing the delicacy of smell and
taste.

I use test-weights that mount in a
series of “just perceptible differences” to an imaginary person of
extreme delicacy of perception, their values being calculated according to
Weber’s law. The lowest weight is heavy enough to give a decided sense of
weight to the hand when handling it, and the heaviest weight can be handled
without any sense of fatigue. They therefore conform with close approximation
to a geometric series; thus— WR0, WR1, WR2,
WR3, etc., and they bear as register-marks the values of the successive
indices, 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. It follows that if a person can just distinguish
between any particular pair of weights, he can also just distinguish between
any other pair of weights whose register-marks differ by the same amount.
Example: suppose A can just distinguish between the weights bearing the
register-marks 2 and 4, then it follows from the construction of the apparatus

Test Weights                            249

that he can just distinguish
between those hearing the register-marks 1 and 3, or 3 and 5, or 4 and 6, etc.;
the difference being 2 in each case.

There can be but one interpretation of
the phrase that the dulness of muscular sense in any person, B, is twice as
great as in that of another person, A. It is that B is only capable of
perceiving one grade of difference where A can perceive two. We may, of course,
state the same fact inversely, and say that the delicacy of muscular sense is
in that case twice as great in A as in B. Similarly in all other cases of the
kind. Conversely, if having known nothing previously about either A or B, we
discover on trial that A can just distinguish between two weights such as those
bearing the register-marks and 7, and that B can just distinguish between
another pair, say, bearing the register-marks 2 and 6; then since the
difference between the marks in the latter case is twice as great as in the
former, we know that the dulness of the muscular sense of B is exactly twice
that of A. Their relative dulness, or if we prefer to speak in inverse terms,
and say their relative sensitivity, is determined quite independently of the
particular pair of weights used in testing them.

It will be noted that the conversion
of results obtained by the use of one series of test-weights into what would
have been given by another series, is a piece of simple arithmetic, the fact
ultimately obtained by any apparatus of this kind being the “just distinguishable”
fraction of real weight. In my own apparatus the unit of weight is 2 per cent.;
that is, the register-mark 1 means 2 per cent.; but I introduce weights in the
earlier part of the scale that deal with half units; that is, with differences
of 1 per cent. In another apparatus the unit of weight might be 3 per cent.,
then three grades of mine would be equal to two of the other, and mine would be
converted to that scale by multiplying them by 2/3. Thus the results obtained
by different apparatus are strictly comparable.

A sufficient number of test-weights
must be used, or trials made, to eliminate the influence of chance. It might
perhaps be thought that by using a series of only five weights, and requiring
them to be sorted into their proper order by the sense of touch alone, the
chance of accidental success would be too small to be worth consideration. It
might be said that there are 5 x 4 x 3 x 2, or 120 different ways in which five
weights can be arranged, and as only one is right, it must be 120 to 1 against
a lucky hit. But this is many fold too high an estimate, because the 119
possible mistakes are by no means equally probable. When a person is tested, an
approximate value for his grade of sensitivity is rapidly found, and the
inquiry becomes narrowed to finding out whether he can surely pass a particular
level. At this stage of the inquiry there is little fear of a gross

250                        Appendix

mistake. He is little likely to
make a mistake of double the amount in question, and it is almost certain that
he will not make a mistake of treble the amount. In other words, he would never
be likely to put one of the test-weights more than one step out of its proper
place. If he had three weights to arrange in their consecutive order, 1, 2, 3,
there are 3 x 2 = 6 ways of arranging them; of these, he would be liable to the
errors of 1, 3, 2, and of 2, 1, 3, but he would hardly be liable to such gross
errors, as 2, 3, 1, or 3, 2, 1, or 3, 1, 2. Therefore of the six permutations
in which three weights may be arranged three have to be dismissed from
consideration, leaving three cases only to be dealt with, of which two are
wrong and one is right. For the same reason there are only four reasonable
chances of error in arranging four weights, and only six in arranging five weights,
instead of the 119 that were originally supposed. These are—

12354

13245

13254

21345

21354

21435

But
exception might be taken to two even of these, namely, those that appear in the
third column, where is found in juxtaposition with 2 in the first case, and 4
with 1 in the second. So great a difference between two adjacent weights would
be almost sure to attract the notice of the person who was being tested, and
make him dissatisfied with the arrangement. Considering all this, together with
the convenience of carriage and manipulation, I prefer to use trays, each
containing only three weights, the trials being made three or four times in
succession. In each trial there are three possibilities and only one success,
therefore in three trials the probabilities against uniform success are as 27
to 1, and in four trials at 81 to 1.

Values
of the Weights.—After preparatory trials, I
adopted 1000 grains as the value of W and 1020 as that of R, but I am now
inclined to think that 1010 would have been better. I made the weights by
filling blank cartridges with shot, wool, and wads, so as to distribute the
weight equally, and I closed the cartridges with a wad, turning the edges over
it with the instrument well known to sportsmen. I wrote the corresponding value
of the index of R on the wad by which each of them was closed, to serve as a
register number. Thus the cartridge whose weight was WR4 was marked 4. The values were so selected that there
should be as few varieties as possible. There are thirty weights in all, but
only ten varieties, whose Register Numbers are respectively 0, 1, 2, 3, 3½,
4½, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12.  The
reason of this limitation of varieties was to enable the weights to be
interchanged whenever there became reason to suspect that the eye had begun to
recognise the appearance of any one of them, and that the judgment might be
influenced by that recognition, and cease to be wholly guided by the sense of
weight.

Test Weights                            251

We are so accustomed to deal with
concurrent impressions that it is exceedingly difficult, even with the best
intention of good faith, to ignore the influence of any corroborative
impression that may be present. It is therefore right to take precautions
against this possible cause of inaccuracy. The most perfect way would be to
drop the weights, each in a little bag or sheath of light material, so that the
operatee could not see the weights, while the ratio between the weights would
not be sensibly changed by the additional weight of the bags. I keep little
bags for this purpose, inside the box that holds the weights.

Arrangement
of the Weights.—The weights are placed in
sets of threes, each set in a separate shallow tray, and the trays lie in two
rows in a box. Each tray bears the register-marks of each of the weights it
contains. It is also marked boldly with a Roman numeral showing the difference
between the register-marks of the adjacent weights. This difference indicates
the grade of sensitivity that the weights in the tray are designed to test.

III.

0, 3, 6.

Fig. 1.

V.

2, 7, 12.

Fig 2.

Thus the tray containing the weights WR0,
WR3, WR6, III. is marked
as in Fig. 1, and that which contains WR2,WR7, WR12 is marked as in Fig. 2  The following is the arrangement of the
trays in the box.

The triplets they contain suffice for ordinary
purposes.

Just  Perceptible Ratio

Grade of Sensitivity

Sequences
of Weights

Just
perceptible Ratio

Grade of Sensitivity

Sequences
of Weights

1.020

I.

1, 2, 3

1.030

I. ½

2, 3½, 5

1.040

II.

3, 5, 7

1.050

II.½

2, 4½ 7

1.061

III.

0, 3,6

1.071

III.½

0, 3½ 7

1.082

IV.

1, 5, 9

1.082

IV.½

0, 4½, 9

1.104

V.

2, 5, 7

1.127

VI.

0, 6, 12

But it will be observed that sequences
of can also be obtained, and again, that it is easy to select doublets of
weights for coarser tests, up to a maximum difference of XII., which may be
useful in cases of morbidly diminished sensitivity.

Manipulation.— A tray is taken
out, the three weights that it contains are shuffled by the operator, who then
passes them on

252                        Appendix

to the experimenter. The latter
sits at ease with his hand in an unconstrained position, and lifts the weights
in turn between his -finger and thumb, the finger pressing against the top, the
thumb against the bottom of the cartridge. Guided by the touch alone, he
arranges them in the tray in what he conceives to be their proper sequence; he
then returns the tray to the operator, who notes the result, the operator then
reshuffles the weights and repeats the trial. It is necessary to begin with
coarse preparatory tests, to accustom the operatee to the character of the
work. After a minute or two the operator may begin to record results, and the
testing may go for several minutes, until the hand begins to tire, the judgment
to be confused, and blunders to arise. Practice does not seem to increase the
delicacy of perception after the first few trials, so much as might be
expected.

D.—WHISTLES FOR TESTING THE UPPER LIMITS OF AUDIBLE SOUND IN
DIFFERENT INDIVIDUALS.

The base of the inner tube of the
whistle is the foremost end of a plug, that admits of being advanced or
withdrawn by screwing it out or in; thus the depth of the inner tube of the
whistle can be varied at pleasure. The more nearly the plug is screwed home,
the less is the depth of the whistle and the more shrill does its note become,
until a point is reached at which, although the air that proceeds from it
vibrates as violently as before, as shown by its effect on a sensitive flame,
the note ceases to be audible.

