CONTENTS - Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development - 7

[PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION]

[VARIETY OF HUMAN NATURE]

Many varieties may each be good of its kind; advantage of variety; some peculiarities are, however, harmful.

Large number of elements in the human expression; of touches in a portrait; difficulty of measuring the separate features; or of selecting typical individuals; the typical English face; its change at different historical periods; colour of hair of modern English; caricatures.

[ PORTRAITURE]

(See Appendix for three Memoirs describing successive stages of the method).--Object and principle of the process; description of the plate--composites of medals; of family portraits; of the two sexes and of various ages; of Royal Engineers; the latter gives a clue to one direction in which the English race might be improved; of criminals; of the consumptive; ethnological application of the process.

[BODILY QUALITIES]

Anthropometric Committee; statistical anomalies in stature as dependent on age; town and rural population; athletic feats now and formerly; increase of stature of middle classes; large number of weakly persons; some appearances of weakness may be fallacious; a barrel and a wheel; definition of word "eugenic."

[ENERGY]

It is the attribute of high races; useful stimuli to activity; fleas, etc.; the preservation of the weakly as exercises for pity; that of foxes for sport.

[SENSITIVITY]

Sensation and pain; range and grades of sensation; idiots; men and women; the blind; reading by touch; sailors; paucity of words to express gradation.

[SEQUENCE OF TEST WEIGHTS]

(See also Appendix, p. 248).--Geometric series of weights; method of using them; the same principle is applicable to other senses; the tests only measure the state of faculties at time of trial; cautions in constructing the test weights; multiplicity of the usual perceptions.

[WHISTLES FOR AUDIBILITY OF SHRILL NOTES]

(See also Appendix, p. 252).--Construction of them; loss of power of hearing high notes as age advances; trials upon animals; sensitivity of cats to high notes; of small dogs and ponies.

[ANTHROPOMETRIC REGISTERS]

Want of anthropometric laboratories; of family records; opportunities in schools; Admiralty records of life of each seaman; family registers (see also 220); autotypes; medical value of ancestral life-histories (see also 220); of their importance to human eugenics.

[UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF PECULIARIIES]

Colour blindness usually unsuspected; unconsciousness of high intellectual gifts; of peculiarities of mental imagery; heredity of colour blindness in Quakers; Young and Dalton.

[STATISTICAL METHODS]

Objects of statistical science; constancy and continuity of statistical results; groups and sub-groups; augival or ogival curves; wide application of the ogival; method; example; first method of comparing two ogival groups; centesimal grades; example; second method of comparing ogival groups; statistical records easily made with a pricker.

[CHARACTER]

Caprice and coyness of females; its cause; observations of character at schools; varieties of likings and antipathies; horror of snakes is by no means universal; the horror of blood among cattle is variable.

[CRIMINALS AND THE INSANE]

Peculiarities of criminal character; some of them are normal and not morbid; their inheritance as in the Jukes family; epileptics and their nervous instability; insanity; religious rapture; strange views of the insane on individuality; their moody segregation; the religious discipline of celibacy, fasting and solitude (see also 125); large field of study among the insane and idiotic.

[GREGARIOUS AND SLAVISH INSTINCTS]

Most men shrink from responsibility; study of gregarious animals: especially of the cattle of the Damaras; fore-oxen to waggon teams; conditions of safety of herds; cow and young calf when approached by lions; the most effective size of herd; corresponding production of leaders; similarly as regards barbarian tribes and their leaders; power of tyranny vested in chiefs; political and religious persecutions; hence human servility; but society may flourish without servility; its corporate actions would then have statistical constancy; nations who are guided by successive orators, etc., must be inconstant; the romantic side of servility; free political life.

[INTELLECTUAL DIFFERENCES]

Reference to Hereditary Genius.

