galton.org 17
Energy
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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.
ENERGY.
Energy is the capacity for labour. It is consistent with all the robust
virtues, and makes a large practice of them possible. It is the measure of
fulness of life; the more energy the more abundance of it; no energy at all
is death; idiots are feeble and listless. In the inquiries I made on the
antecedents of men of science no points came out more strongly than that
the leaders of scientific thought were generally gifted with remarkable
energy, and that they had
[1]
That is, with questions bearing on what is termed in Greek, eugenes namely, good in
stock, hereditarily endowed with noble qualities. This, and the allied words, eugeneia, etc.,
are equally applicable to men, brutes, and plants. We greatly want a brief word to express
the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious
mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that
tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a
better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have
had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea; it is at least a neater word and
a more generalised one than viriculture which I once ventured to use.
