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OCR Rendition - approximate
Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Calton's Life 415 much the same as a whole share to two*. This process may continue indefinitely in a growing population like their own, so his or her influence on the race may increase in geometric proportion as the generations go on. A person is therefore more important as a probable progenitor of many others more or less like to him in constitution than as a mere individual.' I learnt that the object of the first examination was to give a Pass certificate for ` Genetic' qualities. By `genetic' is meant all that is transmissible by heredity, whether it be of ancestral origin or a personal sport or mutation. The refusal to grant a Pass certificate is equivalent to an assertion that the person is unfit to have any offspring at all. By a second class certificate that permission is granted, but with reservations, of which more will be said later. " In reply to my expression of diffidence as regards my own success, I was emphatically reassured by my late scrutineers as to my personal capabilities, which Tom was pleased to rate at 130 at least,'-a term which will be explained later. But what my ancestral claims might be valued at, was another matter. They assured me that my sponsor, Mr Allfancy, had already submitted an. outline of them to the examiners, in as favourable terms as the information warranted, and that he was quite satisfied with them for pass purposes, but was sure that they were insufficiently authenticated to receive adequate credence from the examiners for honours. Consequently far fewer marks might be awarded me for my ancestry than I probably deserved. They all expressed surprise at foreigners knowing so little with exactness about their grandparents and other ancestors, saying, that everyone in Kantsaywhere knew their own as well almost as if they had been their playmates and comrades, and that they all possessed an abundance of well authenticated facts about them t.... "I was told on inquiry that those who were placed high in the list, as Miss Augusta was, were justified in expecting numerous advantages on their marriage, that as many of them as there were vacancies in the College-there were ten in the present year-were elected Probationers, and therefore future recipients of those advantages if their husbands were adequately diplomaed, but not otherwise. What the girls most thought of, as Tom afterwards told me, was a marriage between two probationers whose joint marks exceeded 200 and who had at least two stars, of which more will be said later. It gave the right of having the marriage conducted with special ceremony+, and of its being known and recorded as a ' College marriage.' The offspring of such marriages are reckoned foster children of the College during their childhood, and they and their `College parents' are helped in many important ways. But Tom added that his sister, in order to obtain one, must marry a man with at least 107 marks and one star, and that very few of such unmarried men are available. I took full notes of what Tom told me of the advantages attached to a College wedding, and to others which were a little short of having a `joint 200 marks and two stars,' but I must get them verified before putting the results into my Journal." We now reach Chapter V of the work, entitled : Pass and Honours Examinations. I have reproduced above all that remains of the first four chapters of the work ; the bulk of the extracts given are certainly from Chapter IV, but some possibly from Chapter III. I do not know even the title headings of the first four chapters of the story. On March 21st Tom Allfancy takes the stranger to the Examination Hall for the Pass Examination, where; he tells us " I went through physical tests, which I need not describe particularly, as they were similar to those which all Englishmen undergo before admission into the Army, Navy, Indian Civil Service§, etc. But the examination was more strict and minute and in the medical part it was * A "share" in this sentence must be taken of course to comprise all that an individual's germ-plasm involves, not merely his apparent characteristics. t Galton was undoubtedly thinking here of his books the Record of Family Faculties (1884) and the Life-History Album (1884); see our Vol. ii, pp. 362-370. + This idea, as well as others in " Kantsaywhere," closely resembles that of Galton's first paper on Eugenics, that of 1,864; see our Vol. it, p. 78. § See our pp. 231-2 above.
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