Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) Part 1

Noteworthy Families (Modern Science).

by Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The brief biographical notices of sixty-six noteworthy families printed in this book are compiled from replies to a circular issued by me in the spring of 1904 to all living Fellows of the Royal Society. Those that first arrived were discussed in "Nature," August 11, 1904.

On Mr. Schuster's appointment by the University of London, in October, 1904, to the Research Fellows.h.i.+p in National Eugenics, all my materials were placed in his hand. He was to select from them those families that contained at least three noteworthy kinsmen, to compile lists of their achievements on the model of the above-mentioned memoir, to verify statements as far as possible, and to send what he wrote for final approval by the authors of the several replies.

This was done by Mr. Schuster. The results were then submitted by him as an appendix to his Report to the Senate last summer.

After preliminary arrangements, it was determined by the Senate that the list of Noteworthy Families should be published according to the t.i.tle-page of this book, I having agreed to contribute the preface, Mr. Schuster's time being fully occupied with work in another branch of Eugenics.

So the list of "Noteworthy Families" in this volume is entirely the work of Mr. Schuster, except in respect to some slight alterations and additions for which I am responsible, as well as for all the rest.

FRANCIS GALTON.

PREFACE

CHAPTER I.--GENERAL REMARKS.

This volume is the first instalment of a work that admits of wide extension. Its object is to serve as an index to the achievements of those families which, having been exceptionally productive of noteworthy persons, seem especially suitable for biographical investigation.

The facts that are given here are avowedly bald and imperfect; nevertheless, they lead to certain important conclusions. They show, for example, that a considerable proportion of the noteworthy members in a population spring from comparatively few families.

The material upon which this book is based is mainly derived from the answers made to a circular sent to all the Fellows of the Royal Society whose names appear in its Year Book for 1904.

The questions were not unreasonably numerous, nor were they inquisitorial; nevertheless, it proved that not one-half of those who were addressed cared to answer them. It was, of course, desirable to know a great deal more than could have been asked for or published with propriety, such as the p.r.o.neness of particular families to grave const.i.tutional disease. Indeed, the secret history of a family is quite as important in its eugenic aspect as its public history; but one cannot expect persons to freely unlock their dark closets and drag forth family skeletons into the light of day. It was necessary in such a work as this to submit to considerable limitations, while turning to the fullest account whatever could be stated openly without giving the smallest offence to any of the persons concerned.

One limitation against which I still chafe in vain is the impracticability of ascertaining so apparently simple a matter as the number of kinsfolk of each person in each specific degree of near kins.h.i.+p, without troublesome solicitations. It was specially asked for in the circular, but by no means generally answered, even by those who replied freely to other questions. The reason must in some cases have been mere oversight or pure inertia, but to a large extent it was due to ignorance, for I was astonished to find many to whom the number of even their near kinsfolk was avowedly unknown.

Emigration, foreign service, feuds between near connections, differences of social position, faintness of family interest, each produced their several effects, with the result, as I have reason to believe, that hardly one-half of the persons addressed were able, without first making inquiry of others, to reckon the number of their uncles, adult nephews, and first cousins. The isolation of some few from even their nearest relatives was occasionally so complete that the number of their brothers was unknown. It will be seen that this deficiency of information admits of being supplied indirectly, to a considerable degree.

The collection of even the comparatively small amount of material now in hand proved much more troublesome than was antic.i.p.ated, but as the object and limitations of inquiries like this become generally understood, and as experience acc.u.mulates, the difficulty of similar work in the future will presumably lessen.

CHAPTER II.--NOTEWORTHINESS.

The Fellows.h.i.+p of the Royal Society is a distinction highly appreciated by all members of the scientific world. Fifteen men are annually selected by its council out of some sixty candidates, each candidate being proposed by six, and usually by more, Fellows in a certificate containing his qualifications. The candidates themselves are representatives of a mult.i.tude of persons to whom the t.i.tle would be not only an honour but a material advantage. The addition of the letters "F.R.S." to the names of applicants to any post, however remotely connected with science, is a valuable testimonial and a recognised aid towards success, so the number of those who desire it is very large. Experience shows that no special education, other than self-instruction, is really required to attain this honour. Access to laboratories, good tuition, and so forth, are doubtless helpful, so far that many have obtained the distinction through such aid who could not otherwise have done so, but they are far from being all-important factors of success. The facts that lie patent before the eyes of every medical man, engineer, and the members of most professions, afford ample material for researches that would command the attention of the scientific world if viewed with intelligence and combined by a capable mind.

