Rudyard Kipling: heredity and exceptionality

There was a feast by the blazing campfires in front of the lines of picketed elephants, and Little Toomai was the hero of it all.

And the big brown elephant catchers, the trackers and drivers and ropers, and the men who know all the secrets of breaking the wildest elephants, passed him from one to the other …

Machua Appa, the head of all the drivers of all the Keddahs* … leaped to his feet, with Little Toomai held high in the air above his head, and shouted: ‘Listen, my brothers. Listen, too, you my lords in the lines there [addressing the elephants], for I, Machua Appa, am speaking! This little one shall no more be called Little Toomai, but Toomai of the Elephants, as his great-grandfather was called before him.

What never man has seen he has seen through the long night, and the favour of the elephant-folk and of the Gods of the Jungles is with him. He shall become a great tracker. He shall become greater than I, even I, Machua Appa! … Aihai! my lords in the chains,’ — he whirled up the line of pickets — ‘here is the little one that has seen your dances in your hidden places — the sight that never man saw! … Make your salute to Toomai of the Elephants! … Aihai!’

And at that last wild yell the whole line flung up their trunks till the tips touched their foreheads, and broke out into the full salute — the crashing trumpet-peal that only the Viceroy of India hears …

But it was all for the sake of Little Toomai, who had seen what never man had seen before — the dance of the elephants at night and alone in the heart of the Garo hills!

Rudyard Kipling’s story ‘Toomai of the Elephants’, from which the above extract is taken, was originally published in 1893, and then reprinted in The Jungle Book published in 1894. It provides an illustration of the fact that ideas of heredity and exceptionality were current, and generally accepted, at the end of the nineteenth century.

* Keddah = enclosure to trap wild elephants

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Mensa: debasing the idea of ‘genius’

The parents of a child genius with an IQ similar to Einstein’s have said she is ‘perfectly ordinary’. Ophelia Spracklen, 12, scored a stunning 157 on her Mensa test – only three points lower than Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

More than 121,000 people worldwide are members of Mensa, an elite society that boasts some of the smartest brains on the planet. Its tests gauge Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, using problem-solving tests. ... Ophelia’s results put her into the genius category of 145 to 159.

... Chief executive of Mensa John Stevenage said Ophelia’s score put her in the top one per cent of the population.
(Oxford Times, 31 December 2015)

They appear still further to have debased the concept of ‘genius’. Havelock Ellis defined it by reference to a person having an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. More recently, it has been defined by performance in socially recognised IQ tests.

When my IQ was tested in 1945, I was told that it was 180. At that time, I was given to understand that there was a population of people with an IQ between 180 and 200, and also a population of people with IQs over 200 who were ‘geniuses’. Now, it appears, a testable IQ of over 145 qualifies its possessor to be described as a ‘genius’. This seems to imply that about 1% of the population of this country are geniuses.

In my school days in the 1940s, I used to think that an IQ of 140 or more would usually enable you to be top of your class in a grammar school.

Using the new definition, it would seem that these days, one is never more than a mile away from a ‘genius’.

Slandered by Oxford: reparation overdue

There has recently been some discussion about my colleague Dr Charles McCreery’s father, the late General Sir Richard McCreery.

This has led to interest in our accounts of the fictitious slanders spread about Dr McCreery, and about our research organisation, by senior figures at the University of Oxford and elsewhere, in particular about alleged drug-taking.

As Dr McCreery wrote, there was zero basis for these slanders, as one of the individuals involved in spreading them – the University’s then Registrar, Sir Folliott Sandford – admitted at the time.

Sir Folliott Sandford admitted quite abjectly that there was not a shred of evidence for the slander, that it was pure speculation, and that it had been started in order to explain the rift between me and my parents. [Charles McCreery]

The slanders caused damage to Dr McCreery’s career prospects, and led to his being disinherited by members of his family.

We continue to seek redress from those who unfairly benefited from the disinheritance, and from the universities (Oxford and Warwick) whose officials were involved in spreading the slanders.

We call on Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Andrew Hamilton, to rectify past wrongs.

Tesco and the ‘living wage’

Tesco says national living wage will cost it £500m by 2020

Tesco has said George Osborne’s new ‘national living wage’ will cost it £500m by 2020, putting further pressure on profitability at Britain’s biggest supermarket.

The current Tesco boss, Dave Lewis, said focusing on profits had led Tesco to make bad choices for staff as well as customers. ‘On behalf of myself and the team, the only thing we can say for the choices we made is sorry.’ (The Guardian)

The implication here is presumably that, if resources are transferred from shareholders to people who are paid a relatively low wage, this must be a good thing.

No wonder the share price has been falling if the CEO says, in effect: ‘Sorry we have been trying to make profits for shareholders.’

Maternity pay

When my colleague Dr Fabian Wadel was a graduate student in economics at Oxford, he once expressed to another such student (male) possible reservations about the idea of maternity leave. The other student found this so unacceptable that he stormed off. Fabian says his reaction was not atypical.

