In Pursuit of the Gene

6 ¨ VIVA PANGENESIS
While Galton went to great lengths to impart to Hereditary Genius an air
of scientific neutrality and objectivity, the subject matter had a deeply personal
significance for him. From an early age, Galton’s parents had encouraged
him in the belief that he was a child prodigy and regularly trotted him
out to recite long passages of memorized poetry for visitors. By the end of
high school, Galton revered above all else mathematical talent and those
who possessed it. Helped by the timely intervention of his cousin Charles,
Galton persuaded his father to allow him to abandon the study of medicine
in order to pursue a mathematics degree at Cambridge, where he hoped to
join the ranks of his intellectual heroes.
In an unmistakably autobiographical passage, Galton traced the trajectory
of the gifted child in the opening chapter of Hereditary Genius. “The eager
boy,” he wrote, “when he first goes to school, and confronts intellectual
difficulties, is astonished by his progress.” 16 Judging by his growing capacity,
he becomes convinced that he will be among those “who have left their
mark upon the history of the world.” Slowly, the sober facts of the world
begin to assert themselves. “The years go by; he competes in the examinations
of school and college, over and over again with his fellows, and
soon finds his place among them.” Eventually he comes to understand the
reality, “unless he is incurably blinded by self-conceit.” With this knowledge:
“He is no longer tormented into hopeless efforts by the fallacious
promptings of overweening vanity, but he limits his undertakings to matters
below the level of his reach, and finds true moral repose in an honest
conviction that he is engaged in as much good work as his nature has rendered
him capable of performing.” 17
But unlike his eager boy who found repose in a life of diminished expectations,
Galton was a man obsessed, collecting data on men and their
male ancestors from all walks of life—from English judges to musicians
and painters to “Wrestlers of the north country.” As they had in his youth,
mathematicians held a special fascination for him. “There hardly be a surer
evidence of the enormous difference between the intellectual capacity of
men,” he explained near the beginning of his new book, “than the prodigious
differences in the numbers of marks obtained by those who gain
mathematical honours at Cambridge.” 18
Some years thirty years earlier, when he had been embarking on his