[MENTAL IMAGERY]

Purport of inquiry; circular of questions (see Appendix for this); the first answers were from scientific men, and were negative; those from persons in general society were quite the reverse; sources of my materials; they are mutually corroborative. Analysis of returns from 100 persons mostly of some eminence; extracts from replies of those in whom the visualising faculty is highest; those in whom it is mediocre; lowest; conformity between these and other sets of haphazard returns; octile, median, etc., values; visualisation of colour; some liability to exaggeration; blindfold chess-players; remarkable instances of visualisation; the faculty is not necessarily connected with keen sight or tendency to dream; comprehensive imagery; the faculty in different sexes and ages; is strongly hereditary; seems notable among the French; Bushmen; Eskimo; prehistoric men; admits of being educated; imagery usually fails in flexibility; special and generic images (see also Appendix); use of the faculty.

[NUMBER-FORMS]

General account of the peculiarity; mutually corroborative statements; personal evidence given at the Anthropological Institute; specimens of a few descriptions and illustrative woodcuts; great variety in the Forms; their early origin; directions in which they run; bold conceptions of children concerning height and depth; historical dates, months, etc.; alphabet; derivation of the Forms from the spoken names of numerals; fixity of the Form compared to that of the handwriting; of animals working in constant patterns; of track of eye when searching for lost objects; occasional origin from figures on clock; from various other sources; the non-decimal nomenclature of numerals; perplexity caused by it. Description of figures in Plate I.; Plate II.; Plate III.; Plate IV. Colours assigned to numerals (see 105); personal characters; sex; frequency with which the various numerals are used in the Talmud.

[COLOUR ASSOCIATIONS]

(Description of Plate IV. continued) Associations with numerals; with words and letters; illustrations by Dr. J. Key; the scheme of one seer unintelligible to other seers; mental music, etc.

[VISIONARIES]

Sane persons often see visions; the simpler kinds of visions; unconsciousness of seers, at first, of their peculiarity; subsequent dislike to speak about it; imagery connected with words; that of Mrs. Haweis; automatic changes in dark field of eye; my own experiences; those of Rev. G. Henslow; visions frequently unlike vivid visualisations; phantasmagoria; hallucinations; simile of a seal in a pond; dreams and partial sensitiveness of brain; hallucinations and illusions, their causes; "faces in the fire," etc.; sub-conscious picture-drawing; visions based on patched recollections; on blended recollections; hereditary seership; visions caused by fasting, etc.; by spiritual discipline (see also 47); star of Napoleon I.; hallucinations of great men; seers commoner at some periods than at others; reasons why.

[NURTURE AND NATURE]

Their effects are difficult to separate; the same character has many phases; Renaissance; changes owing merely to love of change; feminine fashions; periodical sequences of changed character in birds; the interaction of nurture and nature.

[ASSOCIATIONS]

Derived from experience; especially from childish recollections (see 141); abstract ideas; cumulative ideas, like composite portraits (see also Appendix, "Generic Images," p. 229); their resemblance even in details.

[PSYCHOMETRIC EXPERIMENTS]

Difficulty of watching the mind in operation; how it may be overcome; irksomeness of the process; tentative experiments; method used subsequently; the number of recurrent associations; memory; ages at which associations are formed; similarity of the associations in persons of the same country and class of society; different descriptions of associations, classified; their relative frequency; abstract ideas are slowly formed; multifariousness of sub-conscious operations.

[ANTECHAMBER OF CONSCIOSNESS]

Act of thinking analysed; automatic mental work; fluency of words and of imagery; processes of literary composition; fluency of spiritual ideas; visionary races of men; morbid ideas of inspiration (see Enthusiasm).

[EARLY SENTIMENTS]

Accidents of education, religion, country, etc.; deaf-mutes and religious ritual; religion in its essentials; all religious teachers preach faith and instil prejudices; origin of the faculty of conscience; evolution is always behindhand; good men of various faiths; the fear of death; terror is easily taught; gregarious animals (see also 47); suspiciousness in the children of criminals; Dante and contemporary artists on the terrors of hell; aversion is easily taught, Eastern ideas of clean and unclean acts; the foregoing influences affect entire classes.

