OCR Rendition - approximate

78 EUGENICS to have recourse to the short cut of the "black arts," and to appeal to the supernatural and miraculous, as science would now define these. We still see, alas, that the special insight and intelligence of women tends to spend itself at best on such absurd misrepresentations of her own instincts and powers as "Christian Science"; or worse, on clairvoyance and fortune-telling, and the like. Then it may be, elaborate theories of personality-mostly wide of the mark-are constructed upon phenomena which we could learn to analyse and interpret on strictly scientific and really philosophical principles, and thus to utilise at every point. We are, in short, failing to enlist for true social service a natural reserve of intelligence which, mostly lying unrecognised and unused in any healthy form, forces its way out in morbid ones. And let us here remember that we are not merely considering a question of sex. No mental function is entirely unrepresented on either side. The question then arises, How is civilised man to avail himself fully of this reserve of power? The provisional answer seems to be, by making the most of it through the training of all girls for the resumption of a lost power of racemotherhood which shall make for their own happiness and well-being, in using these for the benefit of humanity. In short, by making the most of it through truer methods in education than any which have yet, except in rare cases, been applied. Certainly until we do this many social problems of the highest importance will needlessly continue to baffle and defeat us. MR. GALTON'S REPLY. Mr. Galton, in the course of his reply, said that much of what had been said might have been appropriately urged forty years ago, before accurate measurement of the statistical effects of heredity had been commenced, but it was quite obsolete now. Under these circumstances he felt unable to deal with the large amount of material, partly spoken, partly printed or written, that was now before the Society. Mr. Galton went on to say : " All I propose to do is to briefly comment on three or four points that have caught my attention " Mr. Wells spoke of ` stirpiculture ' as a, term that had been used by others and was preferable to `eugenics.' I may be permitted to say that I myself coined that word and deliberately changed it for eugenics. Dr. Hutchison states his belief that environment is far more important than stock, but we know perfectly how enormously one baby, dog, or horse differs from another by nature ; and surely it cannot be denied ITS DEFINITION, SCOPE AND AIMS 79 by any one acquainted with stock breeding that it is well to take pains to increase the multiplication of the best variants. Mr. Elderton in his too few remarks touched on an important point-that the insurance offices might give a great deal of information. I quite agree with him in that, and also on the correlation of certain diseases and fertility. It used to be said that consumptive mothers were prolific. At one time I took great pains to get certain results, but was appalled and deterred by the want of precision in the data. The facts brought forward by one set of medical authorities did not agree with those brought forward by another. I went to the Consumption Hospital at Brompton, and to the Victoria Hospital, and found a total divergence of opinion as to what consumption was. My primary object then was to obtain typical specimens of consumptive patients for the purpose of composite photographs. The results, I may add, appeared in the `Guy's Hospital Reports' nearly twenty years ago. I do not attach much importance to Mr. Kidd's points. His population of drones would have selected the best drones, and each would have selected the best of its kind and worked out their own salvation in their own way." CIibPDF - www.fastio.com