Inquiries into human faculty and its development · Chapter 23Number of Female Descendants who themselves become Mothers
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The general result is that the group B gradually disappears, and the group A more than supplants it. Hence if the races best fitted to occupy the land are encouraged to marry early, they will breed down the others in a very few generations.
It may seem very reasonable to ask how the result proposed in the last paragraph is to be attained, and to add that the difficulty of carrying so laudable a proposal into effect lies wholly in the details, and therefore that until some working plan is suggested, the consideration of improving the human race is Utopian. But this requirement is not altogether fair, because if a persuasion of the importance of any end takes possession of men's minds, sooner or later means are found by which that end is carried into effect. Some of the objections offered at first will be discovered to be sentimental, and of no real importance--the sentiment will change and they will disappear; others that are genuine are not met, but are in some way turned or eluded; and lastly, through the ingenuity of many minds directed for a long time towards the achievement of a common purpose, many happy ideas are sure to be hit upon that would not have occurred to a single individual.
This being premised, it will suffice to faintly sketch out some sort of basis for eugenics, it being now an understanding that we are provisionally agreed, for the sake of argument, that the improvement of race is an object of first-class importance, and that the popular feeling has been educated to regard it in that light.
The final object would be to devise means for favouring individuals who bore the signs of membership of a superior race, the proximate aim would be to ascertain what those signs were, and these we will consider first.
The indications of superior breed are partly personal, partly ancestral. We need not trouble ourselves about the personal part, because full weight is already given to it in the competitive careers; energy, brain, morale, and health being recognised factors of success, while there can hardly be a better evidence of a person being adapted to his circumstances than that afforded by success. It is the ancestral part that is neglected, and which we have yet to recognise at its just value. A question that now continually arises is this: a youth is a candidate for permanent employment, his present personal qualifications are known, but how will he turn out in later years? The objections to competitive examinations are notorious, in that they give undue prominence to youths whose receptive faculties are quick, and whose intellects are precocious. They give no indication of the directions in which the health, character, and intellect of the youth will change through the development, in their due course, of ancestral tendencies that are latent in youth, but will manifest themselves in after life. Examinations deal with the present, not with the future, although it is in the future of the youth that we are especially interested. Much of the needed guidance may be derived from his family history. I cannot doubt, if two youths were of equal personal merit, of whom one belonged to a thriving and long-lived family, and the other to a decaying and short-lived family, that there could be any hesitation in saying that the chances were greater of the first-mentioned youth becoming the more valuable public servant of the two.
A thriving family may be sufficiently defined or inferred by the successive occupations of its several male members in the previous generation, and of the two grandfathers. These are patent facts attainable by almost every youth, which admit of being verified in his neighbourhood and attested in a satisfactory manner.
A healthy and long-lived family may be defined by the patent facts of ages at death, and number and ages of living relatives, within the degrees mentioned above, all of which can be verified and attested. A knowledge of the existence of longevity in the family would testify to the stamina of the candidate, and be an important addition to the knowledge of his present health in forecasting the probability of his performing a large measure of experienced work.
Owing to absence of data and the want of inquiry of the family antecedents of those who fail and of those who succeed in life, we are much more ignorant than we ought to be of their relative importance. In connection with this, I may mention some curious results published by Mr. F.M. Holland[18] of Boston, U.S., as to the antecedent family history of persons who were reputed to be more moral than the average, and of those who were the reverse. He has
been good enough to reply to questions that I sent to him concerning his criterion of morality, and other points connected with the statistics, in a way that seems satisfactory, and he has very obligingly furnished me with additional MS. materials. One of his conclusions was that morality is more often found among members of large families than among those of small ones. It is reasonable to expect this would be the case owing to the internal discipline among members of large families, and to the wholesome sustaining and restraining effects of family pride and family criticism. Members of small families are apt to be selfish, and when the smallness of the family is due to the deaths of many of its members at early ages, it is some evidence either of weakness of the family constitution, or of deficiency of common sense or of affection on the part of the parents in not taking better care of them. Mr. Holland quotes in his letter to me a piece of advice by Franklin to a young man in search of a wife, "to take one out of a bunch of sisters," and a popular saying that kittens brought up with others make the best pets, because they have learned to play without scratching. Sir William Gull[19] has remarked that those candidates for the Indian Civil Service who are members of large families are on the whole the strongest.
[Footnote 18: Index Newspaper, Boston, U.S. July 27, 1882.]
Far be it from me to say that any scheme of marks for family merit would not require a great deal of preparatory consideration. Careful statistical inquiries have yet to be made into the family antecedents of public servants of mature age in connection with their place in examination lists at the earlier age when they first gained their appointments. This would be necessary in order to learn the amount of marks that should be assigned to various degrees of family merit. I foresee no peculiar difficulty in conducting such an inquiry; indeed, now that competitive examinations have been in general use for many years, the time seems ripe for it, but of course its conduct would require much confidential inquiry and a great deal of trouble in verifying returns. Still, it admits of being done, and if the results, derived from different sources, should confirm one another, they could be depended on.
[Footnote 19: Blue Book C--1446, 1876. On the Selection and Training of Candidates for the Indian Civil Service.]
Let us now suppose that a way was seen for carrying some such idea as this into practice, and that family merit, however defined, was allowed to count, for however little, in competitive examinations. The effect would be very great: it would show that ancestral qualities are of present current value; it would give an impetus to collecting family histories; it would open the eyes of every family and or society at large to the importance of marriage alliance with a good stock; it would introduce the subject of race into a permanent topic of consideration, which (on the supposition of its bonâ fide importance that has been assumed for the sake of argument) experience would show to be amply justified. Any act that first gives a guinea stamp to the sterling guinea's worth of natural nobility might set a great social avalanche in motion.
Endowments and bequests have been freely and largely made for various social purposes, and as a matter of history they have frequently been made to portion girls in marriage. It so happens that the very day that I am writing this, I notice an account in the foreign newspapers (September 19, 1882) of an Italian who has bequeathed a sum to the corporation of London to found small portions for three poor girls to be selected by lot. And again, a few weeks ago I read also in the French papers of a trial, in reference to the money adjudged to the "Rosière" of a certain village. Many cases in which individuals and states have portioned girls may be found in Malthus. It is therefore far from improbable that if the merits of good race became widely recognised and its indications were rendered more surely intelligible than they now are, that local endowments, and perhaps adoptions, might be made in favour of those of both sexes who showed evidences of high race and of belonging to prolific and thriving families. One cannot forecast their form, though we may reckon with some assurance that in one way or another they would be made, and that the better races would be given a better chance of marrying early.
A curious relic of the custom which was universal three or four centuries ago, of entrusting education to celibate priests, forbade Fellows of Colleges to marry, under the penalty of losing their fellowships. It is as though the winning horses at races were rendered ineligible to become sires, which I need hardly say is the exact reverse of the practice. Races were established and endowed by "Queen's plates" and otherwise at vast expense, for the purpose of discovering the swiftest horses, who are thenceforward exempted from labour and reserved for the sole purpose of propagating their species. The horses who do not win races, or who are not otherwise specially selected for their natural gifts, are prevented from becoming sires. Similarly, the mares who win races as fillies, are not allowed to waste their strength in being ridden or driven, but are tended under sanatory conditions for the sole purpose of bearing offspring. It is better economy, in the long-run, to use the best mares as breeders than as workers, the loss through their withdrawal from active service being more than recouped in the next generation through what is gained by their progeny.
The college statutes to which I referred were very recently relaxed at Oxford, and have been just reformed at Cambridge. I am told that numerous marriages have ensued in consequence, or are ensuing. In Hereditary Genius I showed that scholastic success runs strongly in families; therefore, in all seriousness, I have no doubt, that the number of Englishmen naturally endowed with high scholastic faculties, will be sensibly increased in future generations by the repeal of these ancient statutes.
