Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development

by Francis Galton (Other)

Overview

Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development is an 1883 book by Francis Galton, in which he covers a variety of psychological phenomena and their subsequent measurement. In this text he also references the idea of eugenics and coined the term for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781410210258
Publisher:	University Press of the Pacific
Publication date:	12/22/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.96(h) x 0.73(d)

Read an Excerpt

In the large experience I have had of sorting photographs, literally by the thousand, while making experiments with composites, I have been struck by certain general impressions. The consumptive patients consisted of many hundred cases, including a considerable proportion of very ignoble specimens of humanity. Some were scrofulous and misshapen, or suffered from various loathsome forms of inherited disease; most were ill nourished. Nevertheless, in studying their portraits the pathetic interest prevailed, and I returned day after day to my tedious work of classification, with a liking for my materials. It was quite otherwise with the criminals. I did not adequately appreciate the £" degradation of their expressions for some time; at J last the sense of it took firm hold of me, and I cannot now handle the portraits without overcoming by an jeffort the aversion they suggest. I am sure that the method of composite portraiture opens a fertile field of research to ethnologists, but I find it very difficult to do much single-handed, on account of the difficulty of obtaining the necessary materials. As a rule, the individuals must be specially photographed. The portraits made by artists are taken in every conceivable aspect and variety of light and shade, but for the purpose in question the aspect and the shade must be the same throughout. Group portraits would do to work from, were it not for the strong out-of-door light under which they are necessarily taken, which gives an unwonted effect to the expression of the faces. Their scale also is too smallto give a sufficiently clear picture when enlarged. I may say that the scale of the portraits need not be uniform, as my apparatusenlarges or reduces as required, at the same time that it superposes the images; but the portraits of the ...