 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
32
Hereditary Genius
of brain fibres, &c.; and thence, by a step on which no physiologist will
hesitate, as regards mental capacity.
This is what I am driving at—that analogy clearly shows there must be a
fairly constant average mental capacity in the inhabitants of the British
Isles, and that the deviations from that average—upwards towards genius,
and downwards towards stupidity—must follow the law that governs
deviations from all true averages.
I have, however, done somewhat more than rely on analogy. I have tried
the results of those examinations in which the candidates had been derived
from the same classes. Most persons have noticed the lists of successful
competitors for various public appointments that are published from time to
time in the newspapers, with the marks gained by each candidate attached
to his name. These lists contain far too few names to fall into such beautiful
accordance with theory, as was the case with the Scotch soldiers. There
are rarely more than 100 names in any one of these examinations, while the
chests of no less than 5,700 Scotchmen were measured. I cannot justly
combine the marks of several independent examinations into one fagot, for I
understand that different examiners are apt to have different figures of
merit; so I have analysed each examination separately. I give a calculation I
made on the examination last before me; it will do as well as any other. It
was for admission into the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, December
1868. The marks obtained were clustered most thickly about 3,000, so I
take that number as representing the average ability of the candidates.
From this datum, and from the fact that no candidate obtained more than
6,500 marks, I computed the column B in the following table, by the help of
Quetetet's numbers. It will be seen that column B accords with column A
quite as closely as the small number of persons examined could have led us
to expect.
 |
|
 |
|