Navigation bar
  Home Start Previous page
 82 of 305 
Next page End  

60 galton.org
60 
Inquiries into Human Faculty
which were made after the masters had fully explained the meaning of the
questions, and interested the boys in them. These have the merit of returns
derived from a general census, which my other data lack, because I cannot
for a moment suppose that the writers of the latter are a haphazard
proportion of those to whom they were sent. Indeed I know of some who,
disavowing all possession of the power, and of many others who,
possessing it in too faint a degree to enable them to express what their
experiences really were, in a manner satisfactory to themselves, sent no
returns at all. Considerable statistical similarity was, however, observed
between the sets of returns furnished by the schoolboys and those sent by
my separate correspondents, and I may add that they accord in this respect
with the oral information I have elsewhere obtained. The conformity of
replies from so many different sources which was clear from the first, the
fact of their apparent trustworthiness being on the whole much increased
by cross-examination (though I could give one or two amusing instances
of break-down), and the evident effort made to give accurate answers,
have convinced me that it is a much easier matter than I had anticipated to
obtain trustworthy replies to psychological questions. Many persons,
especially women and intelligent children, take pleasure in introspection,
and strive their very best to explain their mental processes. I think that a
delight in self-dissection must be a strong ingredient in the pleasure that
many are said to take in confessing themselves to priests.
Here, then, are two rather notable results: the one is the proved facility
of obtaining statistical insight into the processes of other persons’ minds,
whatever à priori objection may have been made as to its possibility; and
the other is that scientific men, as a class, have feeble powers of visual
representation. There is no doubt whatever on the latter point, however it
may be accounted for. My own conclusion is, that an over-ready
perception of sharp mental pictures is antagonistic to the acquirement of
habits of highly-generalised and abstract thought, especially when the
steps of reasoning are carried on by words as symbols, and that if the
faculty of seeing the pictures was ever possessed by men who think hard,
it is very apt to be lost
http://www.purepage.com Previous page Top Next page