The number of vibrations per second in
the note of a whistle or other “closed pipe” depends on its depth.
The theory of acoustics shows that the length of each complete vibration is
four times that of the depth of the closed pipe, and since experience proves
that all sound, whatever may be its pitch, is propagated at the same rate, which
under ordinary conditions of temperature and barometric pressure may be taken
at 1120 feet, or 13,440 inches per second,—it follows that the number of
vibrations in the note of a whistle may be found by dividing 13,440 by four
times the depth, measured in inches, of the inner tube of the whistle. This
rule, however, supposes the vibrations of the air in the tube to be strictly
longitudinal, and ceases to apply when the depth of the tube is less than about
one and a half times its diameter. When the tube is reduced to a shallow pan, a
note may still be produced by it, but that note has reference rather to the
diameter of the whistle than to its depth, being sometimes apparently unaltered
by a further decrease of depth. The necessity of preserving a fair proportion
between the diameter and the depth of a whistle is the reason why these

Whistles
for High Notes                    253

instruments, having necessarily
little depth, require to be made with very small bores.

The depth of the inner tube of the
whistle at any moment is shown by the graduations on the outside of the
instrument. The lower portion of the instrument as formerly made for me by the
late Mr. Tisley, optician, Brompton
Road,[1] is
a cap that surrounds the body of the whistle, and is itself fixed to the screw
that forms the plug. One complete turn of the cap increases or diminishes the
depth of the whistle, by an amount equal to the interval between two adjacent
threads of the screw. For mechanical convenience, a screw is used whose pitch
is 25 to the inch; therefore one turn of the cap moves the plug one
twenty-fifth of an inch, or ten two hundred-and-fiftieths. The edge of the cap
is divided into ten parts, each of which corresponds to the tenth of a complete
turn; and, therefore, to one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of an inch. Hence in
reading off the graduations the tens are shown on the body of the whistle, and
the units are shown on the edge of the cap.

The scale of the instrument having for
its unit the two hundred-and-fiftieth part of an inch, it follows that the
number of vibrations in the note of the whistle is to be found by dividing
(13440x250)/4, or 84,000, by the graduations read off on its scale.

A short table is annexed, giving the
number of vibrations calculated by this formula, for different depths, bearing
in mind that the earlier entries cannot be relied upon unless the whistle has a
very minute bore, and consequently a very feeble note.

Scale Readings
(one division = 1/250 of an inch

Corresponding
Number of Vibrations per Second

Scale Readings one division  = 1/250 of an inch

Corresponding Number of
Vibrations per Second

10

84,000

75

11,200

15

56,000

80

10,500

20

42,000

85

9,882

25

33,600

90

9,333

30

28,000

95

8,842

35

24,000

100

8,400

40

21,000

105

8,000

45

18,666

11

7,591

50

16,800

115

7,305

55

15,273

120

7,000

60

14,000

125

6,720

65

12,923

130

6,461

70

12,000

[1] Mr.
Hawksley, surgical instrument maker, 307
Oxford Street, also makes these whistles, and
those he makes have much purity of tone.

254                        Appendix

The largest whistles suitable for
experiments on the human ear, have an inner tube of about 0.16 inches in
diameter, which is equal to 40 units of the scale. Consequently in these
instruments the theory of closed pipes ceases to be trustworthy when the depth
of the whistle is less than about 60 units. In short, we cannot be sure of
sounding with them a higher note than one of 14,000 vibrations to the second,
unless we use tubes of still smaller bore. In some of my experiments I was
driven to use very fine tubes indeed, not wider than those little glass tubes
that hold the smallest leads for Mordan’s pencils. I have tried without
much success to produce a note that should be both shrill and powerful, and
correspond to a battery of small whistles, by flattering a piece of brass tube,
and passing another sheet of brass up it, and thus forming a whistle the whole
width of the sheet, but of very small diameter from front to back. It made a
powerful note, but not a very pure one. I also constructed an annular whistle
by means of three cylinders, one sliding within the other two, and graduated as
before.

When the limits of audibility are
approached, the sound becomes much fainter, and when that limit is reached, the
sound usually gives place to a peculiar sensation, which is not sound but more
like dizziness, and which some persons experience to a high degree. Young
people hear shriller sounds than older people, and I am told there is a proverb
in Dorsetshire, that no agricultural labourer who is more than forty years old,
can hear a bat squeak. The power of hearing shrill notes has nothing to do with
sharpness of hearing, any more than a wide range of the key-board of a piano
has to do with the sound of the individual strings. We all have our limits, and
that limit may be quickly found by these whistles in every case. The facility
of hearing shrill sounds depends in some degree on the position of the whistle,
for it is highest when it is held exactly opposite the opening of the ear. Any
roughness of the lining of the auditory canal appears to have a marked effect
in checking the transmission of rapid vibrations when they strike the ear
obliquely. I myself feel this in a marked degree, and I have long noted the
fact in respect to the buzz a mosquito. I do not hear the mosquito much as it flies
about, but when it passes close by my ear I hear a “ping,” the
suddenness of which is very striking. Mr. Dalby, the aurist, to whom I gave one
of these instruments, tells me he uses it for diagnoses. When the power of
hearing high notes is wholly lost, the loss is commonly owing to failure in the
nerves, but when very deaf people are still able to hear high notes if they are
sounded with force, the nerves are usually all right, and the fault lies in the
lining of the auditory canal.

Questions
on Visualising, etc.               255

E.—QUESTIONS ON VISUALISING AND OTHER ALLIED
FACULTIES.

The Questions that I circulated were
as follows; there was an earlier and uncomplete form, which I need not
reproduce here.

The object of these Questions is to elicit the
degree in which different persons possess the power of seeing images in their
mind’s eye, and of reviving past sensations.

From inquiries I have already made, it
appears that remarkable variations exist both in the strength and in the
quality of these faculties, and it is highly probable that a statistical
inquiry into them will throw light upon more than one psychological problem.

Before addressing yourself to any of
the Questions on the opposite page, think of some definite object—suppose
it is your breakfast-table as you sat down to it this morning —and
consider carefully the picture that rises before your mind’s eye.

1. Illumination.
—Is the image dim or fairly clear? Is its brightness comparable to
that of the actual scene?

2. Definition.—Are
all the objects pretty well defined at the same time, or is the place of
sharpest definition at any one moment more contracted than it is in a real
scene?

3. Colouring.—Are
the colours of the china, of the toast, bread crust, mustard, meat, parsley, or
whatever may have been on the table, quite distinct and natural?

4. Extent
of field of view.—Call up the image of some panoramic view (the walls
of your room might suffice), can you force yourself to see mentally a wider
range of it than could be taken in by any single glance of the eyes? Can you
mentally see more than three faces of a die, or more than one hemisphere of a
globe at the same instant of time?

5. Distance
of images.—Where do mental images appear to be situated? Within the
head, within the eye-ball, just in front of the eyes, or at a distance
corresponding to reality? Can you project an image upon a piece of paper?

6. Command
over images.—Can you retain a mental picture steadily before the
eyes? When you do so, does it grow brighter or dimmer? When the act of retaining
it becomes wearisome, in what part of the head or eye-ball is the fatigue felt?

7. Persons.—Can
you recall with distinctness the features of all near relations and many other
persons? Can you at will cause your mental image of any or most of them to sit,
stand, or turn slowly round? Can you deliberately seat the image of a
well-known person in a chair and see it with enough distinctness to enable you
to sketch it leisurely (supposing yourself able to draw)?

256                        Appendix

8. Scenery.—Do you preserve the recollection of
scenery with much precision of detail, and do you find pleasure in dwelling on
it? Can you easily form mental pictures from the descriptions of scenery that
are so frequently met with in novels and books of travel?

9.
Comparison with reality.—What difference
do you perceive between a very vivid mental picture called up in the dark, and
a real scene? Have you ever mistaken a mental image for a reality when in
health and wide awake?

10.Numerals
and dates.—Are these invariably associated in your mind with any
peculiar mental imagery, whether of written or printed figures, diagrams, or
colours? If so, explain fully, and say if you can account for the association?

11. Specialities.—If you happen to have special aptitudes for
mechanics, mathematics (either geometry of three dimensions or pure analysis),
mental arithmetic, or chess-playing blindfold, please explain fully how far
your processes depend on the use of visual images, and how far otherwise?

12. Call up before your imagination
the objects specified in the six following paragraphs, numbered A to F, and
consider carefully whether your mental representation of them generally, is in
each group very faint, faint, fair, good, or vivid and comparable to the actual
sensation

-
Light and colour.—An evenly clouded sky
(omitting all landscape), first bright, then gloomy. A thick surrounding haze,
first white, then successively blue, yellow, green, and red.

-
Sound.—The beat of rain against the
window panes, the crack of a whip, a church bell, the hum of bees, the whistle
of a railway, the clinking of tea-spoons and saucers, the slam of a door.

-
Smells.—Tar, roses, an oil-lamp blown
out, hay, violets, a fur coat, gas, tobacco.

-
Tastes.—Salt, sugar, lemon juice,
raisins, chocolate, currant jelly.

-
Touch.—Velvet, silk, soap, gum, sand,
dough, a crisp dead leaf, the prick of a pin.

-
Other sensations.—Heat,
hunger, cold, thirst, fatigue, fever, drowsiness, a bad cold.

13. Music.—Have you any aptitude for mentally recalling music, or
for imagining it?

14. At different ages.—Do you recollect what your powers of
visualising, etc., were in childhood? Have they varied much within your
recollection?

