Preface vii 



While the circumstances detailed in the preface to my second volume led to 

 a great extension of the original plan of this work, I felt the exclusion of 

 many of these charming family letters was not justified by the introduction 

 of so much scientific detail, and thus I have added them as an additional 

 chapter to this volume. To Galton's niece, Mrs Lethbridge, I owe the privilege 

 of publishing the selection from letters which, after the death of his sister 

 Emma in 1904, her Uncle wrote to her almost weekly. They give the most 

 perfect characterisation of Galton in his relationship to his family. 



One apology I must make if the reader feels that in the chapter on the 

 last decade of Galton's life the biographer has introduced too much of himself. 

 To me that last decade was essentially bound up with our joint work for a 

 subject we both had closely at heart; and I believe that for Galton himself our 

 common aim — the establishment of Eugenics as an accepted branch of science — 

 was a leading, if not the principal, purpose of those years. My own enthusiasm 

 may possibly have deceived me, but I believe Galton during that decade lived 

 more in the struggles and difficulties of our infant Laboratory than in any 

 other phase of his wide interests. The sympathy and help he always so readily 

 tendered to his friends may again have misled me, but I think the history 

 of the Laboratory he founded and finally endowed was also the essential 

 history of his own life in those last years. At any rate such is the aspect of 

 Galton's many-sided nature that I then saw most closely, and it is accordingly 

 that which I am best fitted to render account of. To me his final crusade for 

 eugenic principles was the crowning phase of a life whose labours in medicine, 

 evolution, anthropology, psychology, heredity and statistics directly fitted 

 him to be the teacher and prophet of the new faith. 



I have to express my gratitude to various societies and editors of journals 

 for permission to reproduce the illustrations that accompanied Erancis 

 Galton's letters and papers. In particular, to the Royal Institution for 

 permission to use the figures illustrating Galton's lectures of 1877, to the 

 Royal Anthropological Institute for permission to use the diagrams of 

 Galton's memoir of 1885; and to the Editor of Nature for permission to use 

 Galton's diagrams or other figures from that journal. The permission of the 

 Royal Society to reproduce illustrations to Galton's memoirs was granted 

 when my second volume was published. The copyright in Galton's books 

 belongs to the University of London. The copyright in most of the letters 

 and photographs belongs to those members of the Galton and Darwin families 

 who provided me with them, and permission to reproduce them again must 

 be obtained from those members, as well as from myself (if the second repro- 

 duction be made from this volume). 



While I must again renew my thanks to many who have aided me in this 

 as in the earlier volumes, I am under deep obligations to my colleagues Pro- 

 fessor C. J. Sisson and Miss Ethel M. Elderton for assistance in the toil of proof- 

 reading; if in a few instances I have not followed their obviously better 

 judgment, I trust they will not despise me for being of a perverse heart. To 

 Dr Julia Bell I owe the expenditure of too many of her free hours for several 

 years in the preparation of the ample index to this work ; while to my Wife, 



b 



