Abstract
THE criticism which Mr. Constable brings forward in this book is that reputation is not a test of ability, and as Galton's theory of hereditary genius is based on this assumption, it has to be discarded. The statistical evidence given in “Hereditary Genius ” has to be explained away, and Mr. Constable attempts to do this by what he calls the “swamping effect of poverty.” We quite agree with Mr. Constable that it is harder for a poor man with uninfluential parents to achieve success as a judge than for a rich one with influence, but this does not seem to us to justify Mr. Constable in discarding the conclusions of “Hereditary Genius,” for if the social conditions of both parents and offspring are relatively about the same, it seems as if the omission of the ability in poverty-stricken parents and their children is rather like leaving out of account the addition of numbers to both the numerator and denominator of a fraction. The omission may. therefore not affect the result at all, and whether fuller statistical evidence should modify Mr. Galton's conclusions is a matter which can only be decided by statistics other than those which Mr. Constable discusses. He appears, however, to have overlooked altogether in his argument that other statistics exist and tend to show that psychical and physical characteristics are inherited in the same way, a point which seems to us to upset a good deal of Mr. Constable's criticism.
Poverty and Hereditary Genius; a Criticism of Mr. Francis Galton's Theory of Hereditary Genius.
By F. C. Constable. Pp. xvi + 149. (London: Arthur C. Fifield, 1905.) Price 2s. net.
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Poverty and Hereditary Genius; a Criticism of Mr Francis Galton's Theory of Hereditary Genius . Nature 74, 350 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/074350a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/074350a0