General
remarks. — Supplementary information written
here, or on a separate piece of paper, will be acceptable.

INDEX

***For an analysis of the several chapters, see
Table of Contents

ABBADIE,
A. d’, 82, 99

Aborigines, 202

About, E., 205

Abstract ideas, like
composite portraits, 132; are formed with difficulty, 145

Admiralty, records of
lives of sailors, 29

Adoption, 224

Africa, oxen, 48; captive
animals, 177; races of men, 204—206

Alert, H.M.S., the crew
of, 5

Alexander the Great,
medals of, 8; his help to Aristotle, 185

America, captive animals,
276, 177; change of population, 205

Animals and birds, their
attachments and aversions, 187

ANTECHAMBER OF CONSCIOUSNESS 246

ANTHROPOMETRIC REGISTERS, 28;
anthropometric committee, 23, 36; laboratories, 28

Appold, Mr., 226

Arabs, their migrations,
203, 206

Ashurakbal, his
menagerie, 283

ASSOCIATIONS,
131 (see also Psychometric experiments, 233)

Assyria, captive animals,
183

Athletic feats in present
and past generations, 15

Augive, or ogive, 35

Austin, A. L., 226

Australia, tame kites,
180; change of population, 206

Automatic thought, 247

Aversion, 254, 287

BARCLAY, Capt., of Ury,
15

Barrel, 16

Barth, Dr., 279

Bates, W. H., 277

Baume, Dr., 264

Belief (see
Faith), 250

Bevington, Miss
L., 106

Bible, family, 29

Bidder, G., 81,
82, 94

Blackburne, Mr.,
67

Blake, the
artist, 66

Bleuler and
Lehman, 207

Blind, the, 22

Blood, terror at,
42

BODILY QUALITIES, 23

Boisbaudran,
Lecoq de, 73

Breaking out
(violent passion), 45

Brierre de
Boismont, 226, 227

Bruhl, Prof., 106

Burton, Capt.,
275

Bushmen, their
skill in drawing, 70; in Damara Land, 204

CAMPBELL, J. (of
Islay), 186

Candidates,
selection of, 221, 222

Captive Animals
(see Domestication of Animals), 273

Cats can hear
very shrill notes, 27 Cattle, their terror at blood, 42; gregariousness of, 48;
renders them easy to tend, 191; cow guarding her newly-born calf, 51; cattle
highly prized by Damaras, 190

Celibacy as a
religious exercise, 46; effect of endowments upon, 214; prudential, 207; to
prevent continuance of an inferior race, 225

Centesimal
grades, 37

Chance, influence
of, in test experiments, 250

Change, love of,
characteristic of civilised man, 229

CHARACTER, observations on at schools, 40; changing
phases of, 230

Charterhouse College, 93, 96

Cheltenham College, 90, 100

Chess, played
blindfold, 66

Children, mental
imagery, 69; associations, 131, 242; effect of illness on growth of head, 168;
moral impressions on 273; they and their parents understand each other, 273;
can hear shrill notes, 254

Chinese, the, 206

Clock face,
origin of some Number-Forms, 89, 96

Colleges,
celibacy of Fellows of, 215

COLOUR ASSOCIATIONS, 105 (see also chap. on Visionaries, 112 onwards); colour blindness, 32

Comfort, love of,
a condition of domesticability, 188

Competitive
examinations, 222, 222, 223

COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE, 6; also Memoirs I., II., and III. in Appendix, 221, 229, 233

Composite origin
of some visions, 125; of ideas, 232; of memories, 229

Composition,
automatic, 246; literary, 147

CONCLUSION, 216

Conscience,
defective in criminals, 42, 43; its origin, 252, 252

Consciousness
(see Antechamber of), 246; ignorance of its relation to the unconscious lives
of cells of organism, 196; its limited ken, 234, 245, 227

Consumption,
types of features connected with, 11, 22

Cooper, Miss, 94

CRIMINALS AND THE INSANE, 42; criminals,
their features, 10, 11, 12, 224; their peculiarities of character, 42; their
children, 553, 154 Cromwell’s soldiers, 5

Cuckoo

DALTON, colour
blindness, 31; was a Quaker, 33 Damaras, their grade of sensitivity, 22; their
wild cattle and gregariousness, 48; their pride in them, 190; races of men in
Damara Land, 204

Dante, 154

Darwin, Charles,
impulse given by him to new lines of thought, 129; on conscience, 252; notes on
twins, 161, 263 letter of Mr. A. L. Austin forwarded by, 226

Darwin, Limit.,
R. E., photographs of Royal Engineers, 9, 10, 240

Deaf-mutes, 149

Death, fear of,
153; its orderly occurrence, 169; death and reproduction of cells, and their
unknown relation to consciousness, 196

Despine, Prosper,
42

Difference,
verbal difficulty in defining many grades of, 23

Discipline,
ascetic, 46, 126

Discovery, H. M. S., the crew of, 5

Discrimination of
weights by handling them, etc., 24

Dividualism, 148,
217; also 46

Doctrines,
diversity of; 150, 151, 217

Dogs, their
capacity for hearing shrill notes, 27

DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS, 173

Dreaming, 122

Du Cane, Sir E.,
10

Duncan, Dr.
Mathews, 208

EARLSWOOD ASYLUM
for idiots, 20

EARLY AND LATE MARRIAGES, 208

EARLY SENTIMENTS, 149

Ecstasy, 46, 149

Editors of
newspapers, 120, 147

Egg, raw and
boiled, when spun, 25

Egypt, captive animals, 277

Ellis, Rev. Mr. (Polynesia), 181

Emigrants, value
of their breed, 56, 200; migration of barbarian races, 204

ENDOWMENTS, 214

ENERGY, 17

Engineers, Royal,
features of, 9, 10

English race,
change of type, 4, colour of hair, 5; one direction in which it might be
improved, 10; change of stature, 15; various components of, 202

ENTHUSIASM, 248

Epileptic
constitution, 45

Eskimo, faculty
of drawing and mapmaking, 72

Eugenic,
definition of the word, 17

Events, observed
order of; 194

Evolution, its
effects are always behind. hand, 152; its slow progress, 197; man should
deliberately further it, 1, 198, 218

Exiles, families
of, 200

Experiments,
psychometric, 133

FACES seen in the
fire, on wallpaper, etc., 66, 123

Faith, 150

Family
likenesses, 9; records, 28; merit, marks for, 211

Fashion, changes
of; 130

Fasting, visions
caused by, 225, 126; fasting girls, 149

FEATURES, 3

Fellows of
colleges, 225

Fertility at
different ages, 209; is small in highly-bred animals, 199

Fire-faces, 66,
123

First Cause, an
enigma, 294, 196

Flame, sensitive,
and high notes, 27

Fleas are
healthful stimuli to animals, 18

Fluency of
language and ideas, 147

Forest clearing, 197

Forms in which
numerals are seen (see Number-Forms),
79; months, 87; letters, 87, 88; dates, 132

Foxes,
preservation of, 18

France, political persecution in, 55

French, the,
imaginative faculty of, 70

Friends, the
Society of (see Quakers), 32

GARCILASSO DR LA VIA A, 184

Generations,
length of and effect in population, 210; in town and country populations, 241

Generic images,
75, 76; theory of, 132, 234 Geometric series of test-objects, 23; geometric
mean, 39

Gerard, Jules,
181

Gesture-language,
145

Gibbon,
amphitheatrical shows, 184

Goethe and his
visualised rose, 115, 117

Gomara, 284

Goodwin, Mr., 277

Grades,
deficiency of in language, 23; centesimal, 37

Graham, Dr., on
idiots, 20 (note)

GREGARIOUS AND SLAVISH INSTINCTS,
47; gregariousness of cattle, 48, 191; gregarious animals quickly learn from
one another, 153

Gull, Sir W., on
vigour of members of large families, 213; On medical life-histories, 220

Guy’s
Hospital Reports (consumptive types), 11

Gypsies, 125, 203

HAIR, colour of;
5

Hall, Capt., 72

Hallucinations,
cases of; 121 origin of, 122; of great men, 127

Handwriting, 88;
of twins, 157

Hanwell Asylum,
lunatics when at exercise, 46

Hatherley, Lord,
22

Haweis, Mrs.,
words and faces, 113 visions, 119

Head measured for
curve of growth, 168

Hearne (N. America), 176, 186

Height, comparative,
of present and past generation, 15

Henslow, Rev. G,
imagery, 67; Number-Forms, 82, 100; visions, 115

Heredity, the
family tie, 30; of colour blindness in Quakers, 32; of criminality, 43; of
faculty of visualising, 69, 70; of seeing Number-Forms, 100; of colour
associations with sound, 109; of seer-ship, 125; of enthusiasm, 248; of
character and its help in the teaching of children by their parents, 173; that
of a good stock is a valuable patrimony, 215, 216

Hershon, Mr., the
Talmud, 104

Hill, Rev. A. D.,
92

Hippocrates and
snake symbol, 41

HISTORY OF TWINS, 255

Holbein, 4

Holland, F. M., 212

Hottentots,
keenness of sight, 22 (see Bushmen,
70, 204)

