32 SOME RECENT MISINTERPRETATIONS OF THE 



events, and think how largely the destiny of the stick has been 

 governed by a series of trifling accidents. Nevertheless all the sticks 

 succeed in passing down the current, and they travel, in the long run, 

 at nearly the same rate. So it is with life, in respect to the several 

 accidents which seem to have had a great effect upon our careers. 

 The one element, which varies in different individuals, but is constant 

 for each of them is the natural tendency ; it corresponds to the current 

 in the stream, and inevitably asserts itself." (Journal Anthropological 

 Institute, 1875, p. 391, &c.) 



Such work as the Galton Laboratory has done was to give quanti- 

 tative definiteness to this conclusion of its founder. 



It is to me one of the most astonishing illustrations of the worship 

 of the fabulous hero the worship of the man whom you carve out as 

 idol to appear what your fancy desires him to have been, regardless 

 of what he was when we find Francis Galton honoured by men who 

 suggest "that at present we should, as far as possible, avoid such 

 phrases as the relative influence of heredity and environment 1 ," or 

 who deny that there is evidence to show that the mental characters 

 are inherited like the physical. To such men we can only cry in 

 amazement : What in the world do you suppose Francis Galton did 

 teach ? What contributions do you imagine he really made to scientific 

 knowledge? What principles do you consider he actually deduced for 

 human conduct from his discoveries? When one member of the 

 Eugenics Education Society preaches "the decadence of the Galtonian 

 or biometric study of heredity," when a second holds that it is still 

 an open problem whether mental characters are mainly due to heredity 

 or to training, and when the President of the Society wishes to avoid 

 the fundamental necessity of determining before action can be taken 

 the relative influence of nature and nurture, surely we may demand 

 of them why they honour Galton at all 2 ? Is it only because a 

 heterogeneous conclave needs some well-known flag to follow, requires 

 the shadow of some great name to sanction its proceedings, regardless 

 of what the flag stands for, or what were the most cherished principles 

 of the man chosen as its fabulous hero? 



But I shall get warmer than is fitting, if I stay to discuss this 



1 Major Leonard Darwin, The Eugenics Review, vol. v, p. 154. 



* Another recent or present member of the Eugenics Education Society who prates 

 much of "our master, the late Sir Francis Galton" states that "the fact remains that 

 he omitted to discuss factors of racial injury which are quite immeasurably more 

 important than any which he considered at all." As Galton once said of similar 

 utterances, they remind you of the slathering of the boa constrictor preparatory to 

 his making a meal of you. 



