264 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



Galton next sketches out what procedure an active society promoting 

 Eugenics might adopt. It might, he considers : 



(1) Disseminate knowledge of the laws of heredity as far as known and 

 encourage their further investigation. 



Incidently he emphasises the importance for Eugenics of the actuarial side 

 of heredity, and remarks on its advance in recent years, and how the average 

 degree of resemblance — the measure of kinship in each grade — is now obtain- 

 able, so that in the mass the effects of blood relationship can be dealt with 

 even as actuaries deal with the birth- and death-rates. This actuarial side 

 of heredity was ever present in Galton's mind, and was the topic of his 

 Herbert Spencer lecture on Eugenics. 



(2) Inquire into the present and the past rates of fertility of various social 

 groups- — classified according to their civic efficiency. Galton says that there 

 is strong reason for believing from the history of ancient and modern nations 

 that their rise and fall depends upon changes in this relative fertility. He 

 considers that while there are causes at work which tend to check fertility in 

 the classes of higher civic worth, nevertheless types of our race may be found 

 which can be highly civilised without losing fertility, even as some animals 

 become more fertile the more they are domesticated. 



(3) Collect data as to large and thriving families. Galton considers that 

 a "large" family may be taken as one in which there are at least three male 

 children. His definition of a "thriving" family is important, and it seemed to 

 me overlooked in the discussion ; it is one in which the children have gained 

 distinctly superior positions to those achieved by the average of their class- 

 mates in early life. It is clear that such a list of " thriving" families — a 

 "Golden Book," of really noble stirps — must precede any attempt to encourage 

 fertility in the classes of higher civic worth. But the formation of such a 

 "Golden Book," even for a single social group such as the clerical, legal or 

 academic professions, is a matter of extraordinary difficulty. Galton soon 

 dropped the idea of making it depend on the children reaching "superior 

 positions." He saw that it must depend upon the achievements of the stirp 

 or stock as a whole. It was from the standpoint of this idea that Galton set 

 Schuster to work on Noteworthy Families in modern science; that was to 

 form the first section of the "Golden Book." Further portions of it were in 

 part prepared and the "Register of Able Families*" was an offshoot from the 

 same idea. Judged from the aim of the " Golden Book," Noteworthy Families 

 (Modern Science) gains more meaning, if we cannot overlook its defects. 



What Eugenics needs is a book of "Noble Families" in a modern sense; 

 it could at first only apply to the upper classes, and there would certainly 

 be numerous omissions and erroneous inclusions in the early issues. It would 

 contain, just as a peerage does, a list of all families within which, inside a 

 given range of ancestry and collaterals, a certain percentage of members had 

 reached posts falling into a carefully selected list, or achieved results in politics, 

 art, literature or science of a certain degree of worth. New families would 



* See our present volume, p. 121. 



