398 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



Biometric Laboratory, University College. November 8, 1909. 



My dear Francis Galton, Thank you very much for the photograph of Wee Ling ; he is 

 clearly progressing. Thank you also very much for your letter. I enclose a sample of X.'s type 

 of attack. The article is worth reading to show the hopeless character of this man's work. 

 There is not a single appeal to demonstrable facts, to statistical data, in the whole paper. It 

 is simply rhetorical, wholly indefinite in result and meaning. But any reader of the obscure 

 paragraph on p. 9 must, whatever else he makes out of it, come to the conclusion that we have 

 wasted the resources of the laboratory in a " sterile logomachy " and that we have made no 

 attempt to trace the origin of alcoholism or measure its influence on the offspring and the in- 

 dividual. The essential fact is that we are the only people who have really endeavoured to 

 measure the relation of alcoholism in parents to the mental and physical condition of the children, 

 and that only in this Laboratory is the relation of alcoholism to crime and insanity actually 

 known and its statistical correlations to environment and class have here alone been worked out. 

 I believe that we only have seen what relation alcoholism has to feeblemindedness. The rest 

 is " impression," " opinion," rhetoric and fustian like that exhibited by X. I think if you carefully 

 read the paragrapb — and it is only one among many which have emanated from the same 

 quarter — you will see that we cannot continue to leave such charges unreplied to. I hate this 

 sort of controversial work, but sometimes it must be undertaken, if only to prevent the truth 

 from being swamped. I feel very strongly about this, and must write to you exactly what I 

 feel. But if this criticism of an active member of the Eugenics Society seems to you undesirable, 

 I will do it from outside the Laboratory altogether. Yours affectionately, Karl Pearson. 



The Rectory, Haslemere. November 9, 1909. 



My dear Karl Pearson, I have read and re-read the marked passages pp. 9-10 in the 

 British Journal of Inebriety. They seem to me more suited for a bantering reply, than for the fire 

 of heavy guns. I mean, for a paragraph in the sense of " What does X. really want 1 He seems 

 to object to statistical inquiry showing the extent to which feeblemindedness is transmissible. 

 But that is a fact that statesmen must take into account and of which it is of primary importance 

 that the information should be trustworthy. He thinks it a serious matter that Eugenists are 

 not acquainted with physiology and pathology, but that is certainly not true of many contributors 

 to the Eugenics Laboratory and other Biometric Publications. He wants inquiry into the origin 

 of defects; by all means let it be attempted by those who are capable and see their way to fruitful 

 inquiry. But that is a special line of research with which the Eugenics Laboratory is not 

 occupied. Lastly, what is meant by the sonorous phrase 'sterile logomachy'?" 



I have scribbled the above just as I should do in a first draft, to ease my mind and get my 

 thoughts in presentable order. Don't think more of it than that. The great point is not need- 

 lessly to embitter any controversy, but to show that the opponent is ignorant and presumptuous. 

 I feel sure you can do this. 



I have writing now near my elbow a very good lady assistant, Miss Augusta Jones, who 

 tells me that her sister is now working at your laboratory. 



My niece left her bed yesterday, much better for her month's rest-cure, but will require 

 I fear somewhat prolonged care. She goes to Rutland Gate for the week-end, to be doctored 

 and set up with winter clothing. Ever affectionately yours, Francis Galton. 



I may be amusingly embarrassed in relation to X., because he has undertaken to boil down 

 for Harmsworth's forthcoming big serial publication four of my books, and I have assented, 

 the publisher assenting also. I have not seen any advertisement of this J to ^ million issue 

 but a favourable allusion to it in Public Opinion. 



7, Well Road, Hampstead, N.W. November 11, 1909. 



My dear Francis Galton, I ought to have written to you to thank you for your letter 

 and now for your extract from the Cambridge Review, but I have been very busy and just about 

 fit for the sofa when I get home at night. You, seeing things from a reposeful distance, can 

 judge more wisely than I, but I feel very strongly the general harm that all exaggeration and 

 rhetoric does to a good cause and I am sorry that your books are to be taken in hand by this 

 prophet of the age. He can no more understand the Natural Inheritance or the Hereditary 



