Supplement to Nature, March 21, 1 90 1 , 



111 



SUPPLEMENT TO "NATURE." 



DARWINISM AND STATECRAFT. 



National Life from the Standpoint of Science. An 

 Address delivered at Newcastle, November 19, 1900, 

 by Karl Pearson, F.R.S. Pp. 62. (London : A. and 

 C. Black, 1 90 1.) 



THE main purpose of this address is one which all 

 thinking men, who desire the good of their fellow 

 men, must respect, and many will heartily approve. 

 Prof. Pearson presses upon his readers the importance 

 to a nation of the possession by its constituent individuals 

 of good strong brains as well as of good strong muscles, 

 and of a well-directed training of those brains. He 

 points out that the laws of heredity are as true for man- 

 kind as for farm stock or pigeons, yet that the result of 

 modern civilisation is to remove or suspend the natural 

 selection by which, in the case of non-social organisms, 

 those individuals with inferior qualities would be pre- 

 vented from obtaining success in the struggle for 

 existence, and so hindered from largely contributing to 

 the reproduction of the race. He points out that, on the 

 contrary, accumulated wealth enables its inheritors to 

 produce and rear large families without regard to the 

 quahties of the inheritor, and that what seems to be a 

 still more dangerous condition arises from the reckless 

 and abundant breeding of the hopelessly poor and un- 

 successful members of the community. The class which 

 has the greatest mental endowment and is serving the 

 nation best in all directions, marries late and produces 

 few children. Deliberate selection in breeding and the 

 restriction of the increase of worthless stock would, if 

 such discrimination were within our limits of knowledge, 

 produce definite results in mankind as it does in animals. 

 But, in common with many other thinkers who have 

 examined this question. Prof. Pearson does not see the 

 way to any control of the reproductive function in 

 civilised communities, though he does not seem to doubt, 

 as I should do, that mankind would conduct these breed- 

 ing operations with real success were the control to be 

 tolerated. Where custom has introduced a system of 

 restricting the size of families, as in France, Prof. 

 Pearson tells us that unforeseen results follow, as, for 

 instance, the relatively excessive increase of some section 

 or racial division of the community which refuses to 

 adopt the custom of producing only two children. The 

 population of France, it is said, is becoming more and 

 more largely composed of Breton stock in consequence 

 of the production of large families by that race, whilst 

 the rest of the population deliberately restricts itself. 

 Prof. Pearson does not urge any attempt on the part of 

 the community to interfere with the individual in this 

 matter. It is, indeed, a matter which requires far deeper 

 study than Prof. Pearson or any one else has yet given 

 to it before conclusions worthy of the name of science, 

 and so well founded as to justify practical measures, can 

 be formulated^ 



On the other hand, in advocating a really wise and 



carefully considered training of such brains as the mixed 



stock of the community presents for manipulation, Prof. 



Pearson is on less doubtful ground. He justly points 



NO. 1638, VOL. 63 I 



out that not only in our warfare in South Africa, but in 

 commerce and manufacture, we stand in need of trained 

 " scouts," men who have learnt to keep their eyes open 

 and apply common sense, men trained to observe afid 

 reason. Our educational system fails to train the youth 

 of the country in this way ; it does not even aim at it or 

 consider it. Training in what is called " natural science " 

 or in scientific method is utterly neglected. As I have 

 shown elsewhere, Oxford sets the example of neglect, 

 and, naturally enough, that example is followed by each 

 successively lower grade of school throughout the 

 Empire. Prof. Pearson rightly insists that it is not mere 

 knowledge of scientific results and formulas which is 

 needed, but the training which a proper study of a branch 

 of science can give. The British parent foolishly and 

 mistakenly says, " I want my son to learn what will be 

 useful to him in his profession in life." Prof. Pearson 

 has heard it over and over again in his capacity as 

 a teacher, and I can, with a similar range of experi- 

 ence, fully confirm him. Never, says Prof. Pearson, 

 does the British parent say, as he ought to sayj 

 " I want my son to know how to observe and how 

 to think." The result of this almost universal mis- 

 apprehension of the value and purpose of education is 

 that where, after prolonged resistance, science has been 

 forced into colleges and schools, it is perverted and 

 degraded by the commercial purveyors of so-called 

 education ; it is represented by scraps of information 

 supposed to be useful in engineering, brewing or medi- 

 cine. Meanwhile the claim is openly made on behalf of 

 the " humanities " (classical literature, philosophy and 

 history) that they alone can give the training of the 

 mind which is desirable over and above mere technical 

 information. 



It cannot, I think, be denied that this false issue has 

 been raised by the advocates of' the present antiquated 

 course of study through which the average youth of 

 England is slowly and fruitlessly dragged at Oxford and 

 the great schools of the country. Partly through ignorance, 

 partly through interest, here as in other great mechanisms 

 which affect the welfare and the destiny of the British 

 nation, a traditional, ill-considered procedure and a fruit- 

 less expenditure of power and opportunity are obstinately 

 maintained and ruthlessly defended by those who find the 

 present arrangements profitable to themselves and their 

 class. With persistence, which is the index of either pro- 

 found ignorance or overweening conceit, science is 

 declared to be what it is not, namely, professional or 

 technical informatioii, and then it is asserted that science 

 is useless as " training," and that "training" can be given 

 by the traditional classical studies alone. The value of 

 real education in science, namely, its training of men to 

 observe and to reason, does not, of course, belong to the 

 travesty of science, which is all that the educational 

 ring of schoolmasters and college tutors have allowed 

 to grow up in the system which they control. Prof. 

 Pearson has my sympathy in his endeavour to persuade 

 our fellow-countrymen that training in science is a neces- 

 sary and vital factor in national prosperity, and that it 

 is almost totally unprovided for in this country. 



But I greatly fear that this is a case in which it is 

 useless to address the democracy. It is waste of words 

 to harangue the deaf; it is foolish to appeal to the eyes 



