In Pursuit of the Gene

VIVA PANGENESIS © 5
sumption that eminence accurately reflected natural talent, a fallacy that
Galton would commit again and again in future years.
Although his study was fundamentally flawed, Galton made clever use
of the resources at hand. For data, Galton used a number of well-known
biographical sources, including a compilation of four centuries of “original
minds”: a list of biographical sketches called “Men of Our Time” that was a
Who’s Who of England, the Continent, and America. In addition, he consulted
a well-known Dictionary of Painters, another of musicians, a guide called
Lives of Chancellors, and the list of top-ranking classics students from successive
classes at Cambridge. In each case he calculated the percentage of eminent
relatives among the eminent men. For example, he found that of the
391 eminent painters who appeared in the dictionary, 65 were closely related
to another painter in the same book, and likewise, 1 in 12 of his “distinguished”
literary men had a father, son, or brother who was also distinguished.
13 Overall, the probability of having a near male relative in a given
field was 1 in 6. In contrast, he estimated that the probability was 1 in 3,000
that a randomly chosen educated man would achieve eminence. Thus
there was a 500-fold greater probability of eminence among relatives of the
eminent.
The effect was impressive. Galton considered it unmistakable evidence
of the enormous effect of hereditary influence, confidently asserting, “The
overwhelming force of a statistical fact like this renders counter-arguments
of no substantial effect.” 14 Yet on the very next page he succinctly states the
obvious counterargument: “When a parent has achieved great eminence,
his son will be placed in a more favourable position for advancement, than
if he had been the son of an ordinary person,” a view to which Galton gave
no credence.
On the eve of his forty-fourth birthday, shortly after the appearance of
his Macmillan’s article, Galton suffered a debilitating nervous breakdown.
Ordinarily gregarious, Galton was forced to withdraw from London society,
and for months at a stretch he and his wife traveled in Italy and Switzerland.
But even at the peak of his psychological distress, Galton began work
on his next project, Hereditary Genius, a book-length treatment of the material
he’d begun to explore in his magazine piece. 15