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Title: Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development

Author: Francis Galton

Release Date: March 13, 2004 [eBook #11562]

Language: English

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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 of this
book in 1883, its publishers, Messrs. Macmillan, informed me that
the demand for it just, but only just warranted a revised issue. I
shrank from the great trouble of bringing it up to date because it,
or rather many of my memoirs out of which it was built up, had
become starting-points for elaborate investigations both in England
and in America, to which it would be difficult and very laborious to
do justice in a brief compass. So the question of a Second Edition
was then entirely dropped. Since that time the book has by no means
ceased to live, for it continues to be quoted from and sought for,
but is obtainable only with difficulty, and at much more than its
original cost, at sales of second-hand books. Moreover, it became
the starting point of that recent movement in favour of National
Eugenics (see note p. 24 in first edition) which is recognised by
the University of London, and has its home in University College.

Having received a proposal to republish the book in its present
convenient and inexpensive form, I gladly accepted it, having first
sought and received an obliging assurance from Messrs. Macmillan
that they would waive all