260 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



considered that actuaries as a body hold that environment operates merely as a 

 modifying factor after heredity has done its work; L. T. Hobhouse maintained 

 that if the problem of stock is to be taken into consideration at all, then it 

 ought to be by intelligently handling the question rather than submitting to 

 the blind forces of nature, but until there is more knowledge and agreement 

 as to criteria of conscious selection, " we cannot, as sociologists, expect to do 

 much for society on these lines " ; William Bateson held that " the ' actuarial 

 method ' will perhaps continue to possess a certain fascination in regions of 

 inquiry where experimental methods are at present inapplicable," but urged 

 that those who have such aims at heart (as Galton) would best further 

 Eugenics by promoting "the attainment of that solid and irrefragable know- 

 ledge of the physiology of heredity which experimental breeding can alone 

 supply"; he did not state the touchstone — faith in the research and the 

 actuarial treatment — by which we can alone know that the knowledge is "solid 

 and irrefragable"*; C. S. Lock obviously thought the proposals premature ; 

 W. Leslie Mackenzie thought that the effects of inheritance were so masked 

 by nurture that in no individual case could we determine what was due to 

 the former, and cited as an illustration that the modern movement for 

 extirpation of tubercular phthisis could not become world-wide until the 

 belief in the " heredity of tuberculosis " had been sapped ; a view contradicted 

 promptly by Archdall Reid who held that it was selection by consumption 

 tbat made the Northern Races pre-eminently strong against consumption ; 

 J. M. Robertson evidently laid more stress on environment than heredity, 

 and considered ill-feeding, ill-housing, ill-clothing and early profligacy on 

 the one hand, and ignorance in child-bearing and begetting on the other, as 

 the great forces of " Kakogenics " ; Bernard Shaw agreed with the paper 

 and went so far as to say " that there was now no reasonable excuse for 

 refusing to face the fact that nothing but a eugenic religion can save our 

 civilisation from the fate which has overtaken all previous civilisations." He 

 held that "what we must fight for is freedom to build the race without 

 being hampered by the mass of irrelevant conditions implied in marriage," and 

 asserted that "a mere reduction in the severity of the struggle for existence 

 is no substitute for positive steps for the improvement of such a deplorable 

 piece of work as man." Shaw cleared away a good deal of the fog of previous 

 contributors, but went further f than Galton certainly approved, and indicated 

 methods of improving the race, for which, however biologically fitting, the 

 time will not be ripe until the less drastic proposals of Galton have bred 

 " under the existing conditions of law and sentiment % " a more highly social- 

 ised race. Galton's suggestions may seem very limited as compared with 

 Bernard Shaw's attitude to race improvement, but he who would practically 



* I can remember the day when certain so-called "Laws of Motion" were considered "solid 

 and irrefragable " ! Most of the progress in science consists in the passage from one " solid 

 and irrefragable " law to a second. 



t If a marriage is from the eugenic standpoint brilliantly successful "it seems a national loss 

 to limit the husband's progenitive capacity to the breeding capacity of one woman," etc. etc. 



I See the title to Galton's Huxley Lecture on our p. 226. 





