98 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



ness, as some equivalent to the loss of what it forbids. It brings the tie of 

 kinship into prominence and strongly encourages love and interest in family 

 and race. In brief, eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness and appeaUng 

 to many of the noblest feelings of our nature. ^ 



Both Gal ton and Pearson are to be commended for their pains- 

 taking labors in one important department of human progress. 

 The biometric method as developed by Pearson and employed by 

 his co-laborers is certain to prove a valuable instrument in social 

 science although owing to the unreliable character of much of the 

 data gathered up to the present the conclusions are far from 

 satisfactory. The friction between the workers at the Galton 

 Laboratory and the American workers at Cold Spring Harbor 

 under Dr. Davenport is perhaps unfortunate, yet the rivalry and 

 competitive criticism which is essentially a struggle for existence 

 between statistics as applied to the study of hereditary qualities 

 and a study of family records on the basis of the Mendelian theory 

 of unit characters, will doubtless result in hastening a knowledge 

 of the truth. The Memoirs issued from the Eugenics Laboratory 

 are cautious and modest in their statements and conclusions, not 

 pretending to discover causes but only correlations. In the 

 Lecture Series, however, too often the suggestions of the Memoirs 

 are given out as ascertained facts, and the animus shown in some 

 of the criticisms of the Mendelian workers by those of the Galton 

 Laboratory suggests a consciousness of weakness in the biometric 

 methods as there used.^ 



The conclusions of both Galton and Pearson concerning race- 

 stoCk degeneration do not seem to be borne out by the Courtis 

 tests in arithmetic applied to more than 40,000 children in 

 widely separated schools in several states of our country and 

 three schools of London. These tests do not indicate that there 

 is very much difference in natural ability between the children of 

 the various social classes, although they do show great differences 

 in natural ability between individual pupils in all classes.^ Neither 

 are they corroborated by use of the Binet tests on certain orphans 



* Sociological Papers, ii, pp. 52, 53. 



* See Eugenics Record Office, Bulletin no. 11, February, 1914. 



' Report Investigation, New York Schools, 1912, pp. 62, 66, 74; especially tests 

 on twins, pp. 71, 72. 



