Читать книгу Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development - Galton Francis - Страница 17

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The differences in the bodily qualities that are the usual subjects of anthropometry are easily dealt with, and are becoming widely registered in many countries. We are unfortunately destitute of trustworthy measurements of Englishmen of past generations to enable us to compare class with class, and to learn how far the several sections of the English nation may be improving or deteriorating. We shall, however, hand useful information concerning our own times to our successors, thanks principally to the exertions of an Anthropometric Committee established five years ago by the British Association, who have collected and partly classified and published a large amount of facts, besides having induced several institutions, such as Marlborough College, to undertake a regular system of anthropometric record. I am not, however, concerned here with the labours of this committee, nor with the separate valuable publications of some of its members, otherwise than in one small particular which appears to show that the English population as a whole, or perhaps I should say the urban portion of it, is in some sense deteriorating. It is that the average stature of the older persons measured by or for the committee has not been found to decrease steadily with their age, but sometimes the reverse.[1] This contradicts observations made on the heights of the same men at different periods, whose stature after middle age is invariably reduced by the shrinking of the cartilages. The explanation offered was that the statistical increase of stature with age should be ascribed to the survival of the more stalwart. On reconsideration, I am inclined to doubt the adequacy of the explanation, and partly to account for the fact by a steady, slight deterioration of stature in successive years; in the urban population owing to the conditions of their lives, and in the rural population owing to the continual draining away of the more stalwart of them to the towns.

It cannot be doubted that town life is harmful to the town population. I have myself investigated its effect on fertility (see Appendix B), and found that taking on the one hand a number of rural parishes, and on the other hand the inhabitants of a medium town, the former reared, nearly twice as many adult grandchildren as the latter. The vital functions are so closely related that an inferiority in the production of healthy children very probably implies a loss of vigour generally, one sign of which is a diminution of stature.

Though the bulk of the population may deteriorate, there are many signs that the better housed and fed portion of it improves. In the earlier years of this century the so-called manly sports of boxing and other feats of strength ranked high among the national amusements. A man who was [1] successful in these became the hero of a large and demonstrative circle of admirers, and it is to be presumed that the best boxer, the best pedestrian, and so forth, was the best adapted to succeed, through his natural physical gifts. If he was not the most gifted man in those respects in the whole kingdom, he was certainly one of the most gifted of them. It therefore does no injustice to the men of that generation to compare the feats of their foremost athletes with those of ours who occupy themselves in the same way. The comparison would probably err in their favour, because the interest in the particular feats in which our grandfathers and great-grandfathers delighted are not those that chiefly interest the present generation, and notwithstanding our increased population, there are fewer men now who attempt them. In the beginning of this century there were many famous walking matches, and incomparably the best walker was Captain Barclay of Ury. His paramount feat, which was once very familiar to the elderly men of the present time, was that of walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, but of late years that feat has been frequently equalled and overpassed. I am willing to allow much influence to the modern conditions of walking under shelter and subject to improved methods of training (Captain Barclay himself originated the first method, which has been greatly improved since his time); still the fact remains that in executing this particular feat, the athletes of the present day are more successful than those who lived some eighty years ago. I may be permitted to give an example bearing on the increased stature of the better housed and fed portion of the nation, in a recollection of my own as to the difference in height between myself and my fellow-collegians at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1840–4. My height is 5 feet 9–¾ inches, and I recollect perfectly that among the crowd of undergraduates I stood somewhat taller than the majority. I generally looked a little downward when I met their eyes. In later years, whenever I have visited Cambridge, I have lingered in the ante-chapel and repeated the comparison, and now I find myself decidedly shorter than the average of the students. I have precisely the same kind of recollection and the same present experience of the height of crowds of well-dressed persons. I used always to get a fair view of what was going on over or between their heads; I rarely can do so now.

[Footnote 1: Trans. Brit. Assoc., 1881, Table V., p. 242; and remarks by Mr. Roberts, p. 235.]

The athletic achievements at school and college are much superior to what they used to be. Part is no doubt due to more skilful methods of execution, but not all. I cannot doubt that the more wholesome and abundant food, the moderation in drink, the better cooking, the warmer wearing apparel, the airier sleeping rooms, the greater cleanliness, the more complete change in holidays, and the healthier lives led by the women in their girlhood, who become mothers afterwards, have a great influence for good on the favoured portion of our race.

The proportion of weakly and misshapen individuals is not to be estimated by those whom we meet in the streets; the worst cases are out of sight. We should parade before our mind's eye the inmates of the lunatic, idiot, and pauper asylums, the prisoners, the patients in hospitals, the sufferers at home, the crippled, and the congenitally blind, and that large class of more or less wealthy persons who flee to the sunnier coasts of England, or expatriate themselves for the chance of life. There can hardly be a sadder sight than the crowd of delicate English men and women with narrow chests and weak chins, scrofulous, and otherwise gravely affected, who are to be found in some of these places. Even this does not tell the whole of the story; if there were a conscription in England, we should find, as in other countries, that a large fraction of the men who earn their living by sedentary occupations are unfit for military service. Our human civilised stock is far more weakly through congenital imperfection than that of any other species of animals, whether wild or domestic.

It is, however, by no means the most shapely or the biggest personages who endure hardship the best. Some very shabby-looking men have extraordinary stamina. Sickly-looking and puny residents in towns may have a more suitable constitution for the special conditions of their lives, and may in some sense be better knit and do more work and live longer than much haler men imported to the same locality from elsewhere. A wheel and a barrel seem to have the flimsiest possible constitutions; they consist of numerous separate pieces all oddly shaped, which, when lying in a heap, look hopelessly unfitted for union; but put them properly together, compress them with a tire in the one case and with hoops in the other, and a remarkably enduring organisation will result. A wheel with a ton weight on the top of it in the waggons of South Africa will jolt for thousands of miles over stony, roadless country without suffering harm; a keg of water may be strapped on the back of a pack-ox or a mule, and be kicked off and trampled on, and be otherwise misused for years, without giving way.

I do not propose to enter further into the anthropometric differences of race, for the subject is a very large one, and this book does not profess to go into detail. Its intention is to touch on various topics more or less connected with that of the cultivation of race, or, as we might call it, with "eugenic" [1] questions, and to present the results of several of my own separate investigations.