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Psychological Investigations   261

subjective but objective." We cannot assert that our own instinctive convictions alone are to be trusted, we are forced to grant no less trustworthiness to the convictions and fancies of others. All such convictions should be tested, whenever possible, by appeal to facts which admit of repetition, for experience shows that only observations of such facts lead to results which can be universally acknowledged. Galton insists on the duty of suspending our belief and maintaining the freedom of our mental attitude whenever there is strong reason to doubt (p. 298). The section on Enthusiasm closes with a fine paragraph, which indicates how far astray the critics went, when they labelled Galton a materialist


"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 distorted mirage of the 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 service, 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." (p. 298.)

It was a great revolution in thought that Galton was proposing and probably few grasped its extent in 1883. He had in mind a new religion, a religion which should not depend on revelation, physical to a few selected men, or psychical to a few individuals. Man was to study the purpose of the universe in its past evolution, and by working to the same end, he was to make its progress less slow and less painful in the future. Darwin had taught evolution as a scientific doctrine; Galton proposed that this new knowledge should be applied to racial and social problems, and that understanding of, sympathy with, and aid in the progress of the general evolution of living forms should be accepted as religious duties. 'If the purpose of the Deity be manifested in the development of the universe, then' the aim of man should be, with such limited powers as he may at present possess, to facilitate the divine purpose. Before Darwin, living forms, indeed the world itself, had no history; there was held to be no serious ethnological difference between the first man and modern civilised man; the reptile and the mammal were coeval. Darwin for the first time gave a real history to living forms, and Galton following him said : Study that history, study the Bible of Life, and you will find your religion in it, and a new and higher morality as well. Thereby he raised Darwinism on to a higher, a spiritual plane. Thus it comes about that the last 40 pages of Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty contain some of the finest passages he ever wrote, for they are devoted to his philosophical or rather religious views, and to their Darwinian basis. Galton saw in his doctrine a new moral freedom for man and a new religion based on scientific knowledge. His theological critics found it pure materialism,.a fresh war against Heaven. Who shall determine which party was in the right? These