wisdom, and
understanding,"' our 'nobility are peculiarly subject to insanity;' as
are likewise, indeed, 'very religious people of all denominations,'
'religious madness being very common indeed.' 6. So far from 'religious
influences' appearing to have 'clustered in any remarkable degree round
the youth of those who, whether by their talents or their social
position, have left a mark upon English history,' 'remarkable devotional
tendencies' have been conspicuous chiefly by their absence from 'the
lives either of our Lord Chancellors or of the leaders of our great
political parties;' while, out of our twenty-three extant dukes, four at
least, if not five, are descended from mistresses of Charles II., not a
single one of them, on the other hand, being known to Mr. Galton to be
of 'eminently prayerful qualities.' 7. In respect of those
'institutions, societies, commercial adventures, political meetings and
combinations of all sorts' with which England so much abounds, and of
which 'some are exclusively clerical, some lay, and others mixed,' Mr.
Galton 'for his own part never heard a favourable opinion of the value
of the preponderating clerical element in their business committees.'
'The procedure of Convocation which, like all exclusively clerical
meetings, is opened with prayer, has not inspired the outer world with
much respect.' Nay, 'it is a common week-day opinion of the world that
praying people are not practical.' 8. In those numerous instances in
which an enterprise is executed by the agency of the profane on behalf
not of the profane themselves but of pious clients, 'the enterprises are
not observed to prosper beyond the average.' Underwriters recognise no
difference in the risks run by missionary ships and by ordinary traders,
nor do life insurance companies, before they accept a life, introduce
into their 'confidential enquiries into the antecedents of the
applicant' any 'such question as "Does he habitually use family prayers
and private devotions?"' Neither are the funds of devout shareholders
and depositors at all safer than those of the profane when entrusted to
the custody of untrustworthy directors, not even though the day's work
of the undertaking commence, as that of the disastrous Royal British
Bank used to do, with solemn prayer.[52]

Two or three minutes' attention to the grounds for, and the
circumstances connected with, these statements, may assist us in
appreciating Mr. Galton's notion of the dif