INQUIRIES into

HUMAN FACULTY

AND ITS

DEVELOPMENT

by Francis GALTON

F.R.S.

First issue of this Edition 1907

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

After some years had passed subsequent to the publication ofthis book in 1883, its publishers, Messrs. Macmillan, informed methat the demand for it just, but only just warranted a revisedissue. I shrank from the great trouble of bringing it up to datebecause it, or rather many of my memoirs out of which it wasbuilt up, had become starting-points for elaborate investigationsboth in England and in America, to which it would be difficultand very laborious to do justice in a brief compass. So thequestion of a Second Edition was then entirely dropped. Sincethat time the book has by no means ceased to live, for itcontinues to be quoted from and sought for, but is obtainableonly with difficulty, and at much more than its original cost, atsales of second-hand books. Moreover, it became the startingpoint of that recent movement in favour of National Eugenics (seenote p. 24 in first edition) which is recognised by theUniversity of London, and has its home in University College.

Having received a proposal to republish the book in itspresent convenient and inexpensive form, I gladly accepted it,having first sought and received an obliging assurance fromMessrs. Macmillan that they would waive all their claims to thecontrary in my favour.

The following small changes are made in this edition. Theillustrations are for the most part reduced in size to suit thesmaller form of the volume, the lettering of the composites isrearranged, and the coloured illustration is reproduced asclosely as circumstances permit. Two chapters are omitted, on"Theocratic Intervention" and on the "Objective Efficacy ofPrayer." The earlier part of the latter was too much abbreviatedfrom the original memoir in the Fortnightly Review, 1872,and gives, as I now perceive, a somewhat inexact impression ofits object, which was to investigate certain views then thoughtorthodox, but which are growing obsolete. I could not reinsertthese omissions now with advantage, unless considerable additionswere made to the references, thus giving more appearance ofpersonal controversy to the memoirs than is desirable. After all,the omission of these two chapters, in which I find nothing torecant, improves, as I am told, the general balance of thebook.

FRANCIS GALTON.

LIST OF WORKS.

The Teletype: a printing Electric Telegraph, 1850;The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, 1853,   in "Minerva Library of Famous Books," 1889;Notes on Modern Geography (Cambridge Essays, 1855, etc.);Arts of Campaigning: an Inaugural Lecture delivered at Aldershot, 1855;The Art of Travel, or Shifts and Contrivances available in Wild Countries,   1855, 1856, 1860 (1859);   fourth edition, recast and enlarged, 1867, 1872;Vacation Tourists and Notes on Travel, 1861, 1862, 1864;Meteorographica, or M                        
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