Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development

1907. Galton, an explorer and anthropologist, is known for his pioneering studies of human intelligence. Influenced by the work of his cousin Charles Darwin, he coined the term eugenics (from the Greek eugenes or wellborn) and devoted the latter part of life to applying Darwinian science to develop theories about heredity and good or noble birth. This book combines his various memoirs into a single volume the object of which he explains in the Introduction: My general object has been to take note of the varied hereditary faculties of different men, and of the great differences in different families and races, to learn how far history may have shown the practicability of supplanting inefficient human stock by better strains, and to consider whether it might not be our duty to do so by such efforts as may be reasonable, thus exerting ourselves to further the ends of evolution more rapidly and with less distress than if events were left to their own course.