Human Nature,
variety of; 2

Humanity of the
future, power of present generation of men upon it, 206, 217

Hutchinson, Mr.,
71

Huxley,
Professor, on sucking pigs in New
Guinea, 180; generic images, 230

Hysteria, 45, 149

IDIOTS, deficient in energy, 17; in
sensitivity, 29, 20

Illness,
permanent effect on growth, 168

Illumination,
method of regulating it when making composites, 234; requires to be controlled,
533

Illusions, 123 (see also Hallucinations, cases of; 121)

Imagery, mental,
57

Indian Civil
Service, candidates for, 213

Individuality,
doubt of among the insane, 46; among the sane, 148, 217

INFLUENCE OF MAN UPON RACE, 200

Insane, the, 45,
46; similar forms of it in twins, 163

Inspiration
analogous to ordinary fluency, 548; morbid forms of; 149

Instability, 45

Instincts,
variety of; 2; criminal, 42, 43; slavish (see
chapter on Gregarious and Slavish Instincts), 47

INTELLECTUAL DIFFERENCES, 57

JESUITS in S. America, 208

Jukes, criminal
family, 44

KENSINGTON GARDENS, the promenaders in, 4

Key, Dr. J., 209

Kingsley, Miss
R., 102

Kirk, Sir John,
179

LABORATORIES,
anthropometric, 28

Larden, W., 90

Legros, Prof., 74

Lehman and
Bleuler, 207 (note)

Letters, association
of colour with, 107-111

Lewis, G. H., 106

Lewis, Miss, 94

Life-histories,
their importance, 30, 220

Livingstone, Dr.,
279

Longevity of families, 212

MACALISTER, Dr.,
35

M’Leod,
Prof. H., 96

Madness (see Insanity)

Mahomed, Dr., 11

Malthus, 207;
marriage portions, 214

Man, his
influence upon race, 200

Mann, Dr., 71

MARKS FOR FAMILY MERIT, 211

Marlborough College, 14

Marriages, early
and late, 208; with persons of good race, 216; marriage portions, 214 of
Fellows of Colleges, 215 promotion of, 219

Medians and
quartiles, 36 (see 64, 65)

Memory, 138;
physiological basis of; 229; confusion of separate memories, 229

MENTAL IMAGERY, 57

Meredith, Mrs.,
154

Milk offered by
she-goats and wolves to children, 291

Moors, migrations
of the, 203

Moreau, Dr. J.
(of Tours), 163

Morphy, P., 66

Muscular and
accompanying senses, tests of, 24

Mussulmans, small fear of death, 252, 253; things clean and unclean, 254

NAMAQUAS in Damara Land,
204 (see also Bushmen)

Napoleon I., views in connection with the
faculty of visualising, 78 his star, 126

Nature (see Nurture and Nature), 228

Necessitarianism,
169

Negro displaced
by Berbers, 203; by Bushmen, 204; exported as slaves, 205; replaceable by
Chinese, 206

Nervous
irritability, as distinct from sensitivity, 20, 23

New Guinea, 180

Nicholson, Sir
C., 180

Notes, audibility
of very shrill, 26, 254

Nourse, Prof. J.
E., 72

NUMBER-FORMS, 79

Numerals, their
nomenclature, 89; characters assigned to them, 104; coloured 105

NURTURE AND NATURE, 128; history of twins, 155

Nussbaumer, brothers, 106

OBSERVED ORDER OF EVENTS, 594

Octiles, 36 (see 64, 65)

Ogive
(statistical curve), 35

Osborn, Mr., 92

Osten Sacken,
Baron v., 82, 205

Oswell, Mr., 179

Oxen (see Cattle)

PARKYNS,
Mansfield, 177

Peculiarities,
unconsciousness of, 31

Persecution, its
effect on the character of races, 55

Peru, captive animals in, 184

Pet animals, 175

Petrie Flinders,
66, 96

Phantasmagoria,
120 125

Photographic
composites (see Composite
Portraiture); registers, 28, 29; summed effect of a thousand brief exposures,
231; order of exposure is indifferent, 239

Phthisis, typical
features of, 12

Piety, morbid
forms of, in the epileptic and insane, 45, 46; in the hysterical, 149

Pigafetta, 279,
181

Polynesia, pet eels, 181

Ponies, their
capacity for hearing shrill notes, 28

Poole,
R. Stuart, 8, 232

Poole,
W. H., 93

POPULATION, 207; population in town and country, 14,
241; changes of, 205; decays of, 208; effects of early marriages on, 209

Portraits,
composite (see Composite Portraiture); number of elements
in a portrait, 3, 4; the National Portrait Gallery, 4

Prejudices
instilled by doctrinal teachers, 150; affect the judgments of able men, 151

Presence-chamber
in mind, 146

Pricker for
statistical records, 38

Princeton College, U.S., 92, 93

Prisms, double
image, 227

Proudfoot, Mr.,
71

PSYCHOMETRIC EXPERIMENTS, 233

Puritans,

QUAKERS,
frequency of colour blindness, 32

Quartiles 36 (see 64, 65)

Questions on
visualising and other allied faculties, 255

Quetelet, 230

RACE and Selection, 198; influence of man
upon, 200; variety and number of races in different countries, 202; sexual
apathy of decaying races, 208; signs of superior race, 212 pride in being of
good race, 226

Races established
to discover the best horses to breed from, 215

Rapp, General,
226

Rapture,
religious, 46

Rayleigh, Lord,
sensitive flame and high notes, 27

Reindeer,
difficulty of taming, 186

Religion, 150

Renaissance, 129

Republic of
self-reliant men, of life generally, 295; cosmic, 217

Revivals,
religious, 46

Richardson, Sir
John, 176

Roberts, C., 24
(note)

Roget, J., 82, 95

Rome, wild animals captured for use of,
284

Rosiere, marriage
portion to, 214

SAILORS, keenness
of eyesight tested, 22; admiralty life-histories of, 29

St. James’s Gazette(Phantasmagoria), 222

Savages, eyesight
of, 22

Schools,
biographical notes at, 29; opportunities of masters, 29; observation of
characters at, 40, 42

Schuster, Prof.,
82, 94

Seal in pond, a
simile, 121, 122; captured and tamed, 189, 190

Seemann, Dr., 180

Seers (see chapter on Visionaries), 112;
heredity of, 225

Segregation,
passionate terror at among cattle, 49

SELECTION AND RACE, 198

Self, becoming
less personal, 195

SENSITIVITY, 29

Sentiments,
early, 249

SEQUENCE OF TEST WEIGHTS, 23

Serpent worship,
41, 181

Servility (see Gregarious and Slavish Instincts),
47; its romantic side, 56

Sexual
differences sensitivity, 20, 21 in character, 39, apathy in highly-bred
animals, 199

Siberia, change of population in 205

Slavishness (see Gregarious and Slavish Instincts),
47

Smith, B. Woodd,
82, 95; curious Number-Form communicated by, 98

Smythe, G. F.,
202

Snakes, horror of
some persons at, 40; antipathy to, not common among mankind, 41

Socrates and his
catalepsy, 127

Solitude, 46, 47

Sound,
association of colour with, 106, 107

Space and time,
196

Spain, the races in, 202

Speke, Capt., 278

Spencer, H.,
blended outlines, 221

Spiritual sense,
the, 297

Stars of great
men, 126, 227

STATISTICAL METHODS, 33 statistical
constancy, 33; that of republics of self-reliant men, 56; statistics of mental
imagery, 64, 65; pictorial statistics, 233

Stature of the
English, 15, 16

Steinitz, Mr., 67

Stones, Miss, 94,
107

Stow, Mr., 72

Suna, his
menagerie, 278

TALBOT FOX, 283

Talmud frequency
of the different numerals in, 204, 205

Tameness, learned
when young, 153; tame cattle preserved to breed from, 293

Tastes, changes
in, 130

Terror at snakes,
40 at blood, 42; is easily taught, 153

Test objects,
weights, etc., 23, 248

Time and space,
196

Town and country
population, 24, 242

Trousseau, Dr.,
163

Turner, the
painter, 124

Twins, the
history of, 155

Typical centre,
298

Tyranny, 54

ULLOA 277

Unclean, the, and
the clean, 254

UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF PECULIARITIES,
31; in visionaries, 113

VARIETY OF HUMAN NATURE, 2

VISIONARIES, 112 visionary families and races, 69,
70, 225, 248

WATCHES,
magnetised 151

Welch, Mrs.
Kempe, 106

West Indies, change of population in, 206

Wheel and barrel,
16

WHISTLES FOR AUDIBILITY OF SHRILL
NOTES, 26, 252

Wildness taught
young, 253

Wilkes, Capt.,
181

Winchester College, 92, 93

Wollaston, Dr.,
26

Wolves, children
suckled by, 191

Women, relative
sensitivity of, 20, 21; coyness and caprice, 39; visualising

Woodfield, Mr. (Australia), 180

Words, visualised
pictures associated with, 223

Workers,
solitary, 18

YOUNG, Dr., 33

Yule, Colonel,
82, 95

ZEBRAS, hard to
tame, 186

Zoological
Gardens, whistles tried at, 27; snakes fed, 40; seal at, 121, 222

Zukertort, Mr.,
67

ADDENDA: RESTORED SECTIONS

The
Everyman reprint of Inquiries into Human
Faculty omitted the following two sections and abbreviated the third.

