Preface Vii
and Mendelism, for both now transcend any treatment which fails to
approach them with adequate mathematical knowledge.
If this view be a true view of the evolution of biological thought in the near future, then any comparison of the relative greatness of the two men becomes superficial. Darwinism needs the complement of Galtonian method before it can become a demonstrable truth ; it requires to be supplemented by Galtonian enthusiasm before it can exercise a substantial influence on the conscious direction of race evolution. Man has been directly endeavouring for a few thousand years to improve himself by improving his environment. Galton's lesson-over and over again disregarded by those who profess to be his disciples-was that little could be achieved this way, that the primary method to elevate the race was to insure that its physically and mentally abler members, not only had the unrecognised advantage of natural selection in their favour, but were directly and consciously encouraged to be fertile by the state. If my view be correct, Erasmus Darwin planted the seed of suggestion in questioning whether adaptation meant no more to man than illustration of creative ingenuity ; the one grandson, Charles Darwin, collected the facts which had to be dealt with and linked them together by wide-reaching hypotheses; the other grandson, Francis Galton, provided the methods by which they could be tested, and saw with the enthusiasm of a prophet their application in the future to the directed and self-conscious evolution of the human race. It is unprofitable to discuss relative greatness, and in this work I have made no attempt to do so. I see one family which has done much for our national worth, and every fact which bears on its history and its characteristics is of interest to us all. Those who know the real history of the one occasion on which Galton and Darwin disagreed know how loyal Galton'was to Darwin-loyal with a loyalty far rarer to-day. Galton would not have wished me to put him, in the same rank as his master, but the reader who follows my story to the end may possibly see that the ramifications of Galton's methods are producing a renascence in innumerable branches of science, which will be as epoch-making in the near future as the Darwinian theory of evolution was in biology from 1860 to 1880, and which has encountered and will encounter no less bigoted opposition from both the learned and the lay. To work for that Galtonian renascence has been the writer's main aim in life as it was also that of his chief colleague and friendW. F. R. Weldon. I can only hope that these volumes will contribute
