By their special procedure, as rigorously critical in the
statistical treatment of _data_ as it is sweetly simple in its innocent
assumption that all _data_ are of equal value, they have proposed to
show that the elder members of a family are further removed from the
normal, average, or mean type than the younger members. This, according
to them, may sometimes work out in the production of great ability or
genius in the eldest or elder members, but oftener still shows itself in
highly undesirable characters, whether of mind or of body, the latter
often leading to premature decease. There is hence inferred a powerful
argument against the limitation of families, which means a
disproportionate increase amongst the aberrant members of the
population.
This argument really offers as good an example as can be desired of the
almost unimaginable ease with which these skilful mathematicians allow
themselves to be confused. Their inquiry has ignored the age of the
parents at marriage--or, better still, at the births of their respective
children--and has assumed that the number of the family was the
all-important point: a good example of that idolatry of number as number
which is the "freak religion" of the biometrician. Supposing that the
conclusion reached by this method be a true one--which it would need
more credulity than I possess to assert--we must conclude that, somehow,
primogeniture, as such, affects the quality of the offspring, and, on
the other hand, that to be born fifth or tenth or fifteenth involves
certain personal consequences of a special kind.
Pages:
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224