The English race has yet to be explored and their now unknown wealth of hereditary gifts recorded, that those who possess such a patrimony should know of it. The natural impulses of mankind would then be sufficient to ensure that such wealth should no more continue to be neglected than the existence of any other possession suddenly made known to a man. Aristocracies seldom make alliances out of their order, except to gain wealth. Is it less to be expected that those who become aware that they are endowed with the power of transmitting valuable hereditary gifts should abstain from squandering their future children's patrimony by marrying persons of lower natural stamp? The social consideration that would attach itself to high races would, it may be hoped, partly neutralise a social cause that is now very adverse to the early marriages of the most gifted, namely, the cost of living in cultured and refined society. A young man with a career before him commonly feels it would be an act of folly to hamper himself by too early a marriage. The doors of society that are freely open to a bachelor are closed to a married couple with small means, unless they bear patent recommendations such as the public recognition of a natural nobility would give. The attitude of mind that I should expect to predominate among those who had undeniable claims to rank as members of an exceptionally gifted race, would be akin to that of the modern possessors of ancestral property or hereditary rank. Such persons feel it a point of honour not to alienate the old place or make misalliances, and they are respected for their honest family pride. So a man of good race would shrink from spoiling it by a lower marriage, and every one would sympathise with his sentiments.
It remains to sketch in outline the principal conclusions to which we seem to be driven by the results of the various inquiries contained in this volume, and by what we know on allied topics from the works of others.
We cannot but recognise the vast variety of natural faculty, useful and harmful, in members of the same race, and much more in the human family at large, all of which tend to be transmitted by inheritance. Neither can we fail to observe that the faculties of men generally, are unequal to the requirements of a high and growing civilisation. This is principally owing to their entire ancestry having lived up to recent times under very uncivilised conditions, and to the somewhat capricious distribution in late times of inherited wealth, which affords various degrees of immunity from the usual selective agencies.
In solution of the question whether a continual improvement in education might not compensate for a stationary or even retrograde condition of natural gifts, I made inquiry into the life history of twins, which resulted in proving the vastly preponderating effects of nature over nurture.
The fact that the very foundation and outcome of the human mind is dependent on race, and that the qualities of races vary, and therefore that humanity taken as a whole is not fixed but variable, compels us to reconsider what may be the true place and function of man in the order of the world. I have examined this question freely from many points of view, because whatever may be the vehemence with which particular opinions are insisted upon, its solution is unquestionably doubtful. There is a wide and growing conviction among truth-seeking, earnest, humble-minded, and thoughtful men, both in this country and abroad, that our cosmic relations are by no means so clear and simple as they are popularly supposed to be, while the worthy and intelligent teachers of various creeds, who have strong persuasions on the character of those relations, do not concur in their several views.
The results of the inquiries I have made into certain alleged forms of our relations with the unseen world do not, so far as they go, confirm the common doctrines. One, for example, on the objective efficacy of prayer[20] was decidedly negative. It showed that while contradicting the commonly expressed doctrine, it concurred with the almost universal practical opinion of the present day. Another inquiry into visions showed that, however ill explained they may still be, they belong for the most part, if not altogether, to an order of phenomena which no one dreams in other cases of calling supernatural. Many investigations concur in showing the vast multiplicity of mental operations that are in simultaneous action, of which only a minute part falls within the ken of consciousness, and suggest that much of what passes for supernatural is due to one portion of our mind being contemplated by another portion of it, as if it had been that of another person. The term "individuality" is in fact a most misleading word.
[Footnote 20: Not reprinted in this edition.]
I do not for a moment wish to imply that the few inquiries published in this volume exhaust the list of those that might be made, for I distinctly hold the contrary, but I refer to them in corroboration of the previous assertion that our relations with the unseen world are different to those we are commonly taught to believe.
In our doubt as to the character of our mysterious relations with the unseen ocean of actual and potential life by which we are surrounded, the generally accepted fact of the solidarity of the universe--that is, of the intimate connections between distant parts that bind it together as a whole--justifies us, I think, in looking upon ourselves as members of a vast system which in one of its aspects resembles a cosmic republic.
On the one hand, we know that evolution has proceeded during an enormous time on this earth, under, so far as we can gather, a system of rigorous causation, with no economy of time or of instruments, and with no show of special ruth for those who may in pure ignorance have violated the conditions of life.
On the other hand, while recognising the awful mystery of conscious existence and the inscrutable background of evolution, we find that as the foremost outcome of many and long birth-throes, intelligent and kindly man finds himself in being. He knows how petty he is, but he also perceives that he stands here on this particular earth, at this particular time, as the heir of untold ages and in the van of circumstance. He ought therefore, I think, to be less diffident than he is usually instructed to be, and to rise to the conception that he has a considerable function to perform in the order of events, and that his exertions are needed. It seems to me that he should look upon himself more as a freeman, with power of shaping the course of future humanity, and that he should look upon himself less as the subject of a despotic government, in which case it would be his chief merit to depend wholly upon what had been regulated for him, and to render abject obedience.
The question then arises as to the way in which man can assist in the order of events. I reply, by furthering the course of evolution. He may use his intelligence to discover and expedite the changes that are necessary to adapt circumstance to race and race to circumstance, and his kindly sympathy will urge him to effect them mercifully.
When we begin to inquire, with some misgiving perhaps, as to the evidence that man has present power to influence the quality of future humanity, we soon discover that his past influence in that direction has been very large indeed. It has been exerted hitherto for other ends than that which is now contemplated, such as for conquest or emigration, also through social conditions whose effects upon race were imperfectly foreseen. There can be no doubt that the hitherto unused means of his influence are also numerous and great. I have not cared to go much into detail concerning these, but restricted myself to a few broad considerations, as by showing how largely the balance of population becomes affected by the earlier marriages of some of its classes, and by pointing out the great influence that endowments have had in checking the marriage of monks and scholars, and therefore the yet larger influence they might be expected to have if they were directed not to thwart but to harmonise with natural inclination, by promoting early marriages in the classes to be favoured. I also showed that a powerful influence might flow from a public recognition in early life of the true value of the probability of future performance, as based on the past performance of the ancestors of the child. It is an element of forecast, in addition to that of present personal merit, which has yet to be appraised and recognised. Its recognition would attract assistance in various ways, impossible now to specify, to the young families of those who were most likely to stock the world with healthy, moral, intelligent, and fair-natured citizens. The stream of charity is not unlimited, and it is requisite for the speedier evolution of a more perfect humanity that it should be so distributed as to favour the best-adapted races. I have not spoken of the repression of the rest, believing that it would ensue indirectly as a matter of course; but I may add that few would deserve better of their country than those who determine to live celibate lives, through a reasonable conviction that their issue would probably be less fitted than the generality to play their part as citizens.
It would be easy to add to the number of possible agencies by which the evolution of a higher humanity might be furthered, but it is premature to do so until the importance of attending to the improvement of our race shall have been so well established in the popular mind that a discussion of them would be likely to receive serious consideration.
It is hardly necessary to insist on the certainty that our present imperfect knowledge of the limitations and conditions of hereditary transmission will be steadily added to; but I would call attention again to the serious want of adequate materials for study in the form of life-histories. It is fortunately the case that many of the rising medical practitioners of the foremost rank are become strongly impressed with the necessity of possessing them, not only for the better knowledge of the theory of disease, but for the personal advantage of their patients, whom they now have to treat less appropriately than they otherwise would, through ignorance of their hereditary tendencies and of their illnesses in past years, the medical details of which are rarely remembered by the patient, even if he ever knew them. With the help of so powerful a personal motive for keeping life-histories, and of so influential a body as the medical profession to advocate its being done,[21] and to show how to do it, there is considerable hope that the want of materials to which I have alluded will gradually be supplied.
