366 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



been running for at least a generation, it is not possible to obtain anything 

 but the roughest, and this probably a minimum, estimate of the mental disease 

 in the country, and of the number of persons in whom it is hereditary. 

 Galton, citing the Royal Commissioners, assumes that 66,000 of the feeble- 

 minded are not provided for, and that from the eugenic point of view these 

 form the most dangerous sub-class of the mentally defective. I would 

 venture to suggest that those who have familial insanity of a kind which 

 is not chronic, but permits of return to home and mate, may be equally 

 dangerous *. 



Writing of the feeble-minded Galton continues : 



" The persons in question are naturally incapable of standing alone. If protected and super- 

 vised they may lead harmless, and even useful, lives and do something towards earning their 

 living. But when unprotected and cast upon the world, they go to the bad. They do so, not 

 necessarily through vicious propensities, but from the absence of will-power to resist temptations ; 

 and quickly sink into the pauper and criminal classes. The women commonly become prostitutes. 

 The feeble-minded, as distinguished from the idiots, are an exceptionally fecund class, mostly 

 of illegitimate children, and a terrible proportion of their offspring are born mentally deficient. 

 A decorous family life among their children is obviously impossible ; the conditions of their 

 nurture prevent it. Some of the issue of the feeble-minded are wholly mad or imbecile and find 

 their way to asylums ; others are merely feeble-minded and drift into bad ways as their parents 

 did before them ; in others, again, the evil is latent, but may break out in a subsequent genera- 

 tion. So the mischief goes on increasingly, and, judging from the growth of insanity, a 

 considerable part of the population has already become bearers of germs of degeneracy. 

 ****** ***** 



" Almost all the evidence printed in the report points unmistakably to segregation for life 

 as the only means of preventing feeble-minded girls from doing great harm to the community. 

 They propagate children freely, as already mentioned, who, whether they be as little, less, or 

 more, mentally endowed than themselves, are in all cases subject to most undesirable conditions 

 of nurture." 



Galton then refers to the voluntary homes for feeble-minded girls, and 

 the question of whether they are really happy in them. At that date com- 

 pulsory detention was not allowed, and accordingly, if a girl was discontented 

 she could leave the home, and one could not really assert that happiness 

 with this freedom was a valid ground for believing in an equal happiness 

 when she could not escape. I pointed this out in a letter to Galton 

 (see our p. 373), but he seemed to think that he had evidence for their 

 happiness even under compulsion in the many institutions and labour- 

 colonies where now 



" they live happily and feel as if at home, and where they remain for many years. Unfortunately, 

 as yet, no power exists for their compulsory detention. The inmates are taken out, it may be, 

 by their not wise relatives, or they want a change and leave of their own accord. Anyhow, 

 when they quit the shelter of the institution, they usually go to the bad, and after a time very 

 often apply to be again taken in, with an actual or a forthcoming baby. 



* It is not moral insensibility, but ignorance, which is too often at the root of the evil. 

 I can recall the case of a young man who had as bad a pedigree of familial insanity as can 

 well met with, and had actually himself been certified. He consulted the Director of the 

 Eugenics Laboratory on his proposed marriage, and confidently believed that if he begot 

 children when he was not insane, he would not place them under the slightest risk of 

 hereditary insanity. 



