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lid   Life and Letters of Francis Gallon

the cogency of intuition in these cases; then why should the theologians of to-day, if summoned on the grounds of observation or statistics to give up a belief which has far less claim to be considered an intuition, start with naive indignation, as at a previously unheard-of and most unreasonable interference'?

I do not think Galton propounded his thesis of the statistical inefficacy of prayer-as Clifford in other like matters stated he did-with the view of "drawing" The Spectator. He came to his topic naturally and unexpectedly. In his study of the `Divines' for his Hereditary Genius, he had been struck by "their wretched constitutions" (see our p. 101). To obtain a measure of this Galton investigated their age at death, and compared it with that of other classes. Using Chalmers's Biography and The Annual Register, Galton found

 

Artists

64-74

 

Men of Literature and Science

65.22

 

Clergy

66.42

Mean age at death.

Lawyers

66.51

   

Medical Men

67.07

   

Galton holds that the clergy are a far more `prayerful class' than lawyers or doctors, and yet, although the numerous published collections of family prayers are full of petitions for temporal benefits, and the prayers of the clergy are for protection against the perils and dangers of the night and of the day and for recovery from sickness, such prayers appear to be futile in result. The above statistics are for eminent men, and therefore may be supposed to be in the case of `Divines' for those of marked piety. Galton also cites Guy's data$ which provide the following figures:

 

Members of Royal Houses

64.04

 

Artists

65.96

 

Medical Men

67.31

 

Men of Literature and Science

67.55

Mean age at death.

Lawyers

68.14

 

Clergy

69-49

 

Gentry

70-22

 

The members of . the Royal Houses are the persons whose longevity is most widely and continuously prayed for, and they have the least average length of life ! But the mass of clergy-as distinct from eminent divineshave a longer life than the mass of lawyers or medical men. Galton attributes this to the easy country life, family repose, and sanitary conditions, but his critics might well have attributed the result to the greater prayerfulness of the lesser clergy. The greater length of life of the clergy as a whole is now a well-established actuarial fact, but probably to-day no one associates it with prayerfulness. Galton gives a good many illustrations of the want of efficacy in prayer, a: g. the relatively short lives of missionaries, the distribution of still-births as between clergy and laymen being wholly unaffected by


' Letter of Galton to The Spectator, 1872, August 24. In editorials and correspondence the discussion lasted from the issue of August 3 until that of September 7. ' Fortnightly (toe. cit.), p. 129.   ' Journal of R. Statiat. Society, Vol. xxu, p. 355.