This new view brings ethics almost within the circle of the physical sciences. Within these narrower bounds his work is very impressive for it seems to prove that the qualities of men are usually hereditary, not accidental, and that life is a prolonged viriculture, in which progress depends more upon marriage customs and birth-rates than upon the institutions on which we are wont to plume ourselves.
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The fierce struggle for existence described by Darwin takes a modified and gentler form in Galton’s hands, for his conclusions go only to changes in mankind, and do not affect the lines separating the several species. To him, as to most other investigators, cosmism has proved a barren fount. Of the rhythmic integration of the latter we hear nothing from Galton. Galton misspells the name) have carried the investigation a little further, but most of the works on the subject are little more than collections of anecdotes and fancies and in its main aspects it stands as Galton shaped it, a simple and modest theory, but bearing consequences to humanity much more important than those suggested by Darwin or Spencer. Galton to this theory was so cautiously and solidly prepared that no one has pointed out any serious flaw in it, and few have been able to add much to it. Many persons have tried to overthrow portions of the theory of evolution, and in the several forms which Spencer, Darwin, and Haeckel gave it it has certainly had some severe blows but the contribution of Mr. And in the present article we shall try to develop more fully than he has done the consequences which must follow from this new law. Like the rival smith upon whom Siegfried tried his thrice-forged sword, we do not realize the wounds in our old beliefs, until they fall suddenly to pieces before our eyes. And it has all been done with so little assumption that we have not resented it, or even been quite conscious of the injury. In the quietest way, without any flourish of trumpets or pretensions to cosmic knowledge, he has laid down laws which profoundly affect not only science, but practical morality.
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FRANCIS GALTON’S new book of inquiries into the constitution of the human faculties reminds us afresh of the remarkable contribution which this powerful thinker has made to positive philosophy.