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384
Hereditary Genius
of exceeding or falling short of its mean value. I cannot enter further
here into the philosophy of this view; the latest writer upon it is Mr.
Crofton, in a Paper read before the Royal Society in April 1869.
A table, made on the above hypothesis, has been constructed by
Cournot, and will be found in the Appendix, p. 267, of Quetelet's
“Letters on Probabilities” (translated by Downes; Layton & Co.,
1849), but it does not extend nearly so far as that of M. Quetelet. The
latter is calculated on a very simple principle, being the results of
drawing 999 balls out of an urn, containing white and black balls in
equal quantities and in enormous numbers. His grade No. 1 is the
case of drawing 499 white and 500 black, his 2 in 498 white and 501
black, and so on, the 80th being 420 white and 579 black. It makes no
sensible difference in the general form of the results, when these
large numbers are taken, what their actual amount may be. The value
of a grade will of course be very different, but almost exactly the
same quality of curve would be obtained if the figures in Quetelet's
or in Cournot's tables were protracted. All this is shown by Quetelet
in his comparison of the two tables.
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