VARIATION IN MAN AND WOMAN. 253. 



'Secondary sexual characters' remain, in his hands, like variation, 

 undefined. 



4. All 'abnormalities' are added to the material rejected as unsuit- 

 able for investigation, on the ground that they are 'pathological.' 

 It has been easy to show that this notion cannot be maintained, and 

 that in his pious horror of 'pseudo-scientific superstitions' Professor 

 Pearson here lays himself open to retort. Anomalies are not patho- 

 logical, except in the sense of Virchow, who regarded pathology as 

 simply the science of anomalies. Moreover, scientific pathologists do 

 not admit that even diseases can be regarded as involving any new 

 or different laws. Morbid as well as normal phenomena alike furnish 

 proper material, if intelligently used, for the investigation of this 

 question. 



5. Professor Pearson decides that differences in size furnish the 

 best measure of the variability of the sexes. In reaching this decision 

 he makes no reference to the fact that the probabilities accumulated 

 during a century tended to discredit this group of evidence for the 

 purposes he had in view. 



6. If, however, we put aside those probabilities which tend to 

 render this evidence tainted, so far as the object of Professor Pearson's 

 special argument is concerned, we still find that the results he reaches 

 are precisely the results we should expect if the position he assails is 

 sound. That is to say that at birth, before the results of the assumed 

 selective action of the pelvis have yet been fully shown, there is greater 

 variability of the males, while later, as a result of that selection, there 

 is a tendency to equality in sexual variability. 



7. The net outcome of Professor Pearson's paper is thus found 

 to be a confirmation of that very doctrine of the greater variational 

 tendency of the male which he set out to prove to be 'either a dogma 

 or a superstition.' 



It may be as well to state, finally, that nothing I have said can 

 be construed as an attempt to disparage those ' biometrical ' methods 

 of advancing biology of which Professor Pearson is to-day the most 

 brilliant and conspicuous champion. I am not competent to judge of 

 the mathematical validity of such methods, but so far as I am able 

 to follow them I gladly recognize that they constitute a very valuable 

 instrument for biological progress. I say nothing against the instru- 

 ment : I merely point out that, on this occasion, the results obtained 

 by its application have been wrongly interpreted. 