In his conversation with the fellow graduate student, Fabian did not express the most serious objection to maternity leave, which is that it deprives employers of the freedom to employ whom they wish. They will tend to employ fewer women if they know that a potential liability such as maternity leave is attached to them. Since the state does not wish fewer women to be employed, but more, the result is that quotas then have to be introduced with which employers have to comply.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn recently said that self-employed women should have access to maternity pay. Presumably this is because it is considered ‘unfair’ that they should miss out on an advantage provided to women who are employed. If one regards maternity leave as allowing women to have children without risking dismissal, the idea of applying it where a woman employs herself may seem illogical. But perhaps it should really be regarded as a form of unemployment benefit.

Jeremy Corbyn is proposing that, in the case of self-employed women, it should be the state (as opposed to the employer) which funds maternity pay. Intervention is a violation of the freedom to contract as one chooses. However, it is not clear which is the worse violation: forcing an individual employer to pay for an arrangement he would not otherwise have chosen, or forcing all taxpayers to contribute an additional amount towards funding such an arrangement.

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Minimum wage, maximum interference

A legally imposed minimum wage is a violation of the principle that individuals should be able to contract with one another in whatever way they choose.

As with other welfare legislation, once a principle has been violated, even if only in an apparently minor way, the initial violation facilitates further advances in the same direction, and is likely to lead to such advances.

Once the principle against a minimum wage was broken in the UK (in 1999) it became relatively uncontroversial to increase the level. Initially the minimum wage was £3.60 per hour; currently it is £6.50, and is about to rise to £6.70. Adjusting for inflation, it has increased by about 30 percent.

The minimum wage concept is now being used for a different purpose than the one for which it was intended. The government is proposing to increase the rate to £7.20 in 2016, rising to at least £9 by 2020, as a way of reducing dependence on state benefits. The objective of decreasing state expenditure may seem laudable, but doing so by further damaging people’s ability to contract on terms that suit them is morally and economically questionable. It is likely to mean the destruction of certain areas of activity.

For example, some home care organisations are saying that it will make the provision of home visits impossible, because visitors will have to be paid rates* that are unviable.

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position.
I need people to provide moral support both for fund-raising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.

* See for example ‘Living Wage could harm home care sector’, BBC News, 27 July 2015.

Herbert Spencer on status and contract

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher and political theorist of the Victorian era. During his lifetime he achieved great authority, and was for some years one of the world’s best-known intellectuals. When I was about twelve, he was my favourite philosopher, although by then he had become far less well-known.

Spencer is now regarded by libertarians as a pioneer of free-market thought. Among contemporary academic philosophers, however, he is held in very low esteem, being seen ‘primarily as the enthusiast for extreme laissez-faire or Social Darwinism’ (Oxford Companion to Philosophy).

When I was working on my doctoral thesis at Oxford’s philosophy department (which was then located in Merton Street) I noted with interest that the department’s lecture room was called the ‘Herbert Spencer Lecture Room’, but that there appeared to be no books by Spencer on the shelves of the department library.

The department seems to have dropped Spencer’s name in referring to the lecture room. ‘Herbert Spencer Lecture Room’ produces no results in a Google search, the room being referred to as ‘the Lecture Room’ in the documents that come up. However, I distinctly remember seeing the name ‘Herbert Spencer’ prominently displayed above the entrance.

Spencer was opposed to state intervention. He was also against female suffrage, hypothesising that women would be too likely to support paternalistic (or interventionist) policies – perhaps another reason why he has become unfashionable.

One distinction which Spencer made, using terminology proposed by nineteenth-century jurist Henry Maine, is between relations based on status and those based on contract. In Spencer’s model, societies evolve from a condition in which roles are largely determined by status; to one in which primacy is given to contract, so that roles and relations become largely chosen.

The following is an extract from Spencer’s Autobiography, in which he appears to foresee the regression of British society towards something resembling the former condition, so that interactions and relationships are no longer freely chosen by individuals, and contract is interfered with in numerous ways. (See, for example, the story of my grandfather and his shop.)

... it was absurd to suppose that the great relaxation of restraints – political, social, commercial – which culminated in free-trade, would continue. A re-imposition of restraints, if not of the same kind then of other kinds, was inevitable ...

... it is now manifest that whereas during a long period there had been an advance from involuntary co-operation in social affairs to voluntary co-operation (or, to use Sir Henry Maine’s language, from status to contract), there has now commenced a reversal of the process. Contract is in all directions being weakened and broken ...

... we are on the way back to that involuntary co-operation, or system of status, consequent on the immense development of public administrations and the corresponding subordination of citizens ... a new tyranny ...

(Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography, 1904, chapter 55*)

Spencer would no doubt have disapproved of many of the upcoming measures threatened by the current government, including enhancing the state’s powers of surveillance, banning speech which ‘undermines democracy’, and further distortion of the labour market by means of the minimum wage.

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* Complete publication available at Online Library of Liberty.

Early closing and the road to serfdom

Jarrow marchers (1936)

In the pre-totalitarian world which prevailed in this country before the onset of the Welfare State, there was a constant awareness of the risk of starvation. An undersupply of food would lead to physical weakness, and eventually illness and death. People were motivated to earn money in any way they could, and to gain favour with employers who were capable of paying or feeding them.

