Hereditary Genius

Answers

• Q12JUDGMENT

  Can numerical measures adequately determine a person's fitness for a position of responsibility?

  Yes. ability can be graded. Ranks men by reputation on a graded statistical scale of natural ability, using judges and statesmen as samples, and treats that ability as measurable and inherited.

  There is, therefore, little room for doubt, if everybody in England had to work up some subject and then to pass before examiners who employed similar figures of merit, that their marks would be found to range, according to the law of deviation from an average, just as rigorously as the heights of French conscripts, or the circumferences of the chests of Scotch soldiers. The number of grades into which we may divide ability is purely a matter of option. We may consult our convenience by sorting Englishmen into a few large classes, or into many small ones. I will select a system of classification that shall be easily comparable with the numbers of eminent men, as determined in the previous chapter.

  'The Judges of England between 1660 and 1865' · Chapter title confirmed in galton.org text and Macmillan's article PDF. galton.org is not a listed repository.