ENTHUSIASM

The changed meaning of
the word Enthusiasm is an example of the change of belief in modern times. Its
ancient meaning was its literal one, 'God-in-us,' its modern meaning is 'ardent
zeal.' I notice that its definition in a recent dictionary is 'a belief or
conceit of private revelation; the vain confidence or opinion of a person that
he has special divine communications from the Supreme Being, or familiar
intercourse with him.' On the other hand, the belief of devout persons that
they really commune in their hearts with God, that he put holy ideas and
affections into their minds, and inspires them with good resolves, is by no
means in their opinion a vain conceit or confidence. To a large number of the
ablest class of mankind the idea of an indwelling divine Spirit is so habitual
and vivid as to be an axiomatic truth to them. If their views are correct that
the germs of a faculty of communing with an unseen world exists in Man, and
much more abundantly in some persons than in others, then, considering that
this devout persuasion runs in families, as I have fully shown in Hereditary Genius, it would follow that
those races should be encouraged that are characterized by
spiritual-mindedness, and who would be far more worthy occupants of the earth
than the generality of ourselves.

It has been to me a real
and almost life-long subject of thought, whether or no and to what degree the
strong subjective views of the pious are trustworthy. It has been the motive of
many of the inquiries in this book, for it seems to me a cardinal one in any
question of the improvement of race. Should we keep it before us as an object
of endeavour, that future generations may be generally endowed with faculties
such as will enable them really to hold as free communion with a Deity as the
more spiritually-minded of our race profess to enjoy at the present time? Or is
the opinion held by the pious as to the existence of those faculties no more
than a vain conceit and confidence, as the dictionary definition just quoted
would have it to be?

There is no subject more
worthy of reverent but thorough investigation than the objective evidence for
or against the existence of inspiration from an unseen world, and none that up
to the present time has so tantalized the anxious and honest inquirer with
unperformed promises of solution. The arguments scattered or hinted at
throughout this book are negative so far as they go, but it must be borne in
mind that they would be scattered to the winds by solid objective evidence on
the other side, such as could be seriously entertained by scientific men
desiring above all things to arrive at truth.

Among the arguments of
which I speak, there was evidence that persons in sound health were liable to
see visions of an apparently objective character, and to hear voices that seemed
external, all of these hallucinations apparently belonging to the same order of
phenomena. I also showed that their existing cause could in some instances be
traced with more or less certainty; that many of these visions and voices were
meaningless or absurd; and that there was not the slightest ground for
accrediting the majority of them to any exalted or external source. Similarly,
I showed that the fluency of ordinary speakers and writers proceeds in an
automatic way, without its being imputed to inspiration, but that when such
speakers or writers are exercised upon devout subjects, they are apt to suppose
the thoughts that then arise to be inspired, although it would seem to a
bystander that all fluency has the same general origin.

I also pointed out that
it is among those hysterical or insane persons in whom the sexual organization
is disturbed, that the extreme forms of religious rapture chiefly prevail; that
the passion of love has many strange metamorphoses, and that life and love in
some form, and with its customary illusions, can hardly be separated in a
healthy and perfect animal.

An instance of the purely
physiological origin of ideas was seen in those twins who are characterized by
simultaneity of conceptions; the same notion occurring at the same moment to
both, and both responding in nearly the same words and at the same moment to
the person who addresses them, so that the twins appear like a double
individual.

I have further shown in
many ways how little trust can be placed in axiomatic belief. For example,
certain natural oddities of mind, such as the perception of number-forms and of
colours associated with sounds, always appear to be axiomatic necessities to
those who perceive them, and so do many of the sentiments that were instilled in
early life. I have also pointed out the necessary untrustworthiness of
conscience in some particulars.

Lastly, it appears to be
tacitly recognized by all, that the absolute and final court of appeal is not
subjective but objective. It is therefore not upon our instinctive convictions
or fancies that we should lay most trust, but we should observe the convictions
and fancies of others as well as our own, and assign no less trustworthiness to
them. Especially should we test the truth of all convictions whenever it is
possible to do so, by appeal to such facts as may admit of repetition, for the
purpose of verification either by ourselves or by others; experience showing
that, in the long run, the supremacy of such facts becomes universally
acknowledged. Above all things, we must be content to suspend our belief and
maintain the freedom of our mental attitude, wherever there is strong reason
for doubt. When there is stormy weather and no secure harbour, the sailors put
out to sea; it is not anchorage they then want, but sea-room.

There is nothing in any hesitation that may be felt as to the possibility
of receiving help and inspiration from an unseen world, to discredit the
practice that is dearly prized by most of us, of withdrawing from the crowd and
entering into quiet communion with our hearts, until the agitations of the
moment have calmed down, and the distorting mirage of a worldly atmosphere has
subsided and the greater objects and more enduring affections of our life have
reappeared in their due proportions. We may then take comfort and find support
in the sense of our forming part of whatever has existed or will exist, and
this need be the motive of no idle reverie but of an active conviction that we
possess an influence which may be small but cannot be inappreciable, in
defining the as yet undetermined possibilities of an endless future. It may
inspire a vigorous resolve to use all the intelligence and perseverance we can
command to fulfil our part as members of one great family that strives as a
whole towards a fuller and a higher life.

POSSIBILITIES OF THEOCRATIC INTERVENTION

Any attempt to appraise
the relative effects of Nature and Nurture may be objected to. It may be said
that it is an imperfect and fallacious proceeding to treat the actions of Man
as if they were the results of no other influences than may be comprehended
under those heads, and that the possibility of theocratic interference must not
be overlooked, whether it take place in response to prayer or independently of
it. Such an objection may be perfectly valid when the influences at work in any
individual case have to be considered, but it happily does not apply to
statistical averages for reasons that are quite unconnected with theology, and
which I will explain and illustrate. Briefly, it is the very purport and claim
of statistics to isolate the effect of specific influences from all others,
whether known or unknown, that may act concurrently with them.

Suppose a large number of
silk-worms to be tended by a caretaker, and that an observer watched his
proceedings as well as he could, but only during the day-time and through a
telescope. We will further suppose his observations to show that the worms were
of various breeds, and that they were fed in various ways, irrespectively of
their breeds, and that the observer desired to discover the relative effects of
breed and feeding on the growth of the worms. There can be no doubt as to the
principle on which he would work; he would classify his observations so as to
compare race with race, and he would reclassify them to compare nurture with
nurture. By this well-understood treatment he would isolate the two classes of
influence.

Now suppose the caretaker
had a custom wholly unknown to the observer, of feeding the worms in various
ways during the nighttime, how would that affect the statistical conclusions? I
answer, only by increasing the amount of individual deviations from the average
result, so that, other circumstances remaining the same, the observer would not
attain the same constancy in his averages unless the number of observations in
his groups was larger than before. Let us consider the ways in which the
interference of the caretaker might act.

(1) Suppose he favoured a
particular race by giving food to every individual of it during the night-time,
then the effect would be that every individual of that race, by virtue of his
belonging to the race, would be benefited. The observer who noticed the
generally thriving condition of worms of that race would be justified in
accepting it as a racial characteristic, for it would be the consequence of the
race of the worm.

(2) Suppose the caretaker
gave additional food in the night to the particular set whom he had fed the
best during the day-time. The observer would rightly ascribe the more or less
thriving condition of that set to the peculiarities of their nurture.

(3) Suppose the caretaker
acted conversely, feeding those in the night-time whom he had inadequately fed
in the day. If the night and day feeding were of equal importance, the observer
would find the effects of Nurture to be nil, and rightly so. If they did not
balance, he would notice the differential effect.

Thus far we see that the
relative total effects of Nature and Nurture would have been rightly appraised.
We see at the same time that the effect of any particular kind of Nurture could
not be determined, because the whole of the conditions were not under
observation.

(4) Suppose the caretaker
to feed during the night certain worms that he had marked for the purpose in a
manner that wholly escaped the notice of the observer, and that the selection
of the worms that were marked had been made on grounds irrespective both of
their breed and of the care bestowed on them during the day-time. The result
would be that in any large number of worms grouped either according to breed or
to the observed dietary, the proportion in
either group will be the same between those who thrive, and those who otherwise
would not have thriven, consequently the relative
well-being of the two groups will remain unaltered. Favour or disfavour
that is bestowed irrespectively of breed and of nurture cannot influence the
relative effects of breed and nurture in the long run.

The foregoing arguments
cover all composite cases where the influences are mixed, therefore whether
there be any unperceived theocratic intervention in favour of particular races,
or of individuals irrespectively of race, or partly in one way and partly in
another, it cannot under the foregoing suppositions vitiate a statistical
comparison between the relative effects of Nature and Nurture, it being
understood that 'Nature' refers to all the hereditary gifts and privileges of
the race, including constant theocratic intervention in its favour during the
period of the observations.