[Footnote 21: See an address on the Collective Investigation of Disease, by Sir William Gull, British Medical Journal, January 27, 1883, p. 143; also the following address by Sir James Paget, p. 144.]
To sum up in a few words. The chief result of these Inquiries has been to elicit the religious significance of the doctrine of evolution. It suggests an alteration in our mental attitude, and imposes a new moral duty. The new mental attitude is one of a greater sense of moral freedom, responsibility, and opportunity; the new duty which is supposed to be exercised concurrently with, and not in opposition to the old ones upon which the social fabric depends, is an endeavour to further evolution, especially that of the human race.
The object and methods of Composite Portraiture will be best explained by the following extracts from memoirs describing its successive stages, published in 1878, 1879, and 1881 respectively:--
I. PORTRAITS, MADE BY COMBINING THOSE OF MANY DIFFERENT PERSONS INTO A SINGLE RESULTANT FIGURE.
[Extract from Memoir read before the Anthropological Institute, in 1878.]
I submit to the Anthropological Institute my first results in carrying out a process that I suggested last August [1877] in my presidential address to the Anthropological Subsection of the British Association at Plymouth, in the following words:--
"Having obtained drawings or photographs of several persons alike in most respects, but differing in minor details, what sure method is there of extracting the typical characteristics from them? I may mention a plan which had occurred both to Mr. Herbert Spencer and myself, the principle of which is to superimpose optically the various drawings, and to accept the aggregate result. Mr. Spencer suggested to me in conversation that the drawings reduced to the same scale might be traced on separate pieces of transparent paper and secured one upon another, and then held between the eye and the light. I have attempted this with some success. My own idea was to throw faint images of the several portraits, in succession, upon the same sensitised photographic plate. I may add that it is perfectly easy to superimpose optically two portraits by means of a stereoscope, and that a person who is used to handle instruments will find a common double eyeglass fitted with stereoscopic lenses to be almost as effectual and far handier than the boxes sold in shops."
Mr. Spencer, as he informed me, had actually devised an instrument, many years ago, for tracing mechanically, longitudinal, transverse, and horizontal sections of heads on transparent paper, intending to superimpose them, and to obtain an average result by transmitted light.
Since my address was published, I have caused trials to be made, and have found, as a matter of fact, that the photographic process of which I there spoke enables us to obtain with mechanical precision a generalised picture; one that represents no man in particular, but portrays an imaginary figure possessing the average features of any given group of men. These ideal faces have a surprising air of reality. Nobody who glanced at one of them for the first time would doubt its being the likeness of a living person, yet, as I have said, it is no such thing; it is the portrait of a type and not of an individual.
I begin by collecting photographs of the persons with whom I propose to deal. They must be similar in attitude and size, but no exactness is necessary in either of these respects. Then, by a simple contrivance, I make two pinholes in each of them, to enable me to hang them up one in front of the other, like a pack of cards, upon the same pair of pins, in such a way that the eyes of all the portraits shall be as nearly as possible superimposed; in which case the remainder of the features will also be superimposed nearly enough. These pinholes correspond to what are technically known to printers as "register marks."
They are easily made: A slip of brass or card has an aperture cut out of its middle, and threads are stretched from opposite sides, making a cross.[22] Two small holes are drilled in the plate, one on either side of the aperture. The slip of brass is laid on the portrait with the aperture over its face. It is turned about until one of the cross threads cuts the pupils of both the eyes, and it is further adjusted until the other thread divides the interval between the pupils in two equal parts. Then it is held firmly, and a prick is made through each of the holes.
[Footnote 22: I am indebted for the woodcuts to the Editor of Nature, in which journal this memoir first appeared.]
The portraits being thus arranged, a photographic camera is directed upon them. Suppose there are eight portraits in the pack, and that under existing circumstances it would require an exposure of eighty seconds to give an exact photographic copy of any one of them. The general principle of proceeding is this, subject in practice to some variations of detail, depending on the different brightness of the several portraits. We throw the image of each of the eight portraits in turn upon the same part of the sensitised plate for ten seconds. Thus, portrait No. 1 is in the front of the pack; we take the cap off the object glass of the camera for ten seconds, and afterwards replace it. We then remove No. 1 from the pins, and No. 2 appears in the front; we take off the cap a second time for ten seconds, and again replace it. Next we remove No. 2, and No. 3 appears in the front, which we treat as its predecessors, and so we go on to the last of the pack.
The sensitised plate will now have had its total exposure of eighty seconds; it is then developed, and the print taken from it is the generalised picture of which I speak. It is a composite of eight component portraits. Those of its outlines are sharpest and darkest that are common to the largest number of the components; the purely individual peculiarities leave little or no visible trace. The latter being necessarily disposed equally on both sides of the average, the outline of the composite is the average of all the components. It is a band and not a fine line, because the outlines of the components are seldom exactly superimposed. The band will be darkest in its middle whenever the component portraits have the same general type of features, and its breadth, or amount of blur, will measure the tendency of the components to deviate from the common type. This is so for the very same reason that the shot-marks on a target are more thickly disposed near the bull's-eye than away from it, and in a greater degree as the marksmen are more skilful. All that has been said of the outlines is equally true as regards the shadows; the result being that the composite represents an averaged figure, whose lineaments have been softly drawn. The eyes come out with appropriate distinctness, owing to the mechanical conditions under which the components are hung.
A composite portrait represents the picture that would rise before the mind's eye of a man who had the gift of pictorial imagination in an exalted degree. But the imaginative power even of the highest artists is far from precise, and is so apt to be biassed by special cases that may have struck their fancies, that no two artists agree in any of their typical forms. The merit of the photographic composite is its mechanical precision, being subject to no errors beyond those incidental to all photographic productions.
I submit several composites made for me by Mr. H. Reynolds. The first set of portraits are those of criminals convicted of murder, manslaughter, or robbery accompanied with violence. It will be observed that the features of the composites are much better looking than those of the components. The special villainous irregularities in the latter have disappeared, and the common humanity that underlies them has prevailed. They represent, not the criminal, but the man who is liable to fall into crime. All composites are better looking than their components, because the averaged portrait of many persons is free from the irregularities that variously blemish the looks of each of them.
I selected these for my first trials because I happened to possess a large collection of photographs of criminals, through the kindness of Sir Edmund Du Cane, the Director-General of Prisons, for the purpose of investigating criminal types. They were peculiarly adapted to my present purpose, being all made of about the same size, and taken in much the same attitudes. It was while endeavouring to elicit the principal criminal types by methods of optical superimposition of the portraits, such as I had frequently employed with maps and meteorological traces,[23] that the idea of composite figures first occurred to me.
[Footnote 23: Conference at the Loan Exhibition of Scientific Instruments, 1878. Chapman and Hall. Physical Geography Section, p. 312, On Means of Combining Various Data in Maps and Diagrams, by Francis Galton, F.R.S.]
The other set of composites are made from pairs of components. They are selected to show the extraordinary facility of combining almost any two faces whose proportions are in any way similar.
It will, I am sure, surprise most persons to see how well defined these composites are. When we deal with faces of the same type, the points of similarity far outnumber those of dissimilarity, and there is a much greater resemblance between faces generally than we who turn our attention to individual differences are apt to appreciate. A traveller on his first arrival among people of a race very different to his own thinks them closely alike, and a Hindu has much difficulty in distinguishing one Englishman from another.
The fairness with which photographic composites represent their components is shown by six of the specimens. I wished to learn whether the order in which the components were photographed made any material difference in the result, so I had three of the portraits arranged successively in each of their six possible combinations. It will be observed that four at least of the six composites are closely alike. I should say that in each of this set (which was made by the wet process) the last of the three components was always allowed a longer exposure than the second, and the second than the first, but it is found better to allow an equal time to all of them.
