OCR Rendition - approximate

8o EUGENICS PRESS COMMENTS 81 PRESS COMMENTS. PALL MALL GAZETTE (November 11, 19o4). In the very first stage of its existence the Sociological Society did a notable piece of work, by enabling Mr. Francis Galton to develop and further promulgate his new study of eugenics. In pursuance of this purpose, Mr. Galton is giving not only his time and his great intellectual powers-great as ever, we may note, in their ninth decade-but has just given fifteen hundred pounds to the University of London to form a Francis Galton Fellowship in National Eugenics. This initial sum is to be spent in three years. It is to be hoped that the University will obtain the services of a thoroughly competent man. He will need to be uncommonly competent and uncommonly active if he is to keep even approximate pace with Mr. Galton himself, who has done a huge amount of valuable work since he read his paper before the Sociological Society in the summer. We may observe the modesty of Mr. Galton in this matter. The founder of eugenics is under no delusion that he has yet done more than well and truly lay the foundations of the new science. The architect may be yet to seek. We are not yet in the position of being able dogmatically to dictate a series of imperatives to Society, even assuming public opinion -that " chaos of prejudices " as Huxley called it-to be ripe for them. Eugenics, of course, is entirely at the mercy of heredity. It. is indeed no more than an application of the laws of that branch of biology, than which none is more recondite, inchoate, or obscure. Men are not yet agreed, as to the facts or data of heredity, upon which, of course, its inductions depend. The facts, however, are slowly but certainly emerging. That last adverb is used advisedly : for the instrument by which these facts are being ascertained is the mathematical method-and mathematics alone can claim to possess certainty. This application of mathematics to the study of heredity and of biology generally, marks an epoch in the history of the science. It already has great achievements to its credit. This kind of biological study is now known as biometrics or biometry, excellent terms which we owe to Prof. Karl Pearson. The reader will very properly inquire the name of the man who founded biometry, and perhaps it will not surprise him to learn that that name is Francis. Galton. It is not often that the man of imagination and of broad and lofty projects in the realm of practice, such as eugenics, is also the man who can discern and introduce the rigidly scientific instrument which alone makes these projects possible. One other subject was specially dealt with by the Sociological Society last summer ; and that was civics. Students of many different aims, and as diverse as the philanthropist, the psychologist, and the medical man, are coming to see that problems of city life are of immeasurable importance in many various directions. Poverty, the national physique, sex relations, hygiene, the evolution of ethical ideals-even the future of many branches of art-are all concerned with the study of civics, so admirably discussed by Prof. Patrick Geddes last summer. Now, it is an immediate need for the welfare of science and of society that money should be forthcoming for the prosecution of scientific research in civics as in eugenics. Who will follow Mr. Gallon's lead? THE NATION (New York), June 9, 1904: We do not imagine that Francis Galton has read President Roosevelt's letter on "race suicide," but a recent address of his before the Sociological Society is a good corrective of it, and of the whole order of illconsidered ideas lying behind it. That a nation or a stock should simply multiply is by no means the highest good-is not necessarily a good at all. It is a military conception, to be sure, that there should always be plenty of "food for powder." Napoleon, who asked what were the lives of a million soldiers to a man like him, was anxious that French mothers should make good his ravages. Such barbarous notions still persist. But Mr. Galton brushes them all aside with the statement that the real problem of civilisation is how to improve the race, not merely to give it a cheap numerosity. What eugenics aims at is to put every class at its finest : to make each sort more and more conform to its best specimens. Only so can the general tone be made better. And social salvation lies in improving the average quality. As Mr. Galton says, if public leaders will insist upon "playing to the gallery," we must give them a better gallery to play toone that will hiss vulgarities and savagery off the stage, instead of frantically applauding them. In this view the social philosopher is at one with the poet whose prayer was " o God, make no more giants, Elevate the race!" The subject is one of tremendous importance, and the first thing is to get people to believe it so. Mr. Galton is under no illusions. He is well aware of the common ideas and practices related to what John Fiske termed "that stupendous process of breeding which we call civilisation." Better conceptions must begin with the educated and the serious. Eugenics must be an academic question before it can come to be a matter of intense and general practical interest, or be finally, as Mr. Galton hopes it will, "introduced into the national conscience like a new religion." If it is a noble thing to produce a race in which sound physiques, strong minds, and good morals are in widest commonalty spread, to debase the stock is surely a national disgrace. There is, however, no surer way to debase it than to follow rash counsels looking to number rather than quality. The aim throughout is to give richness to life. And here those who hold to the rabbit theory of national well-being have to face the fact that G CIibPDF - www.fastio.com