Hereditary genius : an inquiry into its laws and consequences / by Francis Galton.

  • Galton, Francis, 1822-1911.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hereditary genius : an inquiry into its laws and consequences / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    grandsons of these judges are for the most part too young to have achieved distinction. 22 out of 226 gives 10 in 100 as the percentage of the judges that have had distin- guished sons. (The reader will remark how near this result is to the o,\ as entered in my table, showing the general truth of both estimates.) Of these 22 I count the following triplets. The Atkyns family as two. It is true that the grandfather was only Chief Justice of North Wales, and not an English judge, but the vigour of the blood is proved by the line of not only his son and two grandsons being English judges, but also by the grandson of one of them, through the female line, being an English judge also. Another line is that of the Pratts, viz, the Chief Justice and his son, the Lord Chancellor, Earl Camden, and his grandson, the son of the Earl, created the Marquis Camden ; the latter was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and a man of note in many ways. Another case is in the Yorke line, for the son of the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Hardwicke, was Charles Yorke, himself a Lord Chancellor. His sons were able men : one became First Lord of the Admiralty, another was Bishop of Ely, a third was a military officer of dis- tinction and created Baron Dover, a fourth was an admiral of distinction. I will not count all these, but will reckon them as three favourable instances. The total, thus far, is six ; to which might be added in fairness something from that most remarkable Montagu family and its connexions, of which several judges, both before and after the acces- sion of Charles I., were members. However, I wish to be well within bounds, and therefore will claim only six successes out of the 22 cases (I allow one son to each judge, as before), or i in 4. Even under these limita- tions it is only 4 to i, on the average, against each child of an eminent son of a judge becoming a distin- guished man.