There is, however, a
fifth supposition which I feel somewhat ashamed to record. It is that the
caretaker, knowing he was watched and not liking it, devised plans for
defeating the observer. I fully acknowledge that he could easily succeed in
misleading him. The homologue would be a God with the attributes of a Devil,
who misled humble and earnest inquirers after truth by malicious artifice. I
should not have dared to have alluded to such an ignoble supposition, had not
Milton himself put it forward in Paradise
Lost, Bk. viii, where he makes Raphael tell Adam that God 'did wisely' not
to divulge his secrets to be scanned by those who ought rather to admire, and
that if they list to conjecture, he has perhaps left the fabric of the heavens
to their disputes to 'move his laughter' at their quaint opinions. I think the
passage (which was written before Newton's
time) must have jarred on the hearts of many readers, and that Milton's supposition of such a character in
his God is not likely to be adopted by many persons at the present time. I
cannot imagine a more cruel and wicked act, as estimated by the modern instinct
of right and wrong, than that which has been so airily suggested by Milton.

We have thus far
considered the effects upon statistical conclusions of possible theocratic
intervention when given unasked; we have now to consider that which may be
accorded in response to petitions. The offering of devout prayer must depend
either on the initiative of the Deity or on that of the man. The former
condition has just been disposed of under the head of theocratic intervention
unasked, the latter can be dealt with in an equally simple manner. The desire
to pray, arising independently in the heart of a man, must be due either to his
natural character (that is, to his nature), to the external circumstances (all
of which I include under the term of his Nurture), or to his free-will. The two
first of these are already disposed of, leaving free-will as the only remaining
consideration. There are two senses to the word. The popular sense is caprice,
or at all events something that acts irrespectively of race and nurture; it
therefore falls under the fourth of the conditions already disposed of. Another
sense is freedom to follow one's bent, the bent being due either to nature or
to circumstances; these cases have also been already considered.

It follows from what has
been said that theocratic intervention, whether in response to prayer or given
unasked, cannot affect the value of statistical conclusions on the relative
total effects of Nature and Nurture, unless Milton's horrible supposition be seriously
entertained.

Statistical
Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer

[Fortnightly
Review vol. 12, pp. 125-35, 1872]

An eminent
authority has recently published a challenge to test the efficacy of prayer by
actual experiment. I have been induced, through reading this, to prepare the
following memoir for publication, nearly the whole of which I wrote and laid by
many years ago, after completing a large collection of data, which I had
undertaken for the satisfaction of my own conscience.

The
efficacy of prayer seems to me a simple, as it is a perfectly appropriate and
legitimate subject of scientific inquiry. Whether prayer is efficacious or not,
in any given sense, is a matter of fact on which each man must form an opinion
for himself. His decision will be based upon data more or less justly handled,
according to his education and habits. An unscientific reasoner will be guided
by a confused recollection of crude experience. A scientific reasoner will
scrutinize each separate experience before he admits it as evidence, and will
compare all the cases he has selected on a methodical system.

The
doctrine commonly preached by the clergy is well expressed in the most recent,
and by far the most temperate and learned of theological encyclopaedias,
namely, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible. The
article on 'Prayer,' written by the Rev. Dr. Barry, states as follows: 'Its
real objective efficacy, is both implied and expressed (in Scripture) in the
plainest terms .... We are encouraged to ask special blessings, both spiritual
and temporal, in hopes that thus, and thus only, we may obtain them .... It
would seem the intention of Holy Scripture to encourage all prayer, more
especially intercession, in all relations and for all righteous objects.' Dr.
Hook, the present Dean of Chichester, states in his Church Dictionary, under 'Prayer,' that 'the general providence of
God acts through what are called the laws of nature. By this particular
providence God interferes with those laws, and he has promised to interfere in
behalf of those who pray in the name of Jesus .... We may take it as a general
role that we may pray for that for which we may lawfully labour, and for that
only.'

The phrases
of our Church service amply countenance this view; and if we look to the
practice of the opposed sections of the religious world, we find them
consistent in maintaining it. The so-called 'Low Church' notoriously places
absolute belief in special providences accorded to pious prayer. This is
testified by the biographies of its members, the journals of its missionaries,
and the 'united prayer meetings' of the present day. The Roman Catholics offer
religious vows to avert danger; they make pilgrimages to shrines; they hang
votive offerings and pictorial representations, sometimes by thousands, in
their churches, of fatal accidents averted by the manifest interference of a
solicited saint.

A prima facie argument in favour of the
efficacy of prayer is therefore to be drawn from the very general use of it.
The greater part of mankind, during all the historic ages, have been accustomed
to pray for temporal advantages. How vain, it may be urged, must be the
reasoning that ventures to oppose this mighty consensus of belief! Not so. The
argument of universality either proves too much, or else it is suicidal. It
either compels us to admit that the prayers of Pagans, of Fetish worshippers,
and of Buddhists who turn praying wheels, are recompensed in the same way as
those of orthodox believers; or else the general consensus proves that it has
no better foundation than the universal tendency of man to gross credulity.

The
collapse of the argument of universality leaves us solely concerned with a
simple statistical question - are prayers answered, or are they not? There are
two lines of research, by either of which we may pursue this inquiry. The one
that promises the most trustworthy results is to examine large classes of
cases, and to be guided by broad averages; the other, which I will not employ in
these pages, is to deal with isolated instances. An author who made much use of
the latter method might reasonably suspect his own judgment - he would
certainly run the risk of being suspected by others - in choosing one-sided
examples.

The
principles are broad and simple upon which our inquiry into the efficacy of
prayer must be established. We must gather cases for statistical comparison, in
which the same object is keenly pursued by two classes similar in their
physical but opposite in their spiritual state; the one class being prayerful,
the other materialistic. Prudent pious people must be compared with prudent
materialistic people, and not with the imprudent nor the vicious. Secondly, we
have no regard, in this inquiry, to the course by which the answer to prayers
may be supposed to operate. We simply look to the final result -whether those
who pray attain their objects more frequently than those who do not pray, but
who live in all other respects under similar conditions. Let us now apply our
principles to different cases.

A rapid
recovery from disease may be conceived to depend on many causes besides the
reparative power of the patient's constitution. A miraculous quelling of the
disease may be one of these causes; another is the skill of the physician, or
of the nurse; another is the care that the patient takes of himself. In our
inquiry, whether prayerful people recover more rapidly than others under
similar circumstances, we need not complicate the question by endeavouring to
learn the channel through which the patient's prayer may have reached its
fulfillment. It is foreign to our present purpose to ask if there be any signs
of a miraculous quelling of the disease, or if, through the grace of God, the
physician had showed unusual wisdom, or the nurse or the patient unusual
discretion. We simply look to the main issue - do sick persons who pray, or are
prayed for, recover on the average more rapidly than others?

It appears
that, in all countries and in all creeds, the priests urge the patient to pray
for his own recovery, and the patient's friends to aid him with their prayers;
but that the doctors make no account whatever of their spiritual agencies,
unless the office of priest and medical man be combined in the same individual.
The medical works of modern Europe teem with records of individual illnesses
and of broad averages of disease, but I have been able to discover hardly any
instance in which a medical man of any repute has attributed recovery to the
influence of prayer. There is not a single instance, to my knowledge, in which
papers read before statistical societies have recognized the agency of prayer
either on disease or on anything else. The universal habit of the scientific
world to ignore the agency of prayer is a very important fact. To fully
appreciate “the eloquence of the silence” of medical men, we must
bear in mind the care with which they endeavour to assign a sanatory value to
every influence. Had prayers for the sick any notable effect, it is incredible
but that the doctors, who are always on the watch for such things, should have
observed it, and added their influence to that of the priests towards obtaining
them for every sick man. If they abstain from doing so, it is not because their
attention has never been awakened to the possible efficacy of prayer, but, on
the contrary, that although they have heard it insisted on from childhood
upwards, they are unable to detect its influence. Most people have some general
belief in the objective efficacy of prayer, but none seem willing to admit its
action in those special cases of which they have scientific cognizance.

Those who
may wish to pursue these inquiries upon the effect of prayers for the
restoration of health could obtain abundant materials from hospital cases, and
in a different way from that proposed in the challenge to which I referred at
the beginning of these pages. There are many common maladies whose course is so
thoroughly well understood as to admit of accurate tables of probability being
constructed for their duration and result. Such are fractures and amputations.
Now it would be perfectly practicable to select out of the patients at
different hospitals under treatment for fractures and amputations two
considerable groups; the one consisting of markedly religious and piously
befriended individuals, the other of those who were remarkably cold-hearted and
neglected. An honest comparison of their respective periods of treatment and
the results would manifest a distinct proof of the efficacy of prayer, if it
existed to even a minute fraction of the amount that religious teachers exhort
us to believe.