People then wished to do what their employers wanted – unlike employees now, who will not, for example, do laundry within the hours for which they are paid because, they say, that is too ‘personal’.

The underlying ideology of totalitarianism was, however, already present then. For example, there was a wish to prevent people from competing with one another in ways which might lead some to improve their position faster than others.

At a very early stage, interventionist legislation was brought in which had the effect of restricting competition.

When my mother was about eight, that is, about 1910, my maternal grandfather, who was a shopkeeper, started to take her to music halls on Sundays, because he was not allowed to sell anything in his shop on that day of the week.

The reforms of 1904 to 1914 introduced a number of restrictions on the operation of shops in Britain, including limiting trading hours. For example, the Shop Hours Act 1904 gave powers to local authorities to make ‘closing orders’, fixing the hour at which shops had to stop serving customers; while the Shops Act 1911 made it compulsory for shop assistants to be given half a day off every week (‘early closing’).

Previously my grandfather had been willing, and able, to sell things at any time. People who wanted to buy a bar of soap or a packet of sugar in the night could throw stones up at his bedroom window, and he would get up and come downstairs to serve them. By being more willing to provide this service than other shopkeepers, he could have made more money, allowing his additional efforts to be rewarded.

The rules on trading and employment by shops must have reduced the ability of people like my grandfather to improve their position for the benefit of themselves and their families.

The famous Jarrow March which took place in 1936 is now taken to show the inadequate nature of unemployment benefit at that time. The level of benefits available two or three decades earlier would have been even more limited. It seems reasonable to assume that the restrictions that were introduced in the early twentieth century, doubtless bringing about job losses in some instances, will have caused harm in some cases, including starvation and death.

As Friedrich Hayek wrote in The Constitution of Liberty,

A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.

What does a little girl want with chess?

When I was about 6, my parents and I moved back to Gants Hill in East London after having been evacuated during the war. After we returned, we began regularly visiting my maternal grandparents’ house in Forest Gate. I believe that the incident I am about to describe happened soon after our return, and that this was my uncle Harry’s first meeting with me in the new context. I had never played chess and did not know anything about it. Uncle Harry* was captain of the Essex County chess team and played in tournaments. He also played postal chess with people in other countries.

On one occasion when I visited my grandparents’ house with my mother, Uncle Harry (who lived in the house) sat down with me and started to play chess with me. It took me a little time to get the hang of the rules, and I occasionally made moves which were not permissible. Uncle Harry allowed me to correct them and continue the game. From time to time I had to ask him to remind me what moves were possible for a particular piece.

Uncle Harry told me the rules for playing in tournaments. You had a certain amount of time to think about making your next move. If you touched any of your pieces, you then had to move that piece before the end of the allotted time, or lose the game.

After some time of this, my mother came and said she was wanting to go home, so I should stop playing and come with her. Uncle Harry did not demur or suggest quickly finishing the game. I went away looking forward to playing with him again the next time I came.

When I again visited my grandparents’ house, I immediately asked Uncle Harry to play chess with me. He was unresponsive at first, so I persisted, and he finally answered in a very rebuffing way, saying ‘what do little girls want with chess?’ I had been looking forward to playing chess so much that I burst into tears.

My grandfather, trying to console me, started to offer me books from his library which might appeal to me, climbing up his library stepladder to do so. I accepted the books and thanked him, but was still crying quietly. After we left, my mother took me to visit my father at the school where he was teaching, to tell him that Uncle Harry had refused to play chess with me. I was treated by my parents as if I needed to be cheered up, to help me ‘get over it’, but neither my father nor my mother suggested getting me a chess set or a book explaining how the rules of chess worked.

Uncle Harry never played chess with me again.

It may be noted that the people involved in this incident – my parents, grandfather and Uncle Harry – all had very high IQs (over 160 at least) but appeared to be worried by the possibility of someone demonstrating an even higher IQ. In retrospect, I regard the incident as another illustration of the fact that people were usually threatened by my IQ and did not want me to have opportunity to show it.

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* Harry Cleare, brother of Dorothy Green (née Cleare), my mother

State pension: too little, and getting less

In 2011, I commented on the fact that the basic state pension is acknowledged to be well below the level of income needed to reach a minimum living standard.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s most recent report* on this, the annual cost of the ‘minimum basket of goods and services needed for an acceptable living standard’ for a single adult is now £10,155. The current full basic state pension, on the other hand, is £6,029 per annum – 40% below this minimum level.

The typical annual council tax alone takes up a sizeable proportion of the current state pension. A single pensioner living in even a modest home can easily spend over £1000 per annum on council tax, nearly 20% of his income, if forced to rely on the state pension.

Incidentally, the Rowntree Foundation report notes that the cost of the minimum basket has risen ‘by between a quarter and a third’ since 2008. If we assume that 33% is the more realistic figure, then the government’s CPI figure, which is one of the factors used to determine increases in the state pension, but which has risen only 19% over the same period, has severely understated the inflation faced by low-income pensioners, with the result that the annual pension has actually fallen in real terms since 2008.

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* Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘A Minimum Income Standard for the UK in 2014’