70 galton.org
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Inquiries into Human Faculty
chapter, and which, when they exist at all, are usually found among two,
three, or more brothers and sisters, parents, children, uncles and aunts, and
cousins.
Since families differ so much in respect to this gift, we may suppose
that races would also differ, and there can be no doubt that such is the
case. I hardly like to refer to civilised nations, because their natural
faculties are too much modified by education to allow of their being
appraised in an off-hand fashion. I may, however, speak of the French,
who appear to possess the visualising faculty in a high degree. The
peculiar ability they show in prearranging ceremonials and fêtes of all
kinds, and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy, show that they
are able to foresee effects with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in all
technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction,
and so is their singular clearness of expression. Their phrase, “figurez-
vous,” or “picture to yourself,” seems to express their dominant mode of
perception. Our equivalent of “imagine” is ambiguous.
It is among uncivilised races that natural differences in the visualising
faculty are most conspicuous. Many of them make carvings and rude
illustrations, but only a few have the gift of carrying a picture in their
mind’s eye, judging by the completeness and firmness of their designs,
which show no trace of having been elaborated in that step-by-step
manner which is characteristic of draughtsmen who are not natural artists.
Among the races who are thus gifted are the commonly despised, but,
as I confidently maintain from personal knowledge of them, the much
underrated Bushmen of South Africa. They are no doubt deficient in the
natural instincts necessary to civilisation, for they detest a regular life,
they are inveterate thieves, and are incapable of withstanding the
temptation of strong drink. On the other hand, they have few superiors
among barbarians in the ingenious methods by which they supply the
wants of a difficult existence, and in the effectiveness and nattiness of
their accoutrements. One of their habits is to draw pictures on the walls of
caves of men and animals, and to colour them with ochre. These drawings
were once numerous, but they have been sadly destroyed by advancing
colonisation, and few of them, and
