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OCR Rendition - approximate
374 Life and Letters of Francis Galton with plenty outside its cage. You can hold that the restraint is better than the freedom in its ultimate bearings on the happiness of the individual. But you will not get these purely animal and uncontrolled natures to regard it from this standpoint. The justification for the segregation must be, I fear, not their '1 happiness," as judged by themselves, but the profit to society at large. The madman might be "happier" seated in the market-place with a paper crown on his head, but we wisely segregate him for our own and not his happiness, even if he is quite harmless. I think this is the only line we can take with regard.to the feeble-minded. Mrs Hume Pinsent, one of the Feeble-Minded Commissioners (address Lordswood, Harborne, Nr Birmingham), has much evidence on the need for segregating the feeble-minded. She is a sister of Mr Justice Parker and a friend of mine. I feel sure, if you were to write on this point as a definite point, i.e. whether feeble-minded girls were responsible on an average for one or two degenerate children, she would reply to you with her wide experience. At the same time we were not able to do more with her inheritance data than I fear we can with Miss Dendy's, there was a lack of the requisite information, and especially of a distinction between "known to be sound" and "no information." I am rather anxious about the success of our first lecture on Tuesday. I do not in my MS., alas. seem to say effectively what I want to say. Always affectionately, KARL PEARSON. MEADOW COTTAGE (on Saturday I shall be at the Crown Hotel, Lyndhurst). February 24, 1909. MY DEAR KARL PEARSON, G. K. Chesterton's paragraph is too grotesquely absurd to be worth noticing. His name and paragraph might however be kept in mind for a future "Dunciad," in which specimens of current nonsense might be quoted. I am most desirous to hear about your lecture and the audience. Ever affectionately, FRANCIS GALTON. My only surviving brother* died yesterday; the result of an accident, practically. 7, WELL ROAD, HAMPSTEAD, N.W. February 24, 1909. MY DEAR FRANCIS GALTON, I am so sorry to hear of your loss, which I know will mean another rending of the ties with the past. I appreciated your feelings towards the various members of your family so much better after reading the " Memories," and have very vividly in mind what you say of this brother. There is another point I have been thinking about very much and I want Miss Biggs to second my endeavours. I wish so strongly you would have a bust made by a first-class man. Pictures are excellent but only one person can possess them, whereas a good bust means fairly easy economic multiplication in plaster. My thoughts have been turned to it recently because of Hope Pinker's present to me of Weldon's bust, and I have just purchased a cast of Montford's Darwin to match it in the Biometric Laboratory. About the lecture there is I fear little to be said. The audience, about 57, was very attentive and I think quite earnest. But I made a mistake, I read and did not speak, so I only got about half through my material. My points were non-inheritance of acquired characters and so little permanent effect of nurture, small direct effect of nurture compared with nature, old maintenance of standard by relative death-rate, and our need to replace that by a selective birthrate; but I did not properly get to the latter. I shall probably give a second lecture next time, and postpone Heron's for a week. I cannot say that I was satisfied with either my material or my treatment of it, but I am not "in fettle" just now. Affectionately yours, KARL PEARSON. CROWN HOTEL, LYNDHURST. March 1, 1909. MY DEAR KARL PEARSON, There is much to read and write about, but I am hardly up to much just now. We motored here on (snowy) Saturday and I reached my limit of resistance; consequently I was tucked up in bed all yesterday, with happily perfect results, so that except for weakness I am quite at my normal again. These quarters are singularly comfortable and I expect to stay here for a month. What an issue of Eugenic work this past week ! I was re-reading your Oxford lecture (Mem. in Table X, correct Female to Male in the 2nd or 3rd line) and had * Erasmus Calton, aged 94.
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