An inquiry of a somewhat similar nature may be
made into the longevity of persons whose lives are prayed for; also that of the
praying classes generally; and in both these cases we can easily obtain
statistical facts. The public prayer for the sovereign of every state,
Protestant and Catholic, is and has been in the spirit of our own, “Grant
her in health long to live.” Now, as a simple matter of fact, has this
prayer any efficacy? There is a memoir by Dr. Guy, in the Journal of the Statistical Society (vol. xxii, p. 355), in which he
compares the mean age of sovereigns with that of other classes of persons. His
results are expressed in the following table:-

MEAN AGE ATTAINED BY MALES OF VARIOUS CLASSES WHO
HAD SURVIVED THEIR 30TH YEAR, from 1758 to 1843. Deaths by accident or
violence are excluded

Number

Average

Eminent
Men*

Members of Royal Houses

97

64.04

—

Clergy

945

69.49

66.42

Lawyers

294

68.14

66.51

Medical profession

244

67.31

67.07

English aristocracy

1,179

67.31

—

Gentry

1,632

70.22

—

Trade and commerce

513

68.74

—

Officers in the Royal Navy

366

68.40

—

English literature and science

395

67.55

65.22

Officers of the Army

569

67.07

—

Fine Arts

239

65.96

64.74

* The eminent men
are those whose lives are recorded in Chalmer's Biography, with some
additions from the Annual Register.

The
sovereigns are literally the shortest lived of all who have the advantage of
affluence. The prayer has therefore no efficacy, unless the very questionable
hypothesis be raised, that the conditions of royal life may naturally be yet
more fatal, and that their influence is partly, though incompletely,
neutralized by the effects of public prayers.

It will be
seen that the same table collates the longevity of clergy, lawyers, and medical
men. We are justified in considering the clergy to be a far more prayerful
class than either of the other two. It is their profession to pray, and they
have the practice of offering morning and evening family prayers in addition to
their private devotions, A reference to any of the numerous published
collections of family prayers will show that they are full of petitions for
temporal benefits. We do not, however, find that the clergy are in any way more
tong lived in consequence. It is true that the clergy, as a whole show a
life-value of 69.49, as against 68.14 for the lawyers, and 67.31 for the
medical men; but the easy country life and family repose of so many of the
clergy are obvious sanatory conditions in their favour This difference is
reversed when the comparison is made between distinguished members of the three
classes - that is to say, between persons of sufficient note to have had their
lives recorded in a biographical dictionary. When we examine this category, the
value of life among the clergy, lawyers, and medical men is as 66.42, 66.51,
and 67.07 respectively, the clergy being the shortest lived of the three. Hence
the prayers of the clergy for protection against the perils and dangers of the
night, for protection during the day, and for recovery from sickness, appear to
be futile in result.

In my work
on Hereditary Genius, and in the
chapter on “Divines,” I have worked out the subject with some
minuteness on other data, but with precisely the same result. I show that the
divines are not specially favoured in those worldly matters for which they
naturally pray, but rather the contrary, a fact which I ascribe in part to
their having, as a class, indifferent constitutional vigour. I give abundant
reason for all this, and do not care to repeat myself; but I should be glad if
such of the readers of this present paper who may be accustomed to statistics
would refer to the chapter I have mentioned. They will find it of use in
confirming what I say here. They will believe me the more when I say that I
have taken considerable pains to get at the truth in the questions raised in
this present memoir, and that when I was engaged upon them, I worked, so far as
my material went, with as much care as I gave to that chapter on “Divines”;
and lastly, they will understand that, when writing the chapter in question, I
had all this material by me unused, which justified me in speaking out as
decidedly as I did then.

A further
inquiry may be made into the duration of life among missionaries. We should lay
greater stress upon their mortality than upon that of the clergy, because the
laudable object of a missionary's career is rendered almost nugatory by his
early death. A man goes, say to a tropical climate, in the prime of manhood,
who has the probability of many years of useful life before him, had he
remained at home. He has the certainty of being able to accomplish sterling
good as a missionary, if he should live long enough to learn the language and
habits of the country. In the interval he is almost useless. Yet the painful
experience of many years shows only too clearly that the missionary is not
supernaturally endowed with health. He does not live longer than other people.
One missionary after another dies shortly after his arrival. The work that lay
almost within the grasp of each of them lingers incompleted.

It must
here be repeated, that comparative immunity from disease compels the suspension
of no purely material law, if such an expression be permitted. Tropical fever,
for example, is due to many subtle causes which are partly under man's control.
A single hour's exposure to sun, or wet, or fatigue, or mental agitation, will
determine an attack. Now even if God acted only on the minds of the missionaries
his action might be as much to the advantage of their health as if he wrought a
physical miracle. He could disincline them to take those courses which might
result in mischance, such as the forced march, the wetting, the abstinence from
food, or the night exposure, any one of which was competent to develop the
fever that struck them down. We must not dwell upon the circumstances of
individual cases, and say “this was a providential escape,” or “that
was a salutary chastisement,” but we must take the broad averages of
mortality, and, when we do so, we find that the missionaries do not form a
favoured class.

The
efficacy of prayer may yet further be tested by inquiry into the proportion of
deaths at the time of birth among the children of the praying and the
non-praying classes. The solicitude of parents is so powerfully directed
towards the safety of their expected offspring as to leave no room to doubt
that pious parents pray fervently for it, especially as death before baptism is
considered a most serious evil by many Christians. However, the distribution of
still-births appears wholly unaffected by piety. The proportion, for instance,
of the still-births published in the Record
newspaper and in the Times was
found by me, on an examination of a particular period, to bear an identical
relation to the total number of deaths. This inquiry might easily be pursued by
those who consider that more ample evidence was required.

When we
pray in our Liturgy “that the Nobility may be endued with grace, wisdom
and understanding,” we pray for that which is clearly incompatible with
insanity. Does that frightful scourge spare our nobility? Does it spare very
religious people more than others? The answer is an emphatic negative to both
of these questions, The nobility, probably from their want of the wholesome
restraints felt in humbler walks of life, and from their intermarriages, and
the very religious people of all denominations, probably from their meditations
on hell, are peculiarly subject to it. Religious madness is very common indeed.

As I have
already hinted, I do not propose any special inquiry whether the general laws
of physical nature are ever suspended in fulfilment of prayer: whether, for
instance, success has attended the occasional prayers in the Liturgy when they
have been used for rain, for fair weather, for the stilling of the sea in a
storm, or for the abatement of a pestilence. I abstain from doing so for two
reasons.

First, if
it is proved that God does not answer one large class of prayers at all, it
would be of less importance to pursue the inquiry. Secondly, the modern feeling
of this country is so opposed to a belief in the occasional suspension of the
general laws of nature, that an English reader would merely smile at such an
investigation.

If we are
satisfied that the actions of man are not influenced by prayer, even through
the subtle influences of his thoughts and will, the only probable form of
agency will have been disproved, and no one would care to advance a claim in
favour of direct physical interferences.

Biographies
do not show that devotional influences have clustered in any remarkable degree
round the youth of those who, whether by their talents or social position, have
left a mark upon our English history. Lord Campbell, in his preface to his Lives of the Chancellors, says, “There
is no office in the history of any nation that has been filled with such a long
succession of distinguished and interesting men as the office of Lord
Chancellor,” and that “generally speaking, the most eminent men, if
not the most virtuous, have been selected to adorn it.” His implied
disparagement of their piety is fully sustained by an examination of their
respective biographies, and by a taunt of Horace Walpole, quoted in the same
preface. An equal absence of remarkable devotional tendencies may be observed
in the lives of the leaders of great political parties. The founders of our
great families too often owed their advancement to tricky and time-serving
courtiership. The belief so frequently expressed in the Psalms, that the
descendants of the righteous shall continue, and that those of the wicked shall
surely fail, is not fulfilled in the history of our English peerage. Take for
instance the highest class, that of the Ducal houses. The influence of social
position in this country is so enormous that the possession of a dukedom is a
power that can hardly be understood without some sort of calculation. There
are, I believe, only twenty-seven dukes to about eight millions of adult male
Englishmen, or about three dukes to each million, yet the cabinet of fourteen
ministers which governs this country, and India too, commonly contains one
duke, often two, and in recent times three. The political privilege inherited
with a dukedom in this country is at the lowest estimate many thousand-fold
above the average birth-right of Englishmen. What was the origin of these ducal
families whose influence on the destiny of England and her dependencies is so
enormous? Were their founders the eminently devout children of eminently pious
parents? Have they and their ancestors been distinguished among the praying
classes? Not so. I give in a footnote*
a list of their names, which recalls many a deed of patriotism, valour, and
skill, many an instance of eminent merit of the worldly sort, which we
Englishmen honour six days out of the seven - many scandals, many a disgrace,
but not, on the other hand, a single instance known to me of eminently
prayerful qualities. Four at least of the existing ducal houses are unable to
claim the title of having been raised into existence through the devout habits
of their progenitors, because the families of Buccleuch, Grafton, St. Albans,
and Richmond were thus highly ennobled solely on the ground of their being
descended from Charles II and four of his mistresses, namely, Lucy Walters,
Barbara Villiers, Nell Gwynne, and Louise de Querouaille. The dukedom of Cleveland may almost be
reckoned as a fifth instance.

