CHAPTER XVI 



EUGENICS AS A CREED AND THE LAST DECADE OF GALTON'S LIFE 



" No custom can be considered seriously repugnant to human feelings that has ever pre- 

 vailed extensively in a contented nation, whether barbarous or civilised. Any custom established 

 by a powerful authority soon becomes looked upon as a duty, and before long as an axiom of 

 conduct which is rarely questioned." Francis Galton, 1894. 



(l) Introductory. The careful reader of this work will have realised how 

 deeply impressed Galton was by the idea that with man himself lies the 

 possibility of improving his race ; and this impression existed long before 

 Galton initiated active propaganda for Eugenics as a social and political 

 creed. Indeed, although Galton's earlier writings reached a limited and partly 

 prepared audience, it was not till the beginning of the present century 

 that he considered the time ripe for a more general public appeal, or sought 

 proselytes to the new faith. There are some creeds, and more sciences, of 

 which it is nearly impossible to name a single individual as the creator. When 

 we speak of Christianity we forget, or wilfully disregard, Paul ; Einstein was 

 not the first to see material phenomena in the curvature of space ; nor did 

 Darwin stand alone when he propounded evolution through natural selection. 

 But what student of evolution before Galton, realising the past ascent of man, 

 grasped that his future lies with himself, if he be willing to study and control 

 his own breeding ? It is given to few men to name a new branch of science 

 and lay down the broad lines of its development ; it is the lot of fewer still 

 to forecast its future as a creed of social conduct. In the thirty years which 

 have elapsed, since Galton started his public teaching, what gratifying progress 

 has been made, not only in establishing institutes and laboratories for research 

 in Eugenics*, but also in familiarising the people at large with the code of 

 conduct which an acceptance of eugenic principles involves ! It is as if the 

 Great War had so thoroughly demonstrated the pitiable failure of humanity, 

 that its thinkers and leaders felt that the old man must be replaced by a new- 

 born Apollo f, the worn-out creed which had failed him by a more adequate 



* Institutes primarily for Eugenics research exist to my knowledge in England, America, 

 Sweden, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and probably elsewhere. Popular 

 Journals or Eugenics Societies have been started in England, America, Germany, France, 

 Italy and Russia. 



t " Grief overcame, 



" And I was stopping up my frantic ears, 



" When, past all hindrance of my trembling hands, 



" A voice came, sweeter, sweeter than all tune, 



"And still it cried, 'Apollo! young Apollo! 



"The morning-bright Apollo! young Apollo!' 



"I fled, it follow'd me, and cried 'Apollo!'" Keats, Hyperion. 



r g in 28 