The accompanying woodcut is as fair a representation of one of the composites as is practicable in ordinary printing. It was photographically transferred to the wood, and the engraver has used his best endeavour to translate the shades into line engraving. This composite is made out of only three components, and its threefold origin is to be traced in the ears, and in the buttons to the vest. To the best of my judgment, the original photograph is a very exact average of its components; not one feature in it appears identical with that of any one of them, but it contains a resemblance to all, and is not more like to one of them than to another. However, the judgment of the wood engraver is different. His rendering of the composite has made it exactly like one of its components, which it must be borne in mind he had never seen. It is just as though an artist drawing a child had produced a portrait closely resembling its deceased father, having overlooked an equally strong likeness to its deceased mother, which was apparent to its relatives. This is to me a most striking proof that the composite is a true combination.
The stereoscope, as I stated last August in my address at Plymouth, affords a very easy method of optically superimposing two portraits, and I have much pleasure in quoting the following letter, pointing out this fact as well as some other conclusions to which I also had arrived. The letter was kindly forwarded to me by Mr. Darwin; it is dated last November, and was written to him by Mr. A.L. Austin, from New Zealand, thus affording another of the many curious instances of two persons being independently engaged in the same novel inquiry at nearly the same time, and coming to similar results:--
INVERCARGILL, NEW ZEALAND, November 6th, 1877.
To CHARLES DARWIN, Esq.
SIR,--Although a perfect stranger to you, and living on the reverse side of the globe, I have taken the liberty of writing to you on a small discovery I have made in binocular vision in the stereoscope. I find by taking two ordinary carre-de-visite photos of two different persons' faces, the portraits being about the same sizes, and looking about the same direction, and placing them in a stereoscope, the faces blend into one in a most remarkable manner, producing in the case of some ladies' portraits, in every instance, a decided improvement in beauty. The pictures were not taken in a binocular camera, and therefore do not stand out well, but by moving one or both until the eyes coincide in the stereoscope the pictures blend perfectly. If taken in a binocular camera for the purpose, each person being taken on one half of the negative, I am sure the results would be still more striking. Perhaps something might be made of this in regard to the expression of emotions in man and the lower animals, etc. I have not time or opportunities to make experiments, but it seems to me something might be made of this by photographing the faces of different animals, different races of mankind, etc. I think a stereoscopic view of one of the ape tribe and some low-caste human face would make a very curious mixture; also in the matter of crossing of animals and the resulting offspring. It seems to me something also might result in photos of husband and wife and children, etc. In any case, the results are curious, if it leads to nothing else. Should this come to anything you will no doubt acknowledge myself as suggesting the experiment, and perhaps send me some of the results. If not likely to come to anything, a reply would much oblige me.
Yours very truly, A.L. AUSTIN, C.E., F.R.A.S."
Dr. Carpenter informs me that the late Mr. Appold, the mechanician, used to combine two portraits of himself under the stereoscope. The one had been taken with an assumed stern expression, the other with a smile, and this combination produced a curious and effective blending of the two.
Convenient as the stereoscope is, owing to its accessibility, for determining whether any two portraits are suitable in size and attitude to form a good composite, it is nevertheless a makeshift and imperfect way of attaining the required result. It cannot of itself combine two images; it can only place them so that the office of attempting to combine them may be undertaken by the brain. Now the two separate impressions received by the brain through the stereoscope do not seem to me to be relatively constant in their vividness, but sometimes the image seen by the left eye prevails over that seen by the right, and vice versâ. All the other instruments I am about to describe accomplish that which the stereoscope fails to do; they create true optical combinations. As regards other points in Mr. Austin's letter, I cannot think that the use of a binocular camera for taking the two portraits intended to be combined into one by the stereoscope would be of importance. All that is wanted is that the portraits should be nearly of the same size. In every other respect I cordially agree with Mr. Austin.
The best instrument I have as yet contrived and used for optical superimposition is a "double-image prism" of Iceland spar (see Fig., p. 228), formerly procured for me by the late Mr. Tisley, optician, Brompton Road. They have a clear aperture of a square, half an inch in the side, and when held at right angles to the line of sight will separate the ordinary and extraordinary images to the amount of two inches, when the object viewed is held at seventeen inches from the eye. This is quite sufficient for working with carte-de-visite portraits. One image is quite achromatic, the other shows a little colour. The divergence may be varied and adjusted by inclining the prism to the line of sight. By its means the ordinary image of one component is thrown upon the extraordinary image of the other, and the composite may be viewed by the naked eye, or through a lens of long focus, or through an opera-glass (a telescope is not so good) fitted with a sufficiently long draw-tube to see an object at that short distance with distinctness. Portraits of somewhat different sizes may be combined by placing the larger one farther from the eye, and a long face may be fitted to a short one by inclining and foreshortening the former. The slight fault of focus thereby occasioned produces little or no sensible ill effect on the appearance of the composite.
The front, or the profile, faces of two living persons sitting side by side or one behind the other, can be easily superimposed by a double-image prism. Two such prisms set one behind the other can be made to give four images of equal brightness, occupying the four corners of a rhombus whose acute angles are 45°. Three prisms will give eight images, but this is practically not a good combination; the images fail in distinctness, and are too near together for use. Again, each lens of a stereoscope of long focus can have one or a pair of these prisms attached to it, and four or eight images may be thus combined.
Another instrument I have made consists of a piece of glass inclined at a very acute angle to the line of sight, and of a mirror beyond it, also inclined, but in the opposite direction to the line of sight. Two rays of light will therefore reach the eye from each point of the glass; the one has been reflected from its surface, and the other has been first reflected from the mirror, and then transmitted through the glass. The glass used should be extremely thin, to avoid the blur due to double reflections; it may be a selected piece from those made to cover microscopic specimens. The principle of the instrument may be yet further developed by interposing additional pieces of glass, successively less inclined to the line of sight, and each reflecting a different portrait.
Fig. 1 shows the simple apparatus which carries the prism and on which the photograph is mounted. The former is set in a round box which can be rotated in the ring at the end of the arm and can be clamped when adjusted. The arm can be rotated and can also be pulled out or in if desired, and clamped. The floor of the instrument is overlaid with cork covered with black cloth, on which the components can easily be fixed by drawing-pins. When using it, one portrait is pinned down and the other is moved near to it, overlapping its margin if necessary, until the eye looking through the prism sees the required combination; then the second portrait is pinned down also. It may now receive its register-marks from needles fixed in a hinged arm, and this is a more generally applicable method than the plan with cross threads, already described, as any desired feature--the nose, the ear, or the hand, may thus be selected for composite purposes. Let A, B, C, ... Y, Z, be the components. A is pinned down, and B, C, ... Y, Z, are successfully combined with A, and registered. Then before removing Z, take away A and substitute any other of the already registered portraits, say B, by combining it with Z; lastly, remove Z and substitute A by combining it with B, and register it. Fig. 2 shows one of three similarly jointed arms, which clamp on to the vertical covered with cork and cloth, and the other carries Fig. 3, which is a frame having lenses of different powers set into it, and on which, or on the third frame, a small mirror inclined at 45º may be laid. When a portrait requires foreshortening it can be pinned on one of these frames and be inclined to the line of sight; when it is smaller than its fellow it can be brought nearer to the eye and an appropriate lens interposed; when a right-sided profile has to be combined with a left-handed one, it must be pinned on one of the frames and viewed by reflection from the mirror in the other. The apparatus I have drawn is roughly made, and being chiefly of wood is rather clumsy, but it acts well.
I have tried many other plans; indeed the possible methods of optically superimposing two or more images are very numerous. Thus I have used a sextant (with its telescope attached); also strips of mirrors placed at different angles, their several reflections being simultaneously viewed through a telescope. I have also used a divided lens, like two stereoscopic lenses brought close together, in front of the object glass of a telescope.
