Supplement to Nature, March 21, 1901, 



is impossible in the absence of bloodshed and inter- 

 national hostility. There is much ambiguity in the word 

 *' progress." A movement or change in human society 

 which by some thinkers would be called "progress," 

 would by others be called "retrogression," whilst others 

 would deny the very existence of a change and see 

 stagnation in place of either. Prof. Pearson, like other 

 prophets of things to come, uses terms of conveniently 

 vague significance. He should tell us more clearly what 

 he means by "human progress " before he asks us to 

 accept it as the end which iustifies human warfare. 



E. Ray Lankester. 



Prof. Karl Pearson has for some years devoted his 

 mathematical knowledge to a more exact co-ordina- 

 tion of observations on heredity. It cannot be said 

 that in this address he uses any results of his study 

 which were previously unknown to us through the obser- 

 vations of breeders of animals and the facts recorded 

 by Mr. Galton. Prof. Pearson affirms that the " earlier 

 interpreters of evolution " obscured it, and much of his 

 address is devoted to pointing out that the association of 

 individuals in a tribe made 'the development of human 

 love and sympathy a necessity. 



Now surely Huxley was the very earliest interpreter 

 of evolution, and there was no part of the doctrine to 

 which he devoted more attention than this very subject — 

 evolution and ethics. But it is good that facts, however 

 well known they may be to readers of Nature, should 

 be set forth strongly in an address which has a chance of 

 coming before other readers. 



;|The essential part of the address shows that a nation 

 must be untiring and unresting in its efforts to increase 

 its " brain " power ; to increase its proportion of people 

 of better brains and physique, if it is to hold its own 

 against other nations. It is certain that we readers of 

 Nature are all in agreement with the author, and we 

 are all in sympathy with him in his effort to rouse our 

 sleeping nation, and to make it feel that the struggle for 

 existence is not merely among neighbouring individuals, 

 nor tribes, nor cities, nor counties, but among nations. 

 We may go further, and say that every man of sense in 

 the kingdom is fully alive to the fact that this struggle 

 for existence is going on, and we only differ as to the 

 best method of increasing the strength of our own people. 

 There are many other things to be thought of, many 

 things which Prof Pearson's mere Aryan science can- 

 not take into account. A nation, like a man or a field, 

 needs occasional intervals of lying fallow. After national 

 existence is secure, there is something important in the 

 development of international friendship and affection. 

 As care for the tribe preceded care for the nation, so care 

 for the nation may only precede care for a federation of 

 the nations. The struggle between some nations in 

 Europe may be so bitter as to make them unfit for 

 combination against a fitter Sclavonic and .'\siatic 

 federation. But these considerations must give place 

 when our own nation is in such great danger as it is at 

 the present time. Huxley and many others spoke of 

 this danger and pointed out the remedy long ago, when 

 the danger was remote ; now it is coming swiftly upon 

 us, and we can only repeat the same warnings and give 

 the same advice in shriller and more vehement tones. 

 NO. 1638. VOL. 63I 



To show how we are continually saying the same 

 things in regard to education, I would direct attention to 

 " The Education of our Industrial Classes," an address 

 delivered in 1883 by Sir Norman Lockyer, (Macmillan 

 and Co.). At p. 16 I find the following words : — 



" It is half a century since the Germans found out the 

 importance of the new studies from a national point of 

 view. We are now finding it out for ourselves, and find- 

 ing it out not a moment too soon ; and I need hardly 

 tell you that the transformation which is going on is 

 acknowledged to be one of the highest national import- 

 ance. It is no longer an abstract question of a method 

 of education ; it is a question of the life or death of many 

 of our national industries, for, in the struggle for exist- 

 ence, how can a man who wins his bread by the appli- 

 cation of natural laws to some branch of industry, if he 

 be ignorant of those laws, compete with the man who is 

 acquainted with them ? If for man we read nation, you 

 see our present position." 



The author, although he fears that our economic 

 and social conditions are hardly ripe for such a 

 ^movement, seems to favour Mr. Galton's notion that 

 there ought to be social action towards an en- 

 deavour to prevent the inferior stock of people among 

 us from breeding at will ; making the all-important ques- 

 tion of parentage a matter not of family, but of national 

 importance. He points out that France is becoming a 

 land of Bretons because the Bretons alone have large 

 families, and that the feckless, improvident and brainless 

 people in England among the very poor and the very rich 

 have the largest families, whereas the provident people 



" have been marrying late, have been having small 

 families, have been increasing their individual comfort, 

 and all this is at the expense of the nation's future." 



This is why we are defeated commercially by Germans. 

 He points out that a mere multiplication of centres of 

 technical instruction will do no good against the American 

 and German, as it is only where brains already exist 

 that training is of use. He points out that nurture and 

 education may immensely aid the social machine, but 

 they must be repeated generation by generation ; they 

 will not in themselves reduce the tendency to the pro- 

 duction of bad stock. He believes the Kaffir and Negro 

 and Red Indian so low that they must be destroyed ; that 

 for a good stock of people to live alongside a bad stock, 

 or to keep them as slaves, or to intermarry with them, is 

 only to prepare a cataclysmal solution for the future. 



It would, we think, be easy to prove, from the con- 

 dition of mongrel races and from the history of the fall 

 and rise of nations, that these statements are not the 

 teachings of science ; but let us suppose for a moment 

 that he is right about England. During the French 

 revolution a speaker declared, day after day, with 

 vehemence, that the simple remedy for all French evils 

 was " to kill all the scoundrels and traitors." Prof 

 Pearson's remedy for all evils is to diminish the propor- 

 tion of bad stock ; but who are the people of England 

 of bad stock ? He himself confesses that they may be 

 among the very rich as well as among the very poor ; 

 we are inclined to think that he would find much the same 

 proportion among the middle class people, or Phihstines, 

 who "have been increasing their individual comfort." 



He is specially wrong when he says that education will 

 not improve the stock. On the contrary, we think that 



