252 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



his conclusions, so far as they rested on a definite basis of fact, con- 

 firmed the thesis maintained by Darwin and more fully enforced in 

 'Man and Woman,' his position would have been unimpeachable. If, 

 again, he had refrained altogether from attempting to interpret his 

 own data a task for which, it is obvious, he was singularly ill-pre- 

 pared and had put them forth simply as a study in natural selection 

 which is what they really are his position would, again, have been 

 altogether justifiable. But as the matter stands he has enmeshed 

 himself in a tangle of misapprehensions, confusions and errors from 

 which it must be very difficult to extricate him. 



It may be well to summarize briefly the main points set forth 

 in the foregoing pages. 



1. In opposition to the doctrine of Darwin, more fully set forth 

 in my 'Man and Woman,' that the variational tendency is, on the 

 whole, more marked in men than in women, Professor Pearson re- 

 solved to show that this is one of 'the worst of the pseudo-scientific 

 superstitions. ' 



2. Unfortunately, however, it never occurred to him to define what 

 ho meant by 'variation,' nor to ascertain what the writers whom he 

 was opposing meant by the term.* A very little consideration suf- 

 fices to show that a typical variation, in what may fairly be called its 

 classic sense, is a congenital organic character on which selection 

 works, while, as understood by Professor Pearson, though without 

 definite statement, a typical variation is a character of almost any 

 kind, occurring at any period of life produced by selection. 'To 

 the biometrician, ' Professor Pearson has recently stated, 'variation is 

 a quantity determined by the class or group without reference to its 

 ancestry.' That is to say, it need not be organic or congenital, and 

 it must usually be modified, and sometimes entirely produced, by its 

 environment. This definition may be better than the more classical 

 conception of a variation. But it is certainly very different. To 

 suppose that conclusions reached concerning this kind of variation 

 can be used to overthrow conclusions reached concerning the other 

 kind is obviously unreasonable. 



3. Having silently adopted this conception of a variation, Pro- 

 fessor Pearson proceeds to inquire what 'different degrees of variability 

 are secondary sexual characters' and not 'characteristics which are 

 themselves characteristics of sex'; and is hereby led into various 

 eccentricities of assertion which it is unnecessary to recapitulate. 



* It is somewhat unusual, Professor Pearson has remarked in a recent con- 

 troversial paper (' Biometrika,' April, 1902, p. 323), 'in a discussion to give 

 entirely different meanings to the terms originally used, and leaves your ad- 

 versary to find out with what significance you may be using them.' It seems 

 to occur sometimes however. 



