362 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



Inheritance, being unregistered, fall readily into oblivion as generations pass by, and an enormous 

 amount of valuable experience is thereby irrevocably lost. The object of the Treasury is to 

 remedy, as far as lies in its power, this deplorable waste of opportunity. 



" If the Treasury prospers, as is hoped and expected, a vast amount of information will 

 gradually be collected by its means, in a form suitable for analysis, that will enable more exact 

 conclusions to be hereafter drawn and more emphatic advice to be given than is now possible. 



" In conclusion I may perhaps be permitted to express my own sincere gratification that 

 the Eugenics Laboratory has already become so well equipped and conditioned as to undertake 

 the publication of this large and important serial." Francis Galton. 



(ii) A "Foreword" to the first issue of the Eugenics Review, which 

 appeared in this year, and in which, as the offspring of the Eugenics Education 

 Society, the Hon. President took great interest. Galton stated the aims of 

 the Review in the following sentences : 



" Its general purpose is, as stated in the Prospectus, to give expression to the Eugenic move- 

 ment and to place Eugenic thought, where possible, on a strictly scientific basis 



"The Eugenics Review emphatically disclaims rivalry in any form with the more technical 

 publications issued from time to time from the Eugenics Laboratory of the University of London 

 now located at University College. On the contrary, it proposes to supplement them. There 

 are two sorts of workers in every department of knowledge — those who establish a firm foun- 

 dation, and those who build upon the foundation so established. The foundation of Eugenics is, 

 in some measure, laid by applying a mathematico-statistical treatment to large collections of 

 facts, and this, like engineering deep down in boggy soil, affords little evidence of its bulk and 

 importance. The superstructure requires for its success the co-operation of many minds of a 

 somewhat different order, filled with imagination and enthusiasm ; it does not require technical 

 knowledge as to the nature of the foundation work. So a navigator, in order to find his position 

 at sea, is dependent on the Tables calculated for him and printed in the Nautical Almanac 

 or elsewhere. But he may safely use these Tables without having acquaintance with the 



methods by which they were constructed The field is very wide and varied. To those who 



carefully explore it the direct conflict of Eugenics with some of the social customs of the day 

 will be unexpectedly revealed, while its complete harmony with other social customs will be as 

 unexpectedly made clear." The Eugenics Review, Vol. I, pp. 1-2, April 1909. 



Galton did not foresee that one of the troubles of the remainder of his 

 life would be that the one sort of workers would bitterly attack the other. 

 The members of the Council of the Eugenics Education Society and its journal 

 from the very outset became the harshest critics of the youthful Eugenics 

 Laboratory. No publication of the latter from the day the Society was 

 founded to the present has met with aught but unfavourable reception from 

 that quarter. And this conduct not only rendered much Eugenic investigation 

 still-born, but vexed endlessly the founder not only of the Laboratory but of 

 the Society. Galton did not see that a group of persons of widely diverging 

 views, especially on such topics as sex-problems, several of whom had very 

 highly strung temperaments and little if any real scientific training, might 

 ultimately do small good either to Eugenics as a science or to Eugenics as a 

 creed. As Director of the Eugenics Laboratory I was in a difficult position, and 

 I felt it wise to stand aloof from the Society. I knew that the help I needed 

 and was seeking from the medical profession would hardly be accorded if I were 

 associated with certain then prominent members of the Society. Further 

 I felt morally sure that sooner or later our very different ways of approaching 

 eugenic problems would lead to a divergence of opinion, which would have 

 been harmful inside the Society. My staff consented to give the Society a 



