Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 267 



Galton considered that the public conscience as represented by tribal 

 custom, law or current moral opinion had a powerful influence on conduct. 

 This public conscience is usually reflected in sanctions enforced by the 

 religion of the tribe or nation, often by appeal to the super-rational conse- 

 quences of "sin," i.e. disobedience to the current social code. Occasionally 

 social needs develop the public conscience more rapidly than the guardians of 

 orthodox belief are able or willing to expand their religious creed, and there 

 is friction, slight or grave, between what the forerunners call "progress" and 

 the priests term "heresy." Somehow religion moulds itself to the developed 

 public conscience, and all ends happily with the progressive "sinners" being 

 canonised as saints. Noting the remarks of the speakers and correspondents 

 which followed or resulted from Galton's paper, we may find the same type of 

 statement unsupported by the only possible proof — that of statistics- — again 

 occurring. For example: "the defects of a quality seem sometimes scarcely 

 less valuable than the quality itself," "it is highly probable that a very slight 

 taint may benefit rather than injure a good stock," "marry Hercules with 

 Juno, and Apollo with Venus and put them in slums, their children will be 

 stunted in growth, rickety and consumptive," "in a low state of civilisation 

 the masses obey traditional laws without questioning their authority. Highly 

 differentiated cultured persons have a strong critical sense, they ask of every- 

 thing the reason why, and they have an irrepressible tendency to be their 

 own lawgivers. These persons would not submit to laws restricting marriage 

 for the sake of vague Eugenics*," "at present the care for future man, the 

 love and respect of the race, are quite beyond the pale of the morals of even 

 the best," "the rise of intellectual qualities also involves under given condi- 

 tions a danger of further decay of moral feeling, nay of sympathetic affections 



generally Under existing social conditions it would mean a cruelty to 



raise the average intellectual capacity of a nation to that of its better moiety 

 at the present day," with much more half-baked thought. 



Some few speakers were more helpful; it may be that Galton, perhaps 

 purposely, did not sufficiently emphasise the distinction between procreation 

 and marriage, or indeed note that most primitive taboos concern mating 

 rather than marriage; yet the distinction was in the minds of some of his 

 supporters. Dr A. C. Haddon held that marriage customs among primitive 

 peoples are not in any way hidebound, and that social evolution can take 

 place. "When circumstances demand a change, then a change takes' place, 

 perhaps more or less automatically, being due to a sort of natural selection. 

 There are thinking people among savages, and we have evidence that they 

 do consider and discuss social customs, and even definitely modify them ; but, 

 on the whole, there appears to be a definite trend of social factors that cause 

 this evolution. There is no reason why social evolution should continue to 

 take place among ourselves in a blind sort of way, for we are intelligent 

 creatures, and we ought to use rational means to direct our own evolution. 



* Why should the precepts of Eugenics be "vague," if they start from scientific know- 

 ledge 1 Other critics asserted on the contrary that the more cultivated classes would reach 

 eugenic conclusions, but the uneducated would pay no attention, and so the movement be idle! 



34—2 



