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Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 431


THE COURT, GRAYSHOTT, HASLEMERE. October 30, 1910.

MY DEAR KARL PEARSON, Will the enclosed draft of a letter to the Times fulfil what you think desirable? Pray make suggestions freely. I have heard from X. in a long "private" letter replying to what I sent him. He writes nicely but impenitently*. He is about to give numerous lectures. Very asthmatically, but affectionately yours, FRANCIS GALTON.

X. is no longer even a member of the Eugenics Education Society.

48, GROSVENOR STREET. November 8, 1910.

MY DEAR GALTON, I must write a line, as one of your oldest friends j', to congratulate you on the great honour of the Copley Medal.

I hope you have been keeping well.   Yours very sincerely, AvERURY.

GRAYSHOTT HOUSE, HASLEMERE. November 13, 1910.

This will henceforth be my address.

MY DEAR KARL PEARSON, You must indeed have been " rushed " as you say. The Press cuttings reached me of the letters of you and the antagonists, whom it seems to me you bowl over easily.

Thanks about the Royal Society. I shall not, could not, attend however much I wished it, and had thought of asking you, if Sir George Darwin failed, to receive the medal on my behalf. But he will, anyhow, be there. So I have asked him to do so.

People die so fast that I can find only five other living Englishmen, with Copley after their names, in the Royal Society list of Fellows ; they are-Sir Joseph Hooker, Lord Lister, Lord Rayleigh, Sir William Crookes, Alfred R. Wallace. How age counts!

Thank the Staff for me for their joint telegram of congratulations. There is no news here that you would care for. What a political turmoil is at hand !

Ever affectionately yours, FRANCIS GALTON.

GRAYSHOTT HOUSE, HASLEMERE. December 6, 1910.

MY DEAR KARL PEARSON, Who is Mr Snow? You seem to have found a worker after your own heart. I wish that you or he could throw more light on the paradox that cousins are no more unlike than uncles and nephews. It would seem a reasonable deduction that cousins to the nth degree are as much alike as first cousins. Then, again, statistics make out (unless I am quite wrong) that husbands and wives are as much alike as first cousins. I wish you could clear my puzzled mind. Also one wants to know more precisely about the compound effect of hereditary influences. What is that of bi-parental-of the same kind-as compared with uni-parental? What is that of all four grandparental + bi-parental? and so forth. The whole lot together cannot exceed 1.0+

I congratulate you on the last number of Biometrika.

How are you all? Your Winchester son will soon be with you. All goes on quietly here, but I am not allowed out of doors in such weather as we have recently had. In fact, I have been imprisoned now for 14 days and begin to crave for open air.

Sir Archibald Geikie comes not infrequently over the 5 hilly miles that separate his house from mine, and tells me scientific news.

If you care to rear a breed of dogs who eat woollen cloth, there is one in this house that does so. He began by nibbling off and swallowing the lappet of my man-nurse's coat, who had been caressing him, and subsequently found his way into the butler's pantry at night, and ran away with a beautiful new pair of trousers of mine, dragged them to his kennel and gnawed out a piece bigger than the palm of my hand and ate it. It has strained my Xmas feelings to pardon him !

Galton's singular gentleness of disposition rarely allowed him to give expression to some of his deeper feelings about the proceedings of certain of his rasher self-styled followers. One incident, however, has been preserved: a letter came at mealtime; it went flying across the dinner table with the exclamation, " My disciple indeed ! "

t Lord Avebury was 76 years old, twelve years younger than Galton, but they had been associated in many projects.

It seems to me now in the light of experimental determinations that it can, and that this is the source of progressive evolution when small groups are isolated or there is intensive in-breeding.


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