The civil
liberty we enjoy in England,
and the energy of our race, have given rise to a number of institutions,
societies, commercial adventures, political meetings, and combinations of all
sorts. Some of these are exclusively clerical, some lay, and others mixed. It
is impossible for a person to have taken an active share in social life without
having had abundant means of estimating for himself, and of hearing the opinion
of others, on the value of a preponderating clerical element in business
committees. For my own part, I never heard a favourable one. The procedure of
Convocation, which, like all exclusively clerical meetings, is opened with
prayer, has not inspired the outer world with much respect. The histories of
the great councils of the Church are most painful to read. There is reason to
expect that devout and superstitious men should be unreasonable; for a person
who believes his thoughts to be inspired, necessarily accredits his prejudices
with divine authority. He is therefore little accessible to argument, and he is
intolerant of those whose opinions differ from his, especially on first
principles. Consequently he is a bad coadjutor in business matters. It is a
common weekday opinion of the world that praying people are not practical.

Again,
there is a large class of instances where an enterprise on behalf of pious
people is executed by the agency of the profane. Do such enterprises prosper
beyond the average? For instance, a vessel on a missionary errand is navigated
by ordinary seamen. A fleet, followed by the prayers of the English nation,
carries reinforcements to quell an Indian mutiny. We do not care to ask whether
the result of these prayers is to obtain favourable winds, but simply whether
they ensue in a propitious voyage, whatever may be the agencies by which that
result was obtained. The success of voyages might be due to many other agencies
than the suspension of the physical laws that control the winds and currents;
just as we showed that a rapid recovery from illness might be due to other
causes than direct interference with cosmic order. It might have been put into
the captain's heart to navigate in that course and to perform those acts of
seamanship which proved links in a chain that led to eventual success. A very
small matter would suffice to make a great difference in the end. A vessel
navigated by a man who was a good forecaster of weather and an accomplished
hydrographer would considerably outstrip another that was deficient in so
accomplished a commander, but otherwise similarly equipped. The perfectly
instructed navigator would deviate from the most direct course by perhaps some
mere trifle, first here, then there, in order to bring his vessel within
favouring slants of wind and advantageous currents. A ship commanded by a
captain and steered by a sailor whose hearts were miraculously acted upon in
answer to prayer would unconsciously, as by instinct, or even as it were by
mistake, perform these deviations from routine, which would lead to ultimate
success.

The
missionaries who are the most earnestly prayed for are usually those who sail
on routes where there is little traffic, and therefore where there is more
opportunity for the effects of secret providential overruling to display
themselves than among those who sail in ordinary sea voyages. In the usual sea
routes a great deal is known of the peculiarities of the seasons and currents,
and of the whereabouts of hidden dangers of all kinds; their average risk is
small, and the insurance is low. But when vessels are bound to ports like those
sought by the missionaries the case is different. The risk that attends their
voyages is largely increased, and the insurance is proportionately raised. But
is the risk equally increased in respect to missionary vessels and to those of
traders and slave-dealers? The comparison between the fortune that attends
prayerful and non-prayerful people may here be most happily made. The
missionaries are eminently among the former category, and the slave-dealers and
traders we speak of in the other. Traders in the unhealthy and barbarous
regions to which we refer are notoriously the most godless and reckless (on the
broad average) of any of their set. We have, unfortunately, little knowledge of
the sea risks of slavers, because the rates of their insurance involve the risk
of capture. There is, however, a universal testimony, in the parliamentary
reports on slavery, to the excellent and skilful manner in which these vessels
are sailed and navigated, which is a prima
facie reason for believing their sea risks to be small. As to the relative
risks run by ordinary traders and missionary vessels, the insurance offices
absolutely ignore the slightest difference between them. They look to the class
of the vessel, and to the station to which she is bound, and to nothing else.
The notion that a missionary or other pious enterprise carries any immunity
from danger has never been entertained by insurance companies.

To proceed
with our inquiry, whether enterprises on behalf of pious people succeed better
than others when they are entrusted to profane hands, we may ask - Is a bank or
other commercial undertaking more secure when devout men are among its
shareholders - or when the funds of pious people, or charities, or of religious
bodies are deposited in its keeping, or when its proceedings are opened with
prayer, as was the case with the disastrous Royal British Bank? It is
impossible to say yes. There are far too many sad experiences of the contrary.

If
prayerful habits had influence on temporal success, it is very probable, as we
must again repeat, that insurance offices, of at least some descriptions, would
long ago have discovered and made allowance for it. It would be most unwise,
from a business point of view, to allow the devout, supposing their greater
longevity even probable, to obtain annuities at the same low rates as the
profane. Before insurance offices accept a life, they make confidential
inquiries into the antecedents of the applicant. But such a question has never
been heard of as, “Does he habitually use family prayers and private
devotions?” Insurance offices, so wakeful to sanatory influences,
absolutely ignore prayer as one of them. The same is true for insurances of all
descriptions, as those connected with fire, ships, lightning, hail, accidental
death and cattle sickness. How is it possible to explain why Quakers, who are
most devout and most shrewd men of business, have ignored these considerations,
except on the ground that they do not really believe in what they and others
freely assert about the efficacy of prayer? It was at one time considered an
act of mistrust in an over-ruling Providence
to put lightning conductors on churches; for it was said that God would surely
take care of his own. But Arago's collection of the accidents from lightning
showed they were sorely needed; and now lightning conductors are universal.
Other kinds of accidents befall churches, equally with other buildings of the
same class; such as architectural flaws, resulting in great expenses for
repair, fires, earthquakes, and avalanches.

The cogency
of all these arguments is materially increased by the recollection that many
items of ancient faith have been successively abandoned by the Christian world
to the domain of recognized superstition. It is not two centuries ago, long
subsequent to the days of Shakespeare and other great names, that the sovereign
of this country was accustomed to lay hands on the sick for their recovery,
under the sanction of a regular Church service, which was not omitted from our
prayer-books till the time of George II. Witches were unanimously believed in,
and were regularly exorcised, and punished by law, up to the beginning of the
last century. Ordeals and duels, most reasonable solutions of complicated
difficulties according to the popular theory of religion, were found absolutely
fallacious in practice. The miraculous power of relics and images, still so
general in Southern Europe, is scouted in England. The
importance ascribed to dreams, the barely extinct claims of astrology, and
auguries of good or evil luck, and many other well-known products of
superstition which are found to exist in every country, have ceased to be
believed in by us. This is the natural course of events, just as the Waters of
Jealousy and the Urim and Thummin of the Mosaic law had become obsolete in the
times of the later Jewish kings. The civilized world has already yielded an
enormous amount of honest conviction to the inexorable requirements of solid
fact; and it seems to me clear that all belief in the efficacy of prayer, in
the sense in which I have been considering it, must be yielded also. The evidence
I have been able to collect bears wholly and solely in that direction, and in
the face of it the onus probandi lies
henceforth on the other side.

Nothing
that I have said negatives the fact that the mind may be relieved by the
utterance of prayer. The impulse to pour out the feelings in sound is not
peculiar to Man. Any mother that has lost her young, and wanders about moaning
and looking piteously for sympathy, possesses much of that which prompts men to
pray in articulate words. There is a yearning of the heart, a craving for help,
it knows not where, certainly from no source that it sees. Of a similar kind is
the bitter cry of the hare, when the greyhound is almost upon her; she abandons
hope through her own efforts, and screams- but to whom? It is a voice
convulsively sent out into space, whose utterance is a physical relief. These
feelings of distress and of terror are simple, and an inarticulate cry suffices
to give vent to them; but the reason why Man is not satisfied by uttering
inarticulate cries (though sometimes they are felt to be the most appropriate)
is owing to his superior intellectual powers. His memory travels back through
interlacing paths, and dwells on various connected incidents; his emotions are
complex, and he prays at length.

Neither
does anything I have said profess to throw light on the question of how far it
is possible for Man to commune in his heart with God. We know that many persons
of high intellectual gifts and critical minds look upon it as an axiomatic
certainty that they possess this power, although it is impossible for them to
establish any satisfactory criterion to distinguish between what may really be
borne in upon them from without and what arises from within, but which, through
a sham of the imagination, appears to be external. A confident sense of
communion with God must necessarily rejoice and strengthen the heart, and
divert it from petty cares; and it is equally certain that similar benefits are
not excluded from those who on conscientious grounds are sceptical as to the
reality of a power of communion. These can dwell on the undoubted fact, that
there exists a solidarity between themselves and what surrounds them, through
the endless reactions of physical laws, among which the hereditary influences
are to be included. They know that they are descended from an endless past,
that they have a brotherhood with all that is, and have each his own share of
responsibility in the parentage of an endless future. The effort to familiarize
the imagination with this great idea has much in common with the effort of
communing with a God, and its reaction on the mind of the thinker is in many
important respects the same. It may not equally rejoice the heart, but it is
quite as powerful in ennobling the resolves, and it is found to give serenity
during the trials of life and in the shadow of approaching death.

[1] Ed.: the
page numbers have been corrected here.
The original has successive pages numbered xvi.

* Abercorn,
Argyll, Athole, Beaufort, Bedford, Buccleuch, Buckingham, Cleveland,
Devonshire, Grafton, Hamilton, Leeds, Leinster, Manchester, Marlborough,
Montrose, Newcastle, Norfolk, Northumberland, Portland, Richmond, Roxburghe,
Rutland, St. Albans, Somerset, Sutherland, Wellington.