372 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



London University but the other universities (i) that Eugenics is a Science and that our research 

 work is of the highest type and as reliable and sober as any piece of physiological or chemical 

 work, (ii) that we are running no hobby and have no end in view but the truth. If these things 

 can be carried out we shall have founded a science to which statesmen and social reformers can 

 appeal for marshalled facts. If our youthful efforts were mixed up in any way with the work 

 of Havelock Ellis, Slaughter or Saleeby, we should kill all chance of founding Eugenics as an 

 academic discipline. Please don't think I am narrow, or that I do not admit that these men 

 have done or may do good work. All I say is that I could not get the help we are getting from 

 the medical profession, from pathologists or physiologists, if we were supposed to be specially 

 linked up with these names. Rightly or wrongly it would kill Eugenics as an academic study. 

 All I want is to stand apart doing our scientific work, not in any way hostile to the Eugenics 

 Education Society, giving it any facts we can or an occasional lecture, but not being specially 

 linked to it in any manner. For this reason I am rather sorry that D. has gone on to its Council, 

 because it makes a link, which I think it is better for Laboratory and Society not to forge — it 

 will hamper the freedom of both. My policy, however, with my young people is to show them 

 my own standpoint, but in no way to control their action. Unofficially and privately I shall 

 always be ready to aid the Society. Yours affectionately, Karl Pearson. 



I think we have a copy of the Feeble-Minded Report, but it is needless to say that we shall 

 hail your gift if we have not. I know that Miss Rarrington has been at work on the pedigrees 

 in it. 



I am in a state of most irrepressible excitement ! I believe I am on the track of a far- 

 reaching clue, namely the effect of presence or absence of internal pigment, especially that of 

 the brain centres in mammals. I think it is going to explain why deaf-mutism, imbecility and 

 albinism occur in the same stocks. Don't reveal my secrets ! Rut I believe the ordinary albino 

 has internal pigment ; the imbecile lacks at one or more brain centres internal, but he does not 

 lack external pigment, and the deaf-mute lacks pigment in the membrane of the perilymph 

 chamber, the " retina " so to speak of the ear. The imbecile deaf-mute albino, who spins like 

 a waltzing mouse, lacks pigment everywhere. The waltzing mouse is a partial albino. The partial 

 albino cat with blue eye and white coat is a deaf-mute. The wall-eyed horse tends to " spin." The 

 perishing of the internal pigments of the brain leads to senile insanity. Most of us lose only 

 our external pigment with age. Everything fits in and it ought to give a grand connected theory 

 of degeneracy. Of course it may all prove a dream ! On Friday night there was an autopsy on 

 an albino and much may turn on it, if the internal pigments are shown to be there. Mott is 

 examining the pigmented centres in the brains of imbeciles and deaf-mutes for me. Of course my 

 hypotheses may all collapse, but so far it seems to be the first connected theory of why imbecility, 

 albinism and deaf-mutism run in the same stocks. I expected that imbeciles might "spin," and 

 I find from inquiry that the " spinning imbecile " is a known type. There is an American at 

 Colney Hatch, Mott tells me, who continually spins like a whirling Dervish. I shall put that 

 down, if my theory works out as akin to Hamilton's prediction of the "conical points" of the 

 wave surface ! Don't laugh at me too heartily ! 



7, Well Road, Hampstead, N.W. February 10, 1909. 



My dear Francis Galton, Your Foreword is most kindly and all we could possibly want. 

 I saw Mrs Gotto to-day and tried to explain to her that our position was one of sympathy but 

 independent action. We must not make ourselves in any way intimately associated with 

 propagandism. The medical men are coming in and giving us splendid material for the Treasury, 

 often confidential and personal histories. But Saleeby and others on the Eugenics Education 

 Society's Council are red rags to the medical bull, and if it were thought we were linked up with 

 them we should be left severely alone. I think it a very great thing to have won even partial 

 confidence from a portion of the medical world, and if we can keep it and extend it, we shall 

 have really done a great stroke in forwarding the scientific side of Eugenics. I have mentioned 

 all this because I believe Mrs Gotto thinks me unreasonable, but we should only hamper each 

 other's movements, and to make Eugenics an academic study and get the medical world to aid 

 us will be one definite piece of work done on one side of the movement, and as you say this sort 

 of work can be a foundation for the other. Yours affectionately, K. Pearson. 