II. GENERIC IMAGES.
[Extract from Proceedings Royal Institution, 25th April 1879]
Our general impressions are founded upon blended memories, and these latter will be the chief topic of the present discourse. An analogy will be pointed out between these and the blended portraits first described by myself a year ago under the name of "Composite Portraits," and specimens of the latter will be exhibited.
The physiological basis of memory is simple enough in its broad outlines. Whenever any group of brain elements has been excited by a sense impression, it becomes, so to speak, tender, and liable to be easily thrown again into a similar state of excitement. If the new cause of excitement differs from the original one, a memory is the result. Whenever a single cause throws different groups of brain elements simultaneously into excitement, the result must be a blended memory.
We are familiar with the fact that faint memories are very apt to become confused. Thus some picture of mountain and lake in a country which we have never visited, often recalls a vague sense of identity with much we have seen elsewhere. Our recollections cannot be disentangled, though general resemblances are recognised. It is also a fact that the memories of persons who have great powers of visualising, that is, of seeing well-defined images in the mind's eye, are no less capable of being blended together. Artists are, as a class, possessed of the visualising power in a high degree, and they are at the same time pre-eminently distinguished by their gifts of generalisation. They are of all men the most capable of producing forms that are not copies of any individual, but represent the characteristic features of classes.
There is then, no doubt, from whatever side the subject of memory is approached, whether from the material or from the mental, and, in the latter case, whether we examine the experiences of those in whom the visualising faculty is faint or in whom it is strong, that the brain has the capacity of blending memories together. Neither can there be any doubt that general impressions are faint and perhaps faulty editions of blended memories. They are subject to errors of their own, and they inherit all those to which the memories are themselves liable.
Specimens of blended portraits will now be exhibited; these might, with more propriety, be named, according to the happy phrase of Professor Huxley, "generic" portraits. The word generic presupposes a genus, that is to say, a collection of individuals who have much in common, and among whom medium characteristics are very much more frequent than extreme ones. The same idea is sometimes expressed by the word "typical," which was much used by Quetelet, who was the first to give it a rigorous interpretation, and whose idea of a type lies at the basis of his statistical views. No statistician dreams of combining objects into the same generic group that do not cluster towards a common centre; no more should we attempt to compose generic portraits out of heterogeneous elements, for if we do so the result is monstrous and meaningless.
It might be expected that when many different portraits are fused into a single one, the result would be a mere smudge. Such, however, is by no means the case, under the conditions just laid down, of a great prevalence of the mediocre characteristics over the extreme ones. There are then so many traits in common, to combine and to reinforce one another, that they prevail to the exclusion of the rest. All that is common remains, all that is individual tends to disappear.
The first of the composites exhibited on this occasion is made by conveying the images of three separate portraits by means of three separate magic-lanterns upon the same screen. The stands on which the lanterns are mounted have been arranged to allow of nice adjustment. The composite about to be shown is one that strains the powers of the process somewhat too severely, the portraits combined being those of two brothers and their sister, who have not even been photographed in precisely the same attitudes. Nevertheless, the result is seen to be the production of a face, neither male nor female, but more regular and handsome than any of the component portraits, and in which the common family traits are clearly marked. Ghosts of portions of male and female attire, due to the peculiarities of the separate portraits, are seen about and around the composite, but they are not sufficiently vivid to distract the attention. If the number of combined portraits had been large, these ghostly accessories would have become too faint to be visible.
The next step is to compare this portrait of two brothers and their sister which has been composed by optical means before the eyes of the audience, and concerning the truthfulness of which there can be no doubt, with a photographic composite of the same group. The latter is now placed in a fourth magic-lantern with a brighter light behind it, and its image is thrown on the screen by the side of the composite produced by direct optical superposition. It will be observed that the two processes lead to almost exactly the same result, and therefore the fairness of the photographic process may be taken for granted. However, two other comparisons will be made for the sake of verification, namely, between the optical and photographic composites of two children, and again between those of two Roman contadini.
The composite portraits that will next be exhibited are made by the photographic process, and it will now be understood that they are truly composite, notwithstanding their definition and apparent individuality. Attention is, however, first directed to a convenient instrument not more than 18 inches in length, which is, in fact, a photographic camera with six converging lenses and an attached screen, on which six pictures can be adjusted and brilliantly illuminated by artificial light. The effect of their optical combination can thus be easily studied; any errors of adjustment can be rectified, and the composite may be photographed at once.
It must not be supposed that any one of the components fails to leave its due trace in the photographic composite, much less in the optical one. In order to allay misgivings on the subject, a small apparatus is laid on the table together with some of the results obtained by it. It is a cardboard frame, with a spring shutter closing an aperture of the size of a wafer, that springs open on the pressure of a finger, and shuts again as suddenly when the pressure is withdrawn. A chronograph is held in the other hand, whose index begins to travel the moment the finger presses a spring, and stops instantly on lifting the finger. The two instruments are worked simultaneously; the chronograph checking the time allowed for each exposure and summing all the times. It appears from several trials that the effect of 1000 brief exposures is practically identical with that of a single exposure of 1000 times the duration of any one of them. Therefore each of a thousand components leaves its due photographic trace on the composite, though it is far too faint to be visible unless reinforced by many similar traces.
The composites now to be exhibited are made from coins or medals, and in most instances the aim has been to obtain the best likeness attainable of historical personages, by combining various portraits of them taken at different periods of their lives, and so to elicit the traits that are common to each series. A few of the individual portraits are placed in the same slide with each composite to give a better idea of the character of these blended representatives. Those that are shown are (1) Alexander the Great, from six components; (2) Antiochus, King of Syria, from six; (3) Demetrius Poliorcetes, from six; (4) Cleopatra, from five. Here the composite is as usual better looking than any of the components, none of which, however, give any indication of her reputed beauty; in fact, her features are not only plain, but to an ordinary English taste are simply hideous. (5) Nero, from eleven; (6) A combination of five different Greek female faces; and (7) A singularly beautiful combination of the faces of six different Roman ladies, forming a charming ideal profile.
My cordial acknowledgment is due to Mr. R. Stuart Poole, the learned curator of the coins and gems in the British Museum, for his kind selection of the most suitable medals, and for procuring casts of them for me for the present purpose. These casts were, with one exception, all photographed to a uniform size of four-tenths of an inch between the pupils of the eyes and the division between the lips, which experience shows to be the most convenient size on the whole to work with, regard being paid to many considerations not worth while to specify in detail. When it was necessary the photograph was reversed. These photographs were made by Mr. H. Reynolds; I then adjusted and prepared them for taking the photographic composite.
The next series to be exhibited consists of composites taken from the portraits of criminals convicted of murder, manslaughter, or crimes accompanied by violence. There is much interest in the fact that two types of features are found much more frequently among these than among the population at large. In one, the features are broad and massive, like those of Henry VIII., but with a much smaller brain. The other, of which five composites are exhibited, each deduced from a number of different individuals, varying four to nine, is a face that is weak and certainly not a common English face. Three of these composites, though taken from entirely different sets of individuals, are as alike as brothers, and it is found on optically combining any three out of the five composites, that is on combining almost any considerable number of the individuals, the result is closely the same. The combination of the three composites just alluded to will now be effected by means of the three converging magic-lanterns, and the result may be accepted as generic in respect of this particular type of criminals.
The process of composite portraiture is one of pictorial statistics. It is a familiar fact that the average height of even a dozen men of the same race, taken at hazard, varies so little, that for ordinary statistical purposes it may be considered constant. The same may be said of the measurement of every separate feature and limb, and of every tint, whether of skin, hair, or eyes. Consequently a pictorial combination of any one of these separate traits would lead to results no less constant than the statistical averages. In a portrait, there is another factor to be considered besides the measurement of the separate traits, namely, their relative position; but this, too, in a sufficiently large group, would necessarily have a statistical constancy. As a matter of observation, the resemblance between persons of the same "genus" (in the sense of "generic," as already explained) is sufficiently great to admit of making good pictorial composites out of even small groups, as has been abundantly shown.
