VI"! Lift' nml LeUertf of Fninrix GalUni 



uniU, equally cspable of voting, and the rest. This feeling ih undeniably wrong and cannot 

 last. I therefort" do not hesitate in believing that if the persons on the nsgister were obviously 

 better and finer pieces of manhood in everj- respect tlmn other men, democracy notwithstanding, 

 their superiority would Ix^ recognised lus just what it amounted to, without envy, but very 

 possibly with some feeling of hoetility on the part of beaten competitors." (p. 127.) 



Thus Gallon ploughed his lonely furrow, or rather Odys-seus-like ploughed 

 that track of the restless sea which cjin-ied him between the Charybdis of 

 Democracy and the Scylla of an Hereditary Peerage; and the iinwoiited 

 path giive him few social or political comrades. Men do not trouble when 

 a bnind-new halo is affixed to their old sanctities, but to suggest even that 

 the old halo woidd befit better a new sanctity than a worn-out fetish is sacrilege 

 indeed. 



There is still a law in France, due to Colbert in 1669, touching the wide- 

 spread oak forests ; it runs : 



"in none of the forests of the State shall oaks be felled until they are ripe, that is, are unable 

 to prosper for more than thirty years longer." 



Thus France legislated for the parquet-floors and wine-casks of to-day, for 

 she did not repeal the ordinance when oak l^came of little service for shipping. 



"Is not man," asks Galton, "worthy of more consideration than timber? If a nation readily 

 consents to lay costly plans for result-s not to be attained until five generations of men shall 

 liave passed away, for a good supply of oak, could it not lx> [)ersuade<l to do at least as much 

 for a good supply of Man? Marvellous effects might lie produce<l in five generations (or in 

 166 years; allowing three generations to a century). I Iwlieve when the truth of here<lity as 

 respects man shall have become firml}' establishe<l and be clearly understood, that instead of a 

 sluggish regard Ix'ing shown towartis a practical application of this knowledge, it is much more 

 likely that a perfect enthusiasm for improving the race might develop itself among the educated 

 dsMes'." (p. 120.) 



Thus testifies Francis Galton, nnich as George Fox had testified two 

 centuries earlier. Both were men with a strong religious enthusiasm behind 

 their doctrines. But the former, who combined knowledge with intense convic- 

 tion, has so far failed relatively to the latter, who combmed forcible ignorance 

 with intense conviction. Are we to attribute the difterence to the 'atmo- 

 sphere' peculiar to their ages, to market-place methods, or to the fact that 

 while Fox appealed to the individual's dubiety as to his own future, Galton 

 Jisked the individual to consider the welfare, not of bim.self, but of his off- 

 spring? The sanctions behind past religious beliefs will be found in the 

 great mass of men to have a selfish origin, welfare now or in the future. 



It is conceivable that Galton's teaching, depending largely on the inten- 

 sification of the herd-instinct, may need another ice-age, or defeat in a war 

 greater even than the 'Great War,' to impress itself upon our race. The 

 immediate future social history of German}' may not be uninstructive from 

 this standpoint to the philosophical onlooker. 



We have seen that Galton in his last paper laid stress on the ill-efl'ects 

 on race of town-life, and that in an earlier pajier he had fully recognised the 

 importance of measuring the relative influence of nurture and of nature. 



' Let as remember that the passion to breed animals and to breed them for points is almost 

 instinctive in the Briton, and we see why our race ought to be foremost in the study and 

 practice of eugenics. 



