Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 353 



quote the figures to justify the inference that many of the thousands of persons who are willing 

 to give freely at the prompting of a sentiment based upon compassion might be persuaded to 

 give largely also in response to the more virile desire of promoting the natural gifts and the 

 national efficiency of future generations." 



Was it only the idle dream of an old man ? Scarcely ! Galton had grasped 

 the truth in his early youth that man would respond to careful breeding even 

 as other animals ; he had propounded his gospel in full manhood, as early as 

 1804, when nobody had listened to him; he had repeated his doctrine in 

 1883, when he was sixty years old, with scarcely more effect. And now in 

 his last years he called on his fellow-countrymen once more to have faith and 

 act on that faith. There is a hereditary nobility, an aristocracy of worth, 

 and it is not confined to any social class ; it is a caste which is scattered 

 throughout all classes ; let us awaken it, that it may be self-conscious, and 

 realise how the national future lies incontrovertibly in the feasibility of 

 making it dominant in numbers and submitting the rest to its control. 

 Those who imagine that Eugenics as a national faith was the dream of 

 an octogenarian, have failed to understand the whole trend of Galton's 

 intellectual development ; he preached and waited, he waited and taught. 

 The dream of his youth, he endeavoured to the extent of his ability to make 

 practice in his old age. As in the case of Finger-prints, he took the 

 precaution of first establishing a science, and then followed it with his 

 appeal for public recognition of the principles of his science through all the 

 channels at his command. We shall see that he did not think them ex- 

 hausted by newspaper articles, eugenics education societies and associations, 

 or by public lectures. 



What he might have achieved had he been ten years younger, or the 

 English jniblic ripe for his teaching a decade earlier, it is not possible to say. 

 For two more years he fought for his creed, but his physical strength was 

 failing. In his earlier days his chief recreation had been walking alone and 

 thinking ; his best thoughts came to him on these occasions. We can follow 

 the change in the truthful record he gives under Recreations in successive 

 editions of Who's Who. We find : 



In 1898, " Chiefly solitary rambles," 



in 1904, " Solitary rambles," 



but in 1908, the year we have now reached : 



" Sunshine, quiet, and good wholesome food." 



He gave a literal interpretation to the word "recreate," and we find him 

 from 1908 onwards seeking, well wrapt in rugs, sunshine and quiet in a 

 sheltered garden corner, or on the " stoep " of a fitly chosen winter home. 



Sitting thus, Galton's thoughts rambled through the past eighty odd 

 years and they became again actual to him. As he says in a letter to his 

 biographer: "How much an autobiography must omit," and this, although in 

 a lesser degree, is true of a biography, if it be compiled within fifty years of 

 its subject's decease and its writer would not pain survivors ! 



pom 45 



