Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 2;">9 



were excellent pieces of work*, and I am the more willing to praise them as 

 I had no connection whatever with the Eugenics Record Office. I was not 

 on its Advisory Committee, and Galton, knowing how pressed I was at that 

 time with work, did not as far as I can recollect ever consult me as to the 

 research in his Office ; once or twice only Schuster asked for aid in dealing with 

 statistical matters. In the main it was Galton, with some aid from Weldon, 

 who developed this first attempt at a Eugenics Laboratory. When two years 

 later Galton asked me to take charge of the Office I was only too glad to 

 publish Schuster's memoirs as the first and third of the new Eugenics 

 Laboratory publications. These writings and a couple of papers on the 

 inheritance of psychical characters and of deaf-mutism demonstrated that 

 Galton's proposals for eugenetic research were feasible, and that his endow- 

 ment was not being wasted. If in the future the question arises when and 

 where did Eugenics as an academic branch of study take its origin, the 

 answer can only be : In the autumn of 1.904 in the two rooms at No. 50, 

 Gower Street under the direction of Francis Galton, within a few yards of 

 the house on the same side of the street where Charles Darwin started his 

 married life when he returned from his voyage in the " Beagle." When 

 Eugenics becomes a great factor of academic and political life — as important 

 as State Medicine, — which I have no doubt it will be in the future, then 

 that house will deserve to be commemorated ! 



The second important event for Galton and Eugenics in the year 1904 

 was really anterior to the foundation of the Eugenics Record Office. I have 

 already noted that Galton had endeavoured, although not very successfully, 

 to interest English anthropologists in Eugenics. He now turned with a some- 

 what greater degree of success to the Sociologists, and in particular to the 

 newly founded Sociological Society. A lecture was given by him at a meeting 

 of that Society held on May 16, 1904. It was exceedingly well-staged except 

 in one unfortunate respect, the choice of a chairman. There was a reasonably 

 well-directed discussion and there were written expressions of opinion upon 

 Eugenics as science and art from a number of men with familiar names. 

 Maudsley and Mercier were doubters and apparently ignorant of the know- 

 ledge already obtained ; Francis Warner generalised on impressions ; Weldon 

 preached the sound doctrine " that there can be no doubt whatever that for 

 the student of Eugenics or of organic evolution generally, the conclusions 

 drawn from the larger mass of complex material are far more valuable than 

 those drawn from the simpler, smaller laboratory experiment " ; H. G. Wellsf 

 was of the opinion that more can be achieved in the way of improving the human 

 race by the sterilisation of failures than by the selection of successes for breed- 

 ing; Benjamin Kidd was dogmatic without being convincing; Palin Elderton 



* Both now unfortunately out of print. 



t This popular author set an absurd myth on foot by saying : " Eugenics which is really 

 only a new word for the popular American term stirpiculture." " I wish," said the German 

 Professor, " that Lord Rayleigh would more frequently acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr 

 Strutt." Galton himself actually invented the word " stirpiculture " and changed it advisedly 

 to eugenics ! 



33—2 



