Excerpt from Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty: A Statistical Study in History and Psychology
History is really but a branch of biology. Some of the most difficult problems in evolution namely, hered ity, variation, and the effects of environment are to-day just beginning to be dealt with by mathematical methods, and the results already warrant the hope that we may by carefully collecting facts, and not by mere theorizing and essay - writing, arrive at conclusions which all must agree upon. In biology such mathematical measurements have been given the name of Biometrics, and the study Biometry.
Let us apply to the best of our abilities such methods to history, realizing full well that we cannot in our first steps reduce our results to the seventh decimal place; but we shall at least approach more nearly to the truth than if we forever argue.
In the present research I trust I have not picked out the letters which suit my purpose and said nothing about those which do not. On the contrary, I have severely labored to first include all the facts in a systematic way; and then to analyze these facts by several different methods, in cluding the mathematical, based on recent formulae.
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