364 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



Oxford Herbert Spencer Lecture*. For further details of its history the 

 reader must consult Galton's letters of this year. The preface runs: 



"In my ' Herbert Spencer' lecture of 1907 before the University of Oxford, I expressed a 

 belief that the elementary ideas on which the modern system of statistics depends, that the 

 quality of the results to which it leads, and that the meaning of the uncouth words used in 

 its description, admitted of much simpler explanation than usual. I sketched out a possible 

 course of lectures to be accompanied with certain simple sortings, with object lessons and with 

 diagrams. Finally, I expressed the hope that some competent teacher would elaborate a course 

 of instruction on these lines. I entertain a strong belief that such a course would be of great 

 service to those who are interested in statistics, but who, from want of mathematical aptitude 

 and special study, are unable to comprehend the results arrived at, even as regards their own sub- 

 jects. It is, for example, a great hindrance to have no knowledge of what is meant by 'correlation.' 



" I learnt with much pleasure that two very competent persons were disposed to undertake 

 the task — namely, Mr W. Palin Elderton, well known as a highly instructed actuary, and his 

 sister, Miss Ethel M.- Elderton, who holds the post of Research Scholar in the Eugenics Labora- 

 tory of the University of London (now located in University College), and who is a thoroughly 

 experienced worker in the modern methods. 



"This primer is the result. It goes forth on its important errand of familiarising educated 

 persons witli the most recent developments of the new school of statistics, and, I beg to be 

 allowed to add, with my heartiest good wishes for its success." 

 September, 1909. 



(iv) Galton was much interested in the course of this year in the asserted 

 Deterioration of the British Race, and in the Report of the Commission on 

 that subject. The problem was essentially a statistical one, but the evidence 

 given before the Commission was largely that of witnesses without any 

 statistical sense, who gave merely their opinions and impressions based too 

 often on narrowly local or inadequately transitory observations f. Above 

 all other problems Galton had selected that of the segregation of the 

 mentally defective as a field in which something might be achieved at once. 

 He was roused especially by any appeal to an individual case as confuting 

 a statistical average. Such an appeal drew from him a letter to The Times 

 of June 18th in this year : 



Sir, — A specious inference was drawn yesterday, in a speech by Lord Halsbury at the 

 luncheon given to Lieutenant Shackleton by the Royal Societies Club. He said (I quote from 

 your report) that : " in view of what Mr Shackleton had gone through it was impossible to 

 believe in the supposed deterioration of the British race." But exceptional performances do 

 not contradict the supposition in question. It is not that deterioration is so general that men 

 of remarkably fine physique have ceased to exist — for they do, thank God — but that the bulk 

 of the community is deteriorating, which it is, judging from results of inquiries into the teeth, 

 hearing, eyesight and malformations of children in Board Schools, and from the apparently 

 continuous increase of insanity and feeble-mind edness. Again the popularity of athletic sports 

 proves little, for it is one thing to acclaim successful athletes, which any mob of weaklings can 

 do, — as at a cricket match, — it is quite another thing to be an athlete oneself. 



42, Rutland Gate, S.W. June 16. Francis Galton. 



* See p. 317 et seq. above. The little book has done extraordinarily well and has passed 

 through several editions. 



■)• I feel bound to quote again here Galton's splendid aphorism of 1879 (see Vol. II, p. 297 

 above): "General impressions are never to be trusted. Unfortunately when they are of long 

 standing they become fixed rules of life, and assume a prescriptive right not to be questioned. 

 Consequently those who are not accustomed to original inquiry entertain a hatred and a horror 

 of statistics. They cannot endure the idea of submitting their sacred impressions to cold-blooded 

 verification." 