Composite pictures, are, however, much more than averages; they are rather the equivalents of those large statistical tables whose totals, divided by the number of cases, and entered in the bottom line, are the averages. They are real generalisations, because they include the whole of the material under consideration. The blur of their outlines, which is never great in truly generic composites, except in unimportant details, measures the tendency of individuals to deviate from the central type. My argument is, that the generic images that arise before the mind's eye, and the general impressions which are faint and faulty editions of them, are the analogues of these composite pictures which we have the advantage of examining at leisure, and whose peculiarities and character we can investigate, and from which we may draw conclusions that shall throw much light on the nature of certain mental processes which are too mobile and evanescent to be directly dealt with.
III. COMPOSITE PORTRAITURE.
[Read before the Photographic Society, 24th June, 1881.]
I propose to draw attention to-night to the results of recent experiments and considerable improvements in a process of which I published the principles three years ago, and which I have subsequently exhibited more than once.
I have shown that, if we have the portraits of two or more different persons, taken in the same aspect and under the same conditions of light and shade, and that if we put them into different optical lanterns converging on the same screen and carefully adjust them--first, so as to bring them to the same scale, and, secondly, so as to superpose them as accurately as the conditions admit--then the different faces will blend surprisingly well into a single countenance. If they are not very dissimilar, the blended result will always have a curious air of individuality, and will be unexpectedly well defined; it will exactly resemble none of its components, but it will have a sort of family likeness to all of them, and it will be an ideal and an averaged portrait. I have also shown that the image on the screen might be photographed then and there, or that the same result may be much more easily obtained by a method of successive photography, and I have exhibited many specimens made on this principle. Photo-lithographs of some of these will be found in the Proceedings of the Royal Institution, as illustrations of a lecture I gave there "On Generic Images" in 1879.
The method I now use is much better than those previously described; it leads to more accurate results, and is easier to manage. I will exhibit and explain the apparatus as it stands, and will indicate some improvements as I go on. The apparatus is here. I use it by gaslight, and employ rapid dry plates, which, however, under the conditions of a particularly small aperture and the character of the light, require sixty seconds of total exposure. The apparatus is 4 feet long and 6-1/2 inches broad; it lies with its side along the edge of the table at which I sit, and it is sloped towards me, so that, by bending my neck slightly, I can bring my eye to an eye-hole, where I watch the effect of the adjustments which my hands are free to make. The entire management of the whole of these is within an easy arm's length, and I complete the process without shifting my seat.
The apparatus consists of three parts, A, B, and C. A is rigidly fixed; it contains the dark slide and the contrivances by which the position of the image can be viewed; the eye-hole, e, already mentioned, being part of A. B is a travelling carriage that holds the lens, and is connected by bellows-work with A. In my apparatus it is pushed out and in, and clamped where desired, but it ought to be moved altogether by pinion and rack-work.[24] The lens I use is a I B Dallmeyer. Its focal length is appropriate to the size of the instrument, and I find great convenience in a lens of wide aperture when making the adjustments, as I then require plenty of light; but, as to the photography, the smaller the aperture the better. The hole in my stop is only two-tenths of an inch in diameter, and I believe one-tenth would be more suitable.
[Footnote 24: I have since had a more substantial instrument made with these and similar improvements.]
A The body of the camera, which is fixed.
B Lens on a carriage, which can be moved to and fro.
C Frame for the transparency, on a carriage that also supports the lantern; the whole can be moved to and fro.>
r The reflector inside the camera.
m The arm outside the camera attached to the axis of the reflector; by moving it, the reflector can be moved up or down.
g A ground-glass screen on the roof, which receives the image when the reflector is turned down, as in the diagram.
e The eye-hole through which the image is viewed on g; a thin piece of glass immediately below e, reflects the illuminated fiducial lines in the transparency at f, and gives them the appearance of lying upon g,--the distances f e and g e being made equal, the angle f e g being made a right angle, and the plane of the thin piece of glass being made to bisect f e g.
f Framework, adjustable, holding the transparency with the fiducial lines on it.
t Framework, adjustable, holding the transparency of the portrait.
C is a travelling carriage that supports the portraits in turn, from which the composite has to be made. I work directly from the original negatives with transmitted light; but prints can be used with light falling on their face.
For convenience of description I will confine myself to the first instance only, and will therefore speak of C as the carriage that supports the frame that holds the negative transparencies. C can be pushed along the board and be clamped anywhere, and it has a rack and pinion adjustment; but it should have been made movable by rack and pinion along the whole length of the board. The frame for the transparencies has the same movements of adjustment as those in the stage of a microscope. It rotates round a hollow axis, through which a beam of light is thrown, and independent movements in the plane, at right angles to the axis, can be given to it in two directions, at right angles to one another, by turning two separate screws. The beam of light is furnished by three gas-burners, and it passes through a condenser. The gas is supplied through a flexible tube that does not interfere with the movements of C, and it is governed by a stop-cock in front of the operator.
The apparatus, so far as it has been described with any detail, and ignoring what was said about an eye-hole, is little else than a modified copying-camera, by which an image of the transparency could be thrown on the ordinary focusing-screen, and be altered in scale and position until it was adjusted to fiducial lines drawn on the screen. It is conceivable that this should be done, and that the screen should be replaced by the dark slide, and a brief exposure given to the plate; then, that a fresh transparency should be inserted, a fresh focusing adjustment made, and a second exposure given, and so on. This, I say, is conceivable, but it would be very inconvenient. The adjusting screws would be out of reach; the head of the operator would be in an awkward position; and though these two difficulties might be overcome in some degree, a serious risk of an occasional shift of the plate during the frequent replacement of the dark slide would remain. I avoid all this by making my adjustments while the plate continues in position with its front open. I do so through the help of a reflector temporarily interposed between it and the lens. I do not use the ordinary focusing-screen at all in making my adjustments, but one that is flush, or nearly so, with the roof of the camera. When the reflector is interposed, the image is wholly cut off from the sensitised plate, and is thrown upwards against this focusing-screen, g. When the reflector is withdrawn, the image falls on the plate. It is upon this focusing-screen in the roof that I see the fiducial lines by which I make all the adjustments. Nothing can be more convenient than the position of this focusing-screen for working purposes. I look down on the image as I do upon a book resting on a sloping desk, and all the parts of the apparatus are within an easy arm's length.
My reflector in my present instrument is, I am a little ashamed to confess, nothing better than a piece of looking-glass fixed to an axle within the camera, near its top left-hand edge. One end of the axle protrudes, and has a short arm; when I push the arm back, the mirror is raised; when I push it forward it drops down. I used a swing-glass because the swing action is very true, and as my apparatus was merely a provisional working model made of soft wood, I did not like to use sliding arrangements which might not have acted truly, or I should certainly have employed a slide with a rectangular glass prism, on account of the perfect reflection it affords. And let me say, that a prism of 2 inches square in the side is quite large enough for adjustment purposes, for it is only the face of the portrait that is wanted to be seen. I chose my looking-glass carefully, and selected a piece that was plane and parallel. It has not too high a polish, and therefore does not give troublesome double reflections. In fact, it answers very respectably, especially when we consider that perfection of definition is thrown away on composites. I thought of a mirror silvered on the front of the glass, but this would soon tarnish in the gaslight, so I did not try it. For safety against the admission of light unintentionally, I have a cap to the focusing-screen in the roof, and a slide in the fixed body of the instrument immediately behind the reflector and before the dark slide. Neither of these would be wanted if the reflector was replaced by a prism, set into one end of a sliding block that had a large horizontal hole at the other end, and a sufficient length of solid wood between the two to block out the passage of light both upwards and downwards whenever the block is passing through the half-way position.
