Quotes:Galton, Francis

Zirkoff, Boris

Galton, Sir Francis. English anthropologist; b. at Birmingham, Feb. 16, 1822; d. at Haslemere, Jan. 11, 1911. Educated in his native city, then at King’s Coll., London, and Trinity Coll., Cambridge. Travelled in Sudan, 1845-46; explored Damaraland, 372 and S. W. Africa, 1850; visited Spain, 1860. He then turned to anthropology. His Meteorographica (London: Macmillan Go., 1863) was the first serious attempt to chart weather on extensive scale; he was the first one to establish the existence and theory of anti-cyclones. Inspired by his cousin’s Origin of Species (1859), he made serious study of heredity and laid foundations of the science of eugenics; he advocated furthering of the productivity of the fit and the restriction of the birthrate of the unfit; made special investigation of color-blindness, mental imagery, instinct and criminality; originated process of composite portraiture, and paid much attention to fingerprints. Knighted, 1909. By will founded laboratory for study of national eugenics.

Works: Hereditary Genius. London: Macmillan & Co., 1869.— English Men of Science. Ibid., 1874.—*Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development. Ibid., 1883; also New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1908, 1928.—Finger Prints. London: Macmillan & Co., 1892.— Essays in Eugenics. London: The Eugenics Education Soc., 1909.— Memoirs of My Life. London: Methuen & Co. 1908.—An Explorer in Tropical So. Africa, 1853, 1889.— The Art of Travel. London: J. Murray, 1855.

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 7, pp. 371-372