ed talent fitted him to be a better naval commander than
anything else; if so, it probably also fitted him to be better at many
other things, than are the majority of men. "Intrinsically good traits
have also good correlatives," physical, mental and moral.
F. A. Woods has brought together the best evidence of this, in his
studies of the royal families of Europe. If the dozen best generals were
selected from the men he has studied, they would of course surpass the
average man enormously in military skill; but, as he points out, they
would also surpass the average man to a very high degree as poets,--or
doubtless as cooks or lawyers, had they given any time to those
occupations.[182]
The above considerations lead to two suggestions for vocational
guidance: (i) it is desirable to ascertain and make use of the child's
inherited capacities as far as possible; but (2) it must not be supposed
that every child inherits the ability to do one thing only, and will
waste his life if he does not happen to get a chance to do that thing.
It is easy to suppose that the man who makes a failure as a paperhanger
might, if he had had the opportunity, have been a great electrical
engineer; it is easy to cite a few cases, such as that of General U. S.
Grant, which seem to lend some color to the theory, but statistical
evidence would indicate it is not the rule. If a man makes a failure as
a paperhanger, it is at least possible that he would have made a failure
of very many things that he might try; and if a man makes a brilliant
success as a paperhanger, or railway engineer, or school teacher, or
chemist, he is a useful citizen who would probably have gained a fair
measure of success in any one of several occupations that he might have
taken up but not in all.
To sum up: vocational guidance and training are likely to be of much
service to eugenics. They may derive direct help from heredity; and
their exponents may also learn that a man who is really good in one
thing is likely to be good in many things, and that a man who fails in
one thing would not necessarily achieve success if he were put in some
other career. One of their greatest services will probably be to put a
lot of boys into skilled trades, for which they are adapted and where
they will succeed, and thus prevent them from yielding to the desire for
a more genteel clerical occupation, in which they will not do more than
earn a bare living. This will assist in bringing about t
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