OCR Rendition - approximate

86 EUGENICS is a safe guide to speculations on the theoretical possibility of establishing improved breeds of the human race. It is not intended to enter here into such speculations, but to emphasise the undoubted fact that members of gifted families are, on the whole, appreciably more likely than the generality of their countrymen to produce gifted offspring. No extensive collection exists of the biographies of Gifted Families, as distinguished from biographies of Individuals ; we are therefore without means of obtaining an idea of the distribution of ability in our very mixed race, incomparably more mixed than that of any domestic animal, where some conscious selection is always at work. We cannot tell, a priori, how far ability is sporadic at the present time, and how far it clusters in families. As a first attempt to supply the deficiency, both as to matter and form, I submit the present paper,,the result of inquiries made through a circular letter to all Fellows of the Royal Society as to the "noteworthy" achievements of their near relatives. The standard of " noteworthiness was defined as achievement in any occupation which was judged by the writer to be at least equal in dignity, among the fellows of the relative, to that of F.R.S. among men of science. It was the best standard I could think of ; no one has as yet suggested a better, and notwithstanding its obvious faults it has served well. About half of the 454 fellows, or thereabouts, replied to my circular. Many of the replies were extremely interesting, while not a few were very jejune ; still, I have collected enough material to be serviceable in many ways. I wrote a brief statistical article upon those I had received up to a certain date, in Nature on August ii. Evidence was there given that ability, as measured by achievement, tended in a marked degree to be a family characteristic. Besides the families so distinguished, there were others reputed to have a high level of ability, whose members had nevertheless failed to achieve anything note worthy; again, there were others in whom the ability was, in the language of horticulturists, a " sport " ; it was shared by none of the collaterals or ancestry, but, presumably like all sports, may be highly capable of producing its like in descent. The difficulty of estimating the ability of women, who have few opportunities of displaying it in a measurable way, was partly met by asking for the achievements of the brothers of the females, which are comparable on equal terms with those of the brothers of males. Having collected and discussed my material, the question arose how best to present the results so as to bring out the fact that ability, as measured by achievement, is really clustered to a remarkable degree in certain families. Something more vivid was required than statistical figures ; something in the nature of those Family Biographies above mentioned. It was, however, difficult to give them, because, although no stipulation whatever was made in the circular letter of inquiry that the replies should be treated as private documents, I found that a feeling existed that such restriction was. implied. I could not disregard this view without risking the accusation of breach of trust. At length I thought of the course that has been adopted here. It is to take the replies as guides only, and rarely to quote from them, restricting the mention of achievements to those that have already been published ; to extract the account of them, as a general rule, from publications where they appeared, and to give references as far as seemed reasonably desirable. The publications might be official or only local, but, as a matter of convenience, the references are in almost all cases either to the "Dictionary of National Biography " for deceased persons, and to the "Encyclopaedia Britannica " or to " Who's Who " of 19oq_ for living ones. A biography in either of the first two is in itself a mark of distinction ; it is so, but in a much less degree, in " Who's Who." They all have the merit of giving detailed accounts of the achievements of the person in question, while the " Dict. N. Biog." gives full references to the memoirs and other sources whence the information in each article was derived. The present paper is styled an " Index," because it falls far short of being a collection of biographies, and contains no account of failures. On the other hand, it does more than indicate families deserving of minute study, for it gives a fair idea of the quality of ability that dominates in each. This would be sufficient, if, the collection were largely added to, to enable families to be sorted into different groups, according to A EUGENIC INVESTIGATION 87 CIibPDF - www.fastio.com