Correlation and Application of Statistics to Problems of Heredity 91 



the same time a religious programme for the nation. He puts into the mouth 

 of a supposed agnostic and "somewhat fanatic" preacher opinions which were 

 undoubtedly his own — even though he states that, with much sympathy for 

 them, he would not commit himself to them without serious reservations the 

 statement of which "would merely distract the argument*." It would indeed 

 be a loss, if Galton's views thus boldly expressed should perish in an 

 ephemeral review article. He himself has added in a list of his papers in my 

 possession a note to the effect that this article suggests Eugenics — although 

 that name is not mentioned — as a religion in accordance with our modern 

 views on human evolution. We note here the beginning of Galton's last 

 period in which he devoted his activities to eugenic propaganda. I cite the 

 following characteristic passages : 



"The mystery is unfathomed as to whence the life of each man came, whether it pre-existed 

 in anj' form or not. The mystery is equally great as to what will become of his life after the 

 death of the body ; whether it will be perpetuated in a detached form as some creeds say, 

 whether it will be absorbed into an unlimited sea of existence, as other creeds assert, or whether 

 it will cease entirely. As regards this life, there are also mysteries. Every act may or may not 

 have been determined by previous conditions, but man has the sense of being free and respon- 

 sible: he is accustomed to do and to be done by as if he were so, therefore we may provisionally 

 believe that he is free and should act on that supposition. There is a further mystery as regards 

 the cosmic conditions under which we live, for no assurance can as yet be obtained of any 

 supernatural guidance, the facts alleged in evidence of its existence being more than counter- 

 balanced by those that point the other way. We cannot, in consequence, tell with certainty 

 whether human life is subject to an autocracy, or whether, at least for practical purposes, it 

 exists as an isolated republic; but the latter appears at present to be the more probable, and 

 should, therefore, guide our conduct. Each man's destiny during his life may then be viewed 

 with propriety as depending entirely on his own physiological peculiarities and on his sur- 

 roundings. He has. consequently, to conduct himself as a member of a free executive committee 

 during his brief life, guiding his actions by whatever he can learn of the tendencies of the 

 cosmos, in order to co-operate intelligently with what he cannot in the long-run resist. The 

 sense of responsibility that is imposed by this view would sober, brace, and strengthen the 

 character, just as that of dependence on an autocratic power effeminates and enfeebles it 



"On the foregoing basis our agnostic might say : 'Let us consider what is peculiarly profitable 

 and proper for man to attempt. One of the most prominent conditions to which life has been 

 hitherto subject, is the newly discovered law of the survival of the fittest, whose blind action 

 results in the progressive production of more and more vigorous animals. Any action that causes 

 the breed or nature of man to become more vigorous than it was in former generations is 

 therefore accordant with the process of the cosmos, or, if we cling to teleological ideas, we should 

 say with its purpose. 



" It has now become a serious necessity to better the breed of the human race. The average 

 citizen is too base for the every day work of modern civilization. Civilized man has become 

 possessed of vaster powers than in old times for good or ill, but has made no corresponding 

 advance in wits and goodness to enable him to direct his conduct rightly. It would not require 

 much to raise the natural qualities of the nation high enough to render some few Utopian 

 schemes feasible that are necessarily failures now. Conceive, for the sake of argument, the nation 

 to be divided in the imagination into three equal groups L, At, J¥, in order of their natural civic 

 capacities. At present the production of the forthcoming generation is chiefly effected by L and 

 M, the lowest and the middle; if it were hereafter effected by M and N, the middle and the 



* What these reservations may be we do not know, they probably related to evolutionary, 

 as opposed to revolutionary change. The opinions of the "supposed agnostic" are so akin to those 

 which Galton has himself expressed in other passages, but never more briefly or forcibly, that 

 we may well be certain they are really his own. 



12— i 



