PKOBLEM OF NURTURE AND NATURE 59 



century of social reform have hitherto been able to claim. This is 

 the sole ground on which the eugenist is distinguished from the old 

 social reformer, and those who fail to realise this emphasis of nature 

 over nurture are entirely missing not only Galton's methods of 

 investigation, but the essential feature of what he understood by 

 eugenics. 



Yet what do we find is the present state of affairs with regard to 

 any really scientific study of sociological or racial problems? Why 

 that such study is met by wholly uncritical or often unthinking 

 attacks attacks which show that their writers neither appreciate the 

 facts already known to us, nor grasp in the slightest degree the methods 

 by which alone these facts can be analysed. They honour Francis 

 Galton without studying what he devoted his life to demonstrating; 

 they establish an anniversary festival to his memory, and at the same 

 time deny the actual validity of the calculus which he first introduced 

 to solve these very problems of nature and nurture. They talk idly 

 of using "words in scientific literature without endeavouring to attach 

 a definite meaning to them" although the man they proclaim as a 

 leader had shown how to obtain a definite quantitative measure of 

 these very words. They talk vaguely about "large fallow areas of 

 the brain" still uncultivated and state that "instead of attaching too 

 much importance to nurture we have not yet begun to attach 

 enough" ; they trust to verbal discussion where Francis Galton would 

 have told them to measure and learn the facts before they spoke. 

 It was Galton's fundamental principle that before we know the 

 meaning of anything we must measure it, and that ultimately 

 everything would be found capable of measurement, if we use its own 

 appropriate footrule. I have even a letter from him in which he 

 discusses how we could obtain a definite numerical measure of the 

 influence of Mrs Grundy upon social reform. The one thing that 

 wearied Galton's almost inexhaustibly enthusiastic nature was a 

 torrent of words without any admixture of measured facts. He 

 invariably judged the worth of a publication by the extent of its 

 appeal to statistical data in the form either of observation or experi- 

 ment. Yet all this appears wholly forgotten by those who trumpet 

 most loudly his name. Again I ask: What results do they suppose 

 Galton reached and by what methods do they suppose he reached 

 them? The reality is summed up in the words of Galton himself, 

 which form the motto of our Biometric Laboratory: 