It is so difficult to compare the number of those who might have succeeded with the number of those who do, that the following ill.u.s.tration may perhaps be useful: By adding to the 53 registration counties in England, the 12 in Wales, the 33 in Scotland and the 32 in Ireland, an aggregate of 130 is obtained. The English counties, and the others in a lesser degree, have to be ransacked in order to supply the fifteen annually-elected Fellows; so it requires more than eight of these counties to yield an annual supply of a single Fellow to the Royal Society.

It is therefore contended that the Fellows of the Royal Society have sufficient status to be reckoned "noteworthy," and, such being the case, they are a very convenient body for inquiries like these. They are trained to, and have sympathy with, scientific investigations; biographical notices are published of them during their lifetime, notably in the convenient compendium "Who's Who," to which there will be frequent occasion to refer; and they are more or less known to one another, either directly or through friends, making it comparatively easy to satisfy the occasional doubts which may arise from their communications. It was easier and statistically safer to limit the inquiry to those Fellows who were living when the circulars were issued--that is, to those whose names and addresses appear in the "Royal Society's Year Book" of 1904. Some of them have since died, full of honours, having done their duty to their generation; others have since been elected; so the restriction given here to the term "Modern Science" must be kept in mind.

Another and a strong motive for selecting the F.R.S. as subjects of inquiry was that so long ago as 1863-1864 I had investigated the antecedents of 180 of those who were then living, who were further distinguished by one or other of certain specified and recognised honours. My conclusions were briefly described in a Friday evening lecture, February 27, 1864, before the Royal Inst.i.tution. These, together with the data on which they were founded, were published in the same year in my book "English Men of Science." Readers who desire fuller information as to the antecedents conducive to success that are too briefly described further on should refer to the above book.

The epithet "noteworthy" is applied to achievements in all branches of effort that rank among the members of any profession or calling as equal, at least, to that which an F.R.S. holds among scientific men.

This affords a convenient and sufficiently definite standard of merit. I could think of none more appropriate when addressing scientific men, and it seems to have been generally understood in the desired sense. It includes more than a half of those whose names appear in the modern editions of "Who's Who," which are become less discriminate than the earlier ones. "Noteworthiness" is ascribed, without exception, to all whose names appear in the "Dictionary of National Biography," but all of these were dead before the date of the publication of that work and its supplement. Noteworthiness is also ascribed to those whose biographies appear in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (which includes many who are now alive), and, in other works, of equivalent authority. As those persons were considered by editors of the last named publications to be worthy of note, I have accepted them, on their authority, as noteworthy.

CHAPTER III.--HIGHEST ORDER OF ABILITY.

No attempt is made in this book to deal with the transmission of ability of the very highest order, as the data in hand do not furnish the required material, nor will the conclusions be re-examined at length that I published many years ago in "Hereditary Genius." Still, some explanation is desirable to show the complexity of the conditions that are concerned with the hereditary transmission of the highest ability, which, for the moment, will be considered as the same thing as the highest fame.

It has often been remarked that the men who have attained pinnacles of celebrity failed to leave worthy successors, if any. Many concurrent causes aid in producing this result. An obvious one is that such persons are apt to be so immersed in their pursuit, and so wedded to it, that they do not care to be distracted by a wife.

Another is the probable connection between severe mental strain and fertility. Women who study hard have, as a cla.s.s--at least, according to observant caricaturists--fewer of the more obvious feminine characteristics; but whether this should be considered a cause or a consequence, or both, it is difficult to say. A third, and I think the most important, reason why the children of very distinguished persons fall sometimes lamentably short of their parents in ability is that the highest order of mind results from a fortunate mixture of incongruous const.i.tuents, and not of such as naturally harmonize.

Those const.i.tuents are _negatively_ correlated, and therefore the compound is unstable in heredity. This is eminently the case in the typical artistic temperament, which certainly harmonizes with Bohemianism and pa.s.sion, and is opposed to the useful qualities of regularity, foresight, and level common sense. Where these and certain other incongruous faculties go together in well-adjusted proportions, they are capable of achieving the highest success; but their heritage is most unlikely to be transmitted in its entirety, and ill-balanced compounds of the same const.i.tuents are usually of little avail, and sometimes extraordinarily bad. A fourth reason is that the highest imaginative power is dangerously near lunacy. If one of the sanest of poets, Wordsworth, had, as he said, not unfrequently to exert strength, as by shaking a gate-post, to gain a.s.surance that the world around him was a reality, his mind could not at those times have been wholly sane. Sanity is difficult to define, except negatively; but, even though we may be convinced of the truths of the mystic, that nothing is what it seems to be, the above-mentioned conduct suggests temporary insanity. It is sufficient to conclude, as any Philistine would, that whoever has to shake a gate-post to convince himself that it is not a vision is dangerously near madness. Mad people do such things; those who carry on the work of the world as useful and law-abiding citizens do not. I may add that I myself had the privilege of hearing at first hand the narrator's own account of this incident, which was much emphasized by his gestures and tones. Wordsworth's unexpected sally was in reply to a timid question by the late Professor Bonamy Price, then a young man, concerning the exact meaning of the lines in his famous "Ode to Immortality," "not for these I raise the song of praise; but for those obstinate _questionings of sense and outward things_," etc.