As regards the fiducial lines, they might be drawn on the glass screen; but black lines are not, I find, the best. It is far easier to work with illuminated lines; and it is important to be able to control their brightness. I produce these lines by means of a vertical transparency, set in an adjustable frame, connected with A, and having a gas-light behind it. Below the eye-hole e, through which I view the glass-screen g, is a thin piece of glass set at an angle of 45°, which reflects the fiducial lines and gives them the appearance of lying on the screen, the frame being so adjusted that the distance from the thin piece of glass to the transparency and to the glass-screen g is the same. I thus obtain beautiful fiducial lines, which I can vary from extreme faintness to extreme brilliancy, by turning the gas lower or higher, according to the brightness of the image of the portrait, which itself depends on the density of the transparency that I am engaged upon. This arrangement seems as good as can be. It affords a gauge of the density of the negative, and enables me to regulate the burners behind it, until the image of the portrait on g is adjusted to a standard degree of brightness.
For convenience in enlarging or reducing, I take care that the intersection of the vertical fiducial line with that which passes through the pupils of the eyes shall correspond to the optical axis of the camera. Then, as I enlarge or reduce, that point in the image remains fixed. The uppermost horizontal fiducial line continues to intersect the pupils, and the vertical one continues to divide the face symmetrically. The mouth has alone to be watched. When the mouth is adjusted to the lower fiducial line, the scale is exact. It is a great help having to attend to no more than one varying element. The only inconvenience is that the image does not lie in the best position on the plate when the point between the eyes occupies its centre. This is easily remedied by using a larger back with a suitable inner frame. I have a more elaborate contrivance in my apparatus to produce the same result, which I need not stop to explain.
For success and speed in making composites, the apparatus should be solidly made, chiefly of metal, and all the adjustments ought to work smoothly and accurately. Good composites cannot be made without very careful adjustment in scale and position. An off-hand way of working produces nothing but failures.
I will first exhibit a very simple but instructive composite effect. I drew on a square card a circle of about 2-1/2 inches in diameter, and two cross lines through its centre, cutting one another at right angles. Round each of the four points, 90° apart, where the cross cuts the circle, I drew small circles of the size of wafers and gummed upon each a disc of different tint. Finally I made a single black dot half-way between two of the arms of the cross. I then made a composite of the four positions of the card, as it was placed successively with each of its sides downwards. The result is a photograph having a sharply-defined cross surrounded by four discs of precisely uniform tint, and between each pair of arms of the cross there is a very faint dot. This photograph shows many things. The fact of its being a composite is shown by the four faint dots. The equality of the successive periods of exposure is shown by the equal tint of the four dots. The accuracy of adjustment is shown by the sharpness of the cross being as great in the composite as in the original card. We see the smallness of the effect produced by any trait, such as the dot, when it appears in the same place in only one of the components: if this effect be so small in a series of only four components, it would certainly be imperceptible in a much larger series. Thirdly, the uniformity of resulting tint in the composite wafer is quite irrespective of the order of exposure. Let us call the four component wafers A, B, C, D, respectively, and the four composite wafers 1, 2, 3, 4; then we see, by the diagram, that the order of exposure has differed in each case, yet the result is identical. Therefore the order of exposure has no effect on the result.
In 1 it has been A, D, C, B, " 2 " B, A, D, C, " 3 " C, B, A, D, " 4 " D, C, B, A,
I will next show a series consisting of two portraits considerably unlike to one another, and yet not so very discordant as to refuse to conform, and of two intermediate composites. In making one of the composites I gave two-thirds of the total time of exposure to the first portrait, and one-third to the second portrait. In making the other composite, I did the converse. It will be seen how good is the result in both cases, and how the likeness of the longest exposed portrait always predominates.
The next is a series of four composites. The first consists of 57 hospital patients suffering under one or other of the many forms of consumption. I may say that, with the aid of Dr. Mahomed, I am endeavouring to utilise this process to elicit the physiognomy of disease. The composite I now show is what I call a hotch-pot composite; its use is to form a standard whence deviations towards any particular sub-type may be conveniently gauged. It will be observed that the face is strongly marked, and that it is quite idealised. I claim for composite portraiture, that it affords a method of obtaining pictorial averages, which effects simultaneously for every point in a picture what a method of numerical averages would do for each point in the picture separately. It gives, in short, the average tint of every unit of area in the picture, measured from the fiducial lines as co-ordinates. Now every statistician knows, by experience, that numerical averages usually begin to agree pretty fairly when we deal with even twenty or thirty cases. Therefore we should expect to find that any groups of twenty or thirty men of the same class would yield composites bearing a considerable likeness to one another. In proof that this is the case, I exhibit three other composites: the one is made from the first 28 portraits of the 57, the second from the last 27, and the third is made from 36 portraits taken indiscriminately out of the 57. It will be observed that all the four composites are closely alike.
I will now show a few typical portraits I selected out of 82 male portraits of a different series of consumptive male patients; they were those that had more or less of a particular wan look, that I wished to elicit. The selected cases were about 18 in number, and from these I took 12, rejecting about six as having some marked peculiarity that did not conform well with the remaining 12. The result is a very striking face, thoroughly ideal and artistic, and singularly beautiful. It is, indeed, most notable how beautiful all composites are. Individual peculiarities are all irregularities, and the composite is always regular.
I show a composite of 15 female faces, also of consumptive patients, that gives somewhat the same aspect of the disease; also two others of only 6 in each, that have in consequence less of an ideal look, but which are still typical. I have here several other typical faces in my collection of composites; they are all serviceable as illustrations of this memoir, but, medically speaking, they are only provisional results.
I am indebted to Lieutenant Leonard Darwin, R.E., for an interesting series of negatives of officers and privates of the Royal Engineers. Here is a composite of 12 officers; here is one of 30 privates. I then thought it better to select from the latter the men that came from the southern counties, and to again make a further selection of 11 from these, on the principle already explained. Here is the result. It is very interesting to note the stamp of culture and refinement on the composite officer, and the honest and vigorous but more homely features of the privates. The combination of these two, officers and privates together, gives a very effective physiognomy.
Let it be borne in mind that existing cartes-de-visite are almost certain to be useless. Among dozens of them it is hard to find three that fulfil the conditions of similarity of aspect and of shade. The negatives have to be made on purpose. I use a repeating back and a quarter plate, and get two good-sized heads on each plate, and of a scale that never gives less than four-tenths of an inch between the pupils of the eyes and the mouth. It is only the head that can be used, as more distant parts, even the ears, become blurred hopelessly.
It will be asked, of what use can all this be to ordinary photographers, even granting that it may be of scientific value in ethnological research, in inquiries into the physiognomy of disease, and for other special purposes? I think it can be turned to most interesting account in the production of family likenesses. The most unartistic productions of amateur photography do quite as well for making composites as those of the best professional workers, because their blemishes vanish in the blended result. All that amateurs have to do is to take negatives of the various members of their families in precisely the same aspect (I recommend either perfect full-face or perfect profile), and under precisely the same conditions of light and shade, and to send them to a firm provided with proper instrumental appliances to make composites from them. The result is sure to be artistic in expression and flatteringly handsome, and would be very interesting to the members of the family. Young and old, and persons of both sexes can be combined into one ideal face. I can well imagine a fashion setting in to have these pictures.
Professional skill might be exercised very effectively in retouching composites. It would be easy to obliterate the ghosts of stray features that are always present when the composite is made from only a few portraits, and it would not be difficult to tone down any irregularity in the features themselves, due to some obtrusive peculiarity in one of the components. A higher order of artistic skill might be well bestowed upon the composites that have been made out of a large number of components. Here the irregularities disappear, the features are perfectly regular and idealised, but the result is dim. It is like a pencil drawing, where many attempts have been made to obtain the desired effect; such a drawing is smudged and ineffective; but the artist, under its guidance, draws his final work with clear bold touches, and then he rubs out the smudge. On precisely the same principle the faint but beautifully idealised features of these composites are, I believe, capable of forming the basis of a very high order of artistic work.