[HISTORY OF TWINS]

It supplies means of comparing the effects of nurture and nature; physiological signification of twinship; replies to a circular of inquiries; eighty cases of close resemblance between twins; the points in which their resemblance was closest; extracts from the replies; interchangeableness of likeness; cases of similar forms of insanity in both twins; their tastes and dispositions; causes of growing dissimilarity mainly referred to illness; partly to gradual development of latent elements of dissimilarity; effect of childish illnesses in permanently checking growth of head; parallel lives and deaths among twins; necessitarianism; twenty cases of great dissimilarity; extracts from the replies; evidence of slight exaggeration; education is almost powerless to diminish natural difference of character; simile of sticks floating down a brook; depth of impressions made in childhood; they are partly due to the ease with which parents and children understand one another; cuckoos forget the teachings of their foster-mothers.

[DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS]

Alternative hypotheses of the prehistoric process of domestication; savages rear captive animals; instances in North America; South America; North Africa; Equatorial Africa; South Africa; Australia; New Guinea Group; Polynesia; ancient Syria. Sacred animals; menageries and shows in amphitheatres; instances in ancient Egypt; Assyria; Rome; Mexico; Peru; Syria and Greece. Domestication is only possible when the species has certain natural faculties, viz.--great hardiness; fondness for man; desire of comfort; usefulness to man; fertility; being easy to tend. Habitual selection of the tamest to breed from. Exceptions; summary.

[THE OBSERVED ORDER OF EVENTS]

Steady improvement in the birthright of successive generations; our ignorance of the origin and purport of all existence; of the outcome of life on this earth; of the conditions of consciousness; slow progress of evolution and its system of ruthless routine; man is the heir of long bygone ages; has great power in expediting the course of evolution; he might render its progress less slow and painful; does not yet understand that it may be his part to do so.

[SELECTION AND RACE]

Difference between the best specimens of a poor race and the mediocre ones of a high race; typical centres to which races tend to revert; delicacy of highly-bred animals; their diminished fertility; the misery of rigorous selection; it is preferable to replace poor races by better ones; strains of emigrant blood; of exiles.

[INFLUENCE OF MAN UPON RACE]

Conquest, migrations, etc.; sentiment against extinguishing races; is partly unreasonable; the so-called "aborigines"; on the variety and number of different races inhabiting the same country; as in Spain; history of the Moors; Gypsies; the races in Damara Land; their recent changes; races in Siberia; Africa; America; West Indies; Australia and New Zealand; wide diffusion of Arabs and Chinese; power of man to shape future humanity.

[POPULATION]

Over-population; Malthus--the danger of applying his prudential check; his originality; his phrase of misery check is in many cases too severe; decaying races and the cause of decay.

[EARLY AND LATE MARRIAGES]

Estimate of their relative effects on a population in a few generations; example.

[MARKS FOR FAMILY MERIT]

On the demand for definite proposals how to improve race; the demand is not quite fair, and the reasons why; nevertheless attempt is made to suggest the outline of one; on the signs of superior race; importance of giving weight to them when making selections from candidates who are personally equal; on families that have thriven; that are healthy and long-lived; present rarity of our knowledge concerning family antecedents; Mr. F.M. Hollond on the superior morality of members of large families; Sir William Gull on their superior vigour; claim for importance of further inquiries into the family antecedents of those who succeed in after life; probable large effect of any system by which marks might be conferred on the ground of family merit.

[ENDOWMENTS]

These have frequently been made in order to furnish marriage portions; they, as well as the adoption of gifted children of gifted families, may hereafter become common; college statutes enjoining celibacy on Fellows; reverse effect to that for which prizes at races were established; the recent reform of those statutes and numerous marriages in consequence; the English race has yet to be explored for its natural wealth; those who are naturally gifted would be disinclined to squander their patrimony; social consideration; honest pride in goodness of race.

[CONCLUSION]

Epitome of data; the apparent place of man in nature; he should look upon himself as a freeman; he should assist in furthering evolution; his present ability to do so; the certainty that his ability of doing so will increase; importance of life-histories; brief summary.