THE FOUNDATION OF EUGENICS. 83
is better that many guilty should escape than that one innocent person should suffer.' But that is not the sentiment by which natural selection is guided, and it is dangerous to yield far to it.
There can be no doubt that a thorough investigation of the kind described, even if confined to a single grade and to a single form of degeneracy, would be a serious undertaking. Masses of trustworthy material must be collected, usually with great difficulty, and be afterwards treated with skill and labour by methods that few at present are competent to employ. An extended investigation into the good or evil done to the State by the offspring of many different classes of persons, some of civic value, others the reverse, implies a huge volume of work sufficient to occupy Eugenics laboratories for an indefinite time.
OBJECT LESSONS IN THE METHODS OF
BIOMETRY.
I propose now to speak of those fundamental principles of the laws of Probability that are chiefly concerned in the newer methods of Biometry, and consequently of Eugenics. Most persons of ordinary education seem to know nothing about them, not even understanding their technical terms, much less appreciating the cogency of their results. 4_S~ This popular ignorance so obstructs the path of Eugenics that I venture to tax your attention by proposing a method of