[Read before the Statistical Society in 1873.]
It is well known that the population of towns decays, and has to be recruited by immigrants from the country, but I am not aware that any statistical investigation has yet been attempted of the rate of its decay. The more energetic members of our race, whose breed is the most valuable to our nation, are attracted from the country to our towns. If residence in towns seriously interferes with the maintenance of their stock, we should expect the breed of Englishmen to steadily deteriorate, so far as that particular influence is concerned.
I am well aware that the only perfectly trustworthy way of conducting the inquiry is by statistics derived from numerous life-histories, but I find it very difficult to procure these data. I therefore have had recourse to an indirect method, based on a selection from the returns made at the census of 1871, which appears calculated to give a fair approximation to the truth. My object is to find the number of adult male representatives in this generation, of 1000 adult males in the previous one, of rural and urban populations respectively. The principle on which I have proceeded is this:--
I find (A) the number of children of equal numbers of urban and of rural mothers. The census schedules contain returns of the names and ages of the members of each "family," by which word we are to understand those members who are alive and resident in the same house with their parents. When the mothers are young, the children are necessarily very young, and nearly always (in at least those classes who are unable to send their children to boarding schools) live at home. If, therefore, we limit our inquiries to the census "families" of young mothers, the results may be accepted as practically identical with those we should have obtained if we had direct means of ascertaining the number of their living children. The limits of age of the mothers which I adopted in my selection were, 24 and 40 years. Had I to begin the work afresh, I should prefer the period from 20 to 35, but I have reason to feel pretty well contented with my present data. I correct the results thus far obtained on the following grounds:--(B) the relative mortality of the two classes between childhood and maturity; (C) the relative mortality of the rural and urban mothers during childbearing ages; (D) their relative celibacy; and (E) the span of a rural and urban generation. It will be shown that B is important, and C noteworthy, but that D and E may be disregarded.
In deciding on the districts to be investigated, it was important to choose well-marked specimens of urban and rural populations. In the former, a town was wanted where there were various industries, and where the population was not increasing. A town where only one industry was pursued would not be a fair sample, because the particular industry might be suspected of having a special influence, and a town that was increasing would have attracted numerous immigrants from the country, who are undistinguishable as such in the census returns. Guided by these considerations, I selected Coventry, where silk weaving, watch-making, and other industries are carried on, and whose population had scarcely varied during the decade preceding the census of 1871.[25] It is an open town, in which the crowded alleys of larger places are not frequent. Its urban peculiarities are therefore minimised, and its statistical returns would give a picture somewhat too favourable of the average condition of life in towns. For specimens of rural districts, I chose small agricultural parishes in Warwickshire.
[Footnote 25: It has greatly changed since this was written.]
By the courteous permission of Dr. Farr, I was enabled to procure extracts from the census returns concerning 1000 "families" of factory hands at Coventry, in which the age of the mother was neither less than 24 nor more than 40 years, and concerning another 1000 families of agricultural labourers in rural parishes of Warwickshire, under the same limitations as to the age of the mother. When these returns were classified (see Table I., p. 246), I found the figures to run in such regular sequence as to make it certain that the cases were sufficiently numerous to give trustworthy results. It appeared that:
(A) The 1000 families of factory hands comprised 2681 children, and the 1000 of agricultural labourers comprised 2911; hence, the children in the urban "families," the mothers being between the ages of 24 and 40, are on the whole about 8 per cent, less numerous than the rural. I see no reason why these numbers should not be accepted as relatively correct for families, in the ordinary sense of that word, and for mothers of all ages. An inspection of the table does indeed show that if the selection had begun at an earlier age than 24, there would have been an increased proportion of sterile and of small families among the factory hands, but not sufficient to introduce any substantial modification of the above results. It is, however, important to recollect that the small error, whatever its amount may be, is a concession in favour of the towns.
(B) I next make an allowance for the mortality between childhood and maturity, which will diminish the above figures in different proportions, because the conditions of town life are more fatal to children than those of the country. No life tables exist for Coventry and Warwickshire; I am therefore obliged to use statistics for similarly conditioned localities, to determine the amount of the allowance that should be made. The life tables of Manchester [26] will afford the data for towns, and those of the "Healthy Districts" [27] will suffice for the country. By applying these, we could calculate the number of the children of ages specified in the census returns who would attain maturity. I regret extremely that when I had the copies taken, I did not give instructions to have the ages of all the children inserted; but I did not, and it is too late now to remedy the omission. I am therefore obliged to make a very rough, but not unfair, estimate. The average age of the children was about 3 years, and 25 years may be taken as representing the age of maturity. Now it will be found that 74 per cent. of children in Manchester, of the age of 3, reach the age of 25, while 86 per cent. of children do so in the "Healthy Districts." Therefore, if my rough method be accepted as approximately fair, the number of adults who will be derived from the children of the 1000 factory families should be reckoned at (2681 × 74/100) = 1986, and those from the 1000 agricultural at (2911 × 86/100) = 2503.
[Footnote 26: "Seventh Annual Report of Registrar-General."]
[Footnote 27: Healthy Districts Life Table, by Dr. Farr. Phil Trans. Royal Society, 1859.]
(C) The comparison we seek is between the total families produced by an equal number of urban and rural women who had survived the age of 24. Many of these women will not marry at all; I postpone that consideration to the next paragraph. Many of the rest will die before they reach the age of 40, and more of them will die in the town than in the country. It appears from data furnished by the above-mentioned tables, that if 100 women of the age of 24 had annually been added to a population, the number of those so added, living between the ages of 24 and 40 (an interval of seventeen years) would be 1539 under the conditions of life in Manchester, and 1585 under those of the healthy districts. Therefore the small factors to be applied respectively to the two cases, on account of this correction, are 1539/(17 × 100) and 1585/(17 × 100).
(D) I have no trustworthy data for the relative prevalence of celibacy in town and country. All that I have learned from the census returns is, that when searching them for the 1000 families, 131 bachelors were noted between the ages of 24 and 40, among the factory hands, and 144 among the agricultural labourers. If these figures be accepted as correct guides to the amount of celibacy among the women, it would follow that I must be considered to have discussed the cases of 1131 factory, and 1144 agricultural women, when dealing with those of 1000 mothers in either class. Consequently that the respective corrections to be applied, are given by the factors 1000/1131 and 1000/1141 or 88.4/1000 and 87.6/ 1000. This difference of less than 1 per cent, is hardly worth applying, moreover I do not like to apply it, because it seems to me erroneous and to act in the wrong direction, inasmuch as unmarried women can obtain employment more readily in the town than in the country, and celibacy is therefore more likely to be common in the former than in the latter.
(E) The possible difference in the length of an urban and rural generation must not be forgotten. We, however, have reason to believe that the correction on this ground will be insignificant, because the length of a generation is found to be constant under very different circumstances of race, and therefore we should expect it to be equally constant in the same race under different conditions; such as it is, it would probably tell against the towns.
Let us now sum up the results. The corrections are not to be applied for (D) and (E), so we have only to regard (A) × (B) × (C), that this--
2681 × 74/100 × 1539/1700 1796 77 ------------------------- = ---- = -- 2911 × 86/100 × 1585/1700 2334 100
In other words, the rate of supply in towns to the next adult generation is only 77 per cent., or, say, three-quarters of that in the country. This decay, if it continued constant, would lead to the result that the representatives of the townsmen would be less than half as numerous as those of the country folk after one century, and only about one fifth as numerous after two centuries, the proportions being 45/100 and 21/100 respectively.