I cannot speak from the present returns, but only from my own private knowledge of the somewhat abnormal frequency with which eccentricity, or other mental unsoundness, occurs in the families of very able scientific men. Lombroso, as is well known, strongly a.s.serted the truth of this fact, but more strongly, as it seems to myself, than the evidence warrants.

It is, therefore, not in the highest examples of human genius that heredity can be most profitably studied, men of high, but not of the highest, ability being more suitable. The only objection to their use is that their names are, for the most part, unfamiliar to the public.

The vastness of the social world is very imperfectly grasped by its several members, the large majority of the numerous persons who have been eminent above their far more numerous fellows, each in his own special department, being unknown to the generality. The merits of such men can be justly appreciated only by reference to records of their achievements. Let no reader be so conceited as to believe his present ignorance of a particular person to be a proof that the person in question does not merit the t.i.tle of noteworthy.

I said what I have to say about the modern use of the word "genius"

in the preface to the second edition of my "Hereditary Genius." It has only latterly lost its old and usual meaning, which is preserved in the term of an "ingenious" artisan, and has come to be applied to something akin to inspiration. This simply means, as I suppose, though some may think differently, that the powers of unconscious work possessed by the brain are abnormally developed in them. The heredity of these powers has not, I believe, been as yet especially studied. It is strange that more attention has not been given until recently to unconscious brain-work, because it is by far the most potent factor in mental operations. Few people, when in rapid conversation, have the slightest idea of the particular form which a sentence will a.s.sume into which they have hurriedly plunged, yet through the guidance of unconscious cerebration it develops itself grammatically and harmoniously. I write on good authority in a.s.serting that the best speaking and writing is that which seems to flow automatically shaped out of a full mind.

CHAPTER IV.--PROPORTION OF NOTEWORTHIES TO THE GENERALITY.

The materials on which the subject of this chapter depends are too various to lead to a single definite and trustworthy answer. Men who have won their way to the front out of uncongenial environments owe their success princ.i.p.ally, I believe, to their untiring energy, and to an exceptionally strong inclination in youth towards the pursuits in which they afterwards distinguished themselves. They do not seem often to be characterized by an ability that continues pre-eminent on a wider stage, because after they have fully won a position for themselves, and become engaged in work along with others who had no early difficulties to contend with, they do not, as a rule, show greatly higher natural ability than their colleagues. This is noticeable in committees and in other a.s.semblies or societies where intellects are pitted against one another. The bulk of existing noteworthies seem to have had but little more than a fair education as small boys, during which their eagerness and apt.i.tude for study led to their receiving favour and facilities. If, in such cases, the apt.i.tudes are scholastic, a moderate sum suffices to give the boy a better education, enabling him to win scholars.h.i.+ps and to enter a University. If they lie in other directions, the boy attracts notice from some more congenial source, and is helped onwards in life by other means. The demand for exceptional ability, when combined with energy and good character, is so great that a lad who is gifted with them is hardly more likely to remain overlooked than a bird's nest in the playground of a school. But, by whatever means noteworthiness is achieved, it is usually after a course of repeated and half-unconscious testings of intelligence, energy, and character, which build up repute brick by brick.

If we compare the number of those who achieved noteworthiness through their own exertions with the numbers of the greatly more numerous persons whose names are registered in legal, clerical, medical, official, military, and naval directories, or in those of the t.i.tled cla.s.ses[A] and landed gentry, or lastly, of those of the immense commercial world, the proportion of one noteworthy person to one hundred of the generality who were equally well circ.u.mstanced as himself does not seem to be an over-estimate.

[A] By a rough count of the entries in Burke's "Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage," I find that upwards of 24,000 ladies are of sufficient rank to be included by name in his Table of Precedence.

CHAPTER V.--NOTEWORTHINESS AS A MEASURE OF ABILITY.

Success is the joint result of the natural powers of mind and body, and of favourable circ.u.mstances. Those of the latter which fall into definite groups will be distinguished as "environment," while the others, which evade cla.s.sification, will be called "accidental."