Early Anthropological Researches 87
from Frank Buckland, to whom, I think, Galton must have sent an advanced copy of his paper, for Buckland says that he cannot thank Galton sufficiently for the copy of Macmillan's Magazine.
"Your theory is most excellent, and I shall endeavour to collect facts for you with a view to its elucidation."
And some facts Buckland does give, especially with regard to his experience of soldiers, but they are scarcely scientific observations. One point may be noted, because it carries us back into the age in which Galton was working.
"I have heard," Buckland writes, "that when a fine-looking Englishman travels in the Southern States the slave-owners offer him the best-looking girls, as a cross between a tall strong Englishman and a fine made Black girl produces a good useful slave worth money."
"
The son of the Dean makes no comment, however, on the originality and heterodoxy of Galton's standpoint ; it is probable that he had not yet seen the second half of the paper'. While Galton always dated his letters fully, Darwin rarely, if ever, did and it has taken a good deal of consideration and labour to place these letters in approximate order. I cannot, however, find out that Galton sent a copy of this paper to Darwin, although he sent most of his publications. It would, indeed, be of interest to have seen Darwin's comments upon it, if he made any. What Galton himself wrote in 1908 is indeed the best general comment
"I published my views as long ago as 1865, in two articles written in Macmillan's Magazine while preparing materials for my book, Hereditary Genius. But I did not then realise, as now, the powerful influence of Small Causes upon statistical results,. I was too much disposed to
think of marriage under some regulation, and not enough of the effects of self-interest and of social and religious sentiment. Popular feeling was not then ripe to accept even the elementary truths of hereditary talent and character, upon which the possibility of Race Improvement depends. Still less was it prepared to consider dispassionately any proposals for practical action. So I laid the subject wholly to one side for many years. Now I see my way better, and
an appreciative audience is at last to be had, though it be small'."
Galton laid it aside as propaganda, but as I have said it is the key to nearly the whole of his work for twenty years.
B. HEREDITARY GENIUS, 1869 (SEcoND EDN. 1892)
We now turn -to the first step Galton took in the scientific demonstration of his creed-the study of the heredity of the mental and moral characters as a basis for Race Improvement. It was the first of four fundamental treatises in whole or great part devoted to the inheritance of the mental aptitudes in man. The other three are : English Men of Science, their Nature and Nurture, 1874; Human Faculty, 1883 and Natural inheritance, 1889,-and round these four greater works a whole swarm of memoirs and minor researches group themselves like flotillas of destroyers about a battle-fleet. A bid
' Of some interest for the history of journalism is Buckland's statement that "in order to give the public numerous facts connected with Natural History I propose to start a new paper of my own to be called The Land and the Water."
s Memories, p. 310.
