When shall we have anthropometric laboratories, where a man may, when he pleases, get himself and his children weighed, measured, and rightly photographed, and have their bodily faculties tested by the best methods known to modern science? The records of growth of numerous persons from childhood to age are required before it can be possible to rightly appraise the effect of external conditions upon development, and records of this kind are at present non-existent. The various measurements should be accompanied by photographic studies of the features in full face and in profile, and on the same scale, for convenience of comparison.
We are all lazy in recording facts bearing on ourselves, but parents are glad enough to do so in respect to their children, and they would probably be inclined to avail themselves of a laboratory where all that is required could be done easily and at small cost. These domestic records would hereafter become of considerable biographical interest. Every one of us in his mature age would be glad of a series of pictures of himself from childhood onwards, accompanied by physical records, and arranged consecutively with notes of current events by their sides. Much more would he be glad of similar collections referring to his father, mother, grandparents, and other near relatives. It would be peculiarly grateful to the young to possess likenesses of their parents and those whom they look upon as heroes, taken when they were of the same age as themselves. Boys are too apt to think of their parents as having always been elderly men, because they have insufficient data to construct imaginary pictures of them as they were in their youth.
The cost of taking photographs in batches is so small, and the time occupied is so brief, when the necessary preparations have been made and the sitters are ready at hand, that a practice of methodically photographing schoolboys and members of other large institutions might easily be established. I, for one, should dearly prize the opportunity of visiting the places where I have been educated, and of turning over pages showing myself and my companions as we were in those days. But no such records exist; the institutions last and flourish, the individuals who pass through them are dispersed and leave few or no memorials behind. It seems a cruel waste of opportunity not to make and keep these brief personal records in a methodical manner. The fading of ordinary photographic prints is no real objection to keeping a register, because they can now be reproduced at small charge in permanent printers' ink, by the autotype and other processes.
I have seen with admiration, and have had an opportunity of availing myself of, the newly-established library of well-ordered folios at the Admiralty, each containing a thousand pages, and each page containing a brief summary of references to the life of a particular seaman. There are already 80,000 pages, and owing to the excellent organisation of the office it is a matter of perfect ease to follow out any one of these references, and to learn every detail of the service of any seaman. A brief register of measurements and events in the histories of a large number of persons, previous to their entering any institution and during their residence in it, need not therefore be a difficult matter to those who may take it in hand seriously and methodically.
The recommendation I would venture to make to my readers is to obtain photographs and ordinary measurements periodically of themselves and their children, making it a family custom to do so, because, unless driven by some custom, the act will be postponed until the opportunity is lost. Let those periodical photographs be full and side views of the face on an adequate scale, adding any others that may be wished, but not omitting these. As the portraits accumulate have collections of them autotyped. Keep the prints methodically in a family register, writing by their side careful chronicles of illness and all such events as used to find a place on the fly-leaf of the Bible of former generations, and inserting other interesting personal facts and whatever anthropometric data can be collected.
Those who care to initiate and carry on a family chronicle illustrated by abundant photographic portraiture, will produce a work that they and their children and their descendants in more remote generations will assuredly be grateful for. The family tie has a real as well as a traditional significance. The world is beginning to awaken to the fact that the life of the individual is in some real sense a prolongation of those of his ancestry. His vigour, his character, and his diseases are principally derived from theirs; sometimes his faculties are blends of ancestral qualities; but more frequently they are mosaics, patches of resemblance to one or other of them showing now here and now there. The life-histories of our relatives are prophetic of our own futures; they are far more instructive to us than those of strangers, far more fitted to encourage and to forewarn us. If there be such a thing as a natural birthright, I can conceive of none superior to the right of the child to be informed, at first by proxy through his guardians, and afterwards personally, of the life-history, medical and other, of his ancestry. The child is thrust into existence without his having any voice at all in the matter, and the smallest amend that those who brought him here can make, is to furnish him with all the guidance they can, including the complete life-histories of his near progenitors.
The investigation of human eugenics--that is, of the conditions under which men of a high type are produced--is at present extremely hampered by the want of full family histories, both medical and general, extending over three or four generations. There is no such difficulty in investigating animal eugenics, because the generations of horses, cattle, dogs, etc., are brief, and the breeder of any such stock lives long enough to acquire a large amount of experience from his own personal observation. A man, however, can rarely be familiar with more than two or three generations of his contemporaries before age has begun to check his powers; his working experience must therefore be chiefly based upon records. Believing, as I do, that human eugenics will become recognised before long as a study of the highest practical importance, it seems to me that no time ought to be lost in encouraging and directing a habit of compiling personal and family histories. If the necessary materials be brought into existence, it will require no more than zeal and persuasiveness on the part of the future investigator to collect as large a store of them as he may require.
[UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF PECULIARIEITES]
The importance of submitting our faculties to measurement lies in the curious unconsciousness in which we are apt to live of our personal peculiarities, and which our intimate friends often fail to remark. I have spoken of the ignorance of elderly persons of their deafness to high notes, but even the existence of such a peculiarity as colour blindness was not suspected until the memoir of Dalton in 1794. That one person out of twenty-nine or thereabouts should be unable to distinguish a red from a green, without knowing that he had any deficiency of colour sense, and without betraying his deficiency to his friends, seems perfectly incredible to the other twenty-eight; yet as a matter of fact he rarely does either the one or the other. It is hard to convince the colour-blind of their own infirmity. I have seen curious instances of this: one was that of a person by no means unpractised in physical research, who had been himself tested in matching colours. He gave me his own version of the result, to the effect that though he might perhaps have fallen a little short of perfection as judged by over-refined tests, his colour sense was for all practical purposes quite good. On the other hand, the operator assured me that when he had toned the intensities of a pure red and a pure green in a certain proportion, the person ceased to be able to distinguish between them! Colour blindness is often very difficult to detect, because the test hues and tints may be discriminated by other means than by the normal colour sense. Ordinary pigments are never pure, and the test colours may be distinguished by those of their adventitious hues to which the partly colour-blind man may be sensitive. We do not suspect ourselves to be yellow-blind by candle light, because we enjoy pictures in the evening nearly or perhaps quite as much as in the day time; yet we may observe that a yellow primrose laid on the white table-cloth wholly loses its colour by candle light, and becomes as white as a snowdrop.
In the inquiries I made on the hereditary transmission of capacity, I was often amused by the naïve remark of men who had easily distanced their competitors, that they ascribed their success to their own exertions. They little recognised how much they owed to their natural gifts of exceptional capacity and energy on the one hand, and of exceptional love for their special work on the other.