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OCR Rendition - approximate
Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 279 I have sent Schuster's paper to press. Hartog has paid the account. I was seeing Dr Pearl yesterday and put my head into Miss Elderton's door ; she seemed bright and fresh, and said she had plenty to do ; so I hope the work of your Eugenics Office is going forward. The enclosed letter may amuse you. I think that X. is a very dangerous person, if his notion of eugenics is the intermarriage of consumptive stocks ! Very many thanks for your long letter. I wish there were some simple colour register. I don't expect it is easy to get colours like terra-cottas and salmons out of Abney's apparatus. I shall send you a copy of the poppy plate when it comes. I hope Miss Biggs will not be too scornful about it ! Weldon will have told you about Y. and Z.'s attack at the R.S. Weldon had a good paper last Thursday and Z. drew as usual red herrings across the track. Affectionately yours, KARL PEARSON. Feb. 1, 1906. MY DEAR KARL PEARSON, Thank you very much for your letter of sympathy. I have now lost the last tie that brought the family's interests together as to a common focus, and kept each member informed by letter, weekly or otherwise, of the welfare of the rest. To what an enormous amount of grief do the tombstones of any churchyard bear witness ! The "slasher" against X. is right well deserved. I had always a faint misgiving of his Oriental ways and fluency, which steadily deepened until I have come to look upon his aid as unreliable and dangerous. He strikes me as an interesting evidence of the danger of entrusting political power to Oriental subjects-Indian, Egyptian and others. I will venture shortly to ask you to do me a very great favour, namely to look over a short type-written paper on " the Measurement of- Resemblance," and tell me what you think of it. The thing has, as you may remember at Peppard!, been often taken up by me, puzzled over and temporarily laid down. It is at length worked out, I think, fully and practically, but before venturing on publication, I should greatly value criticism. At this moment it is only in an uncorrected draft, and I do not wish to burry before putting it into a corrected form and sending it to London to be typed. The typist will then be instructed (say in a week or a fortnight) to send you a copyt. We go to-day to "Hotel de la Rhune, Ascain, Basses Pyrenees," for a week. It is a picturesque Basque Village, four miles from here. Then we probably return to where I am writing from, "Hotel Terminus, Sr Jean de Luz, Basses Pyrendes," for a day or two, and afterwards according to conditions not yet determined on which we are dependent, to somewhere else. These may lead either to a dip of a fortnight into Spain or to another Basque village, I cannot foresee which. I will send address later on. The Basque orderliness, thorough but quiet ways, and their substantial clean-looking houses, tug at every Quaker fibre in my heart, and I love them so far. As to their wonderful language unlike in syntax to any other, the virtue of these parts is accounted for by the legend that Satan came here for a visit, but finding after six years that he could neither learn the Basque language, nor make the Basques understand him, he left the country in despair. With kindest remembrances to Mrs Pearson. Ever sincerely yours, FRANCIS GALTON. It would be an interesting problem to determine what is the degree of likeness of a man to himself, by correlating the habits and modes of thought of individuals at selected ages. We might thus obtain a measure of the permanence of individuality. How far is one the same man at 20 and 60 years of age? Galton at least in his love of travel at 18 and 84 exhibited a marvellous sameness. His love of ingenious mechanical apparatus also remained fully as strong, and his humility was not a whit less. "How.purious it is to see," remarks Lord Minto, "how exactly people follow their own characters all through life." * The long vacation of 1903 was spent at Peppard, the Galtons on the Green, the Pearsons at Blount's Court Farm, the Weldons at the far end of the village, and various biometric workers round about. It was a delightful and fertile summer. t See the section in Vol. II on the 11 Measurement of Resemblance," pp. 329-333.
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