406 Life and Letters of Francis Qalton 



experience" was another term for Galton's "general impressions" which 

 had assumed a prescriptive right not to be questioned. The Chairman 

 administered one blow after another to the Honorary President of the Society ! 

 The latter had asserted that "probability is the basis of Eugenics"; the 

 former thought he knew of a better method, though there is no evidence 

 that he ever described it, still less attempted to apply it. 



" To those, however, who are familiar with the methods of eugenic. ..research the Report [that 

 of the Eugenics Laboratory] causes no surprise at all. It simply confirms their belief that, 

 serviceable as biometry is in its proper sphere, it has its limitations, and that a complex problem 

 such as that of the relation of parental alcoholism to offspring is quite beyond its ken. ... 



" First the biometrical method is based on the ' law of averages ' which again is based on the 

 ' theory of probabilities,' which again is based on mathematical calculations of a highly abstract 

 order. From this it follows that in this particular problem, biometric research supplies no 

 practical guide to the individual 



" I agree that some of the new technical phraseology used by the biometricians is at first 

 rather repelling — notably, their coefficient of correlation " 



But this, we are told, is not so bad as their probable error, which they had 

 to borrow ready-made from the astronomers. 



" Further : the biometrical method deals only with patent and not at all with latent character- 

 istics or qualities. Herein it differs markedly from Mendelism " 



And so the Chairman of Galton's Society wandered on, talking of matters 

 he did not understand and of a memoir — as he admitted afterwards — he had 

 not at the time read*. Heredity was not discussed in the memoir, and 

 accoi'dingly the reference to Mendelism was meaningless. What the Chairman 

 of the Eugenics Education Society imagined would be the effect of his letter 

 I cannot say ; that it moved Galton so that a word would have led him to 

 resign his honorary presidency of the Society I do know. As for the members 

 of the Eugenics Laboratory their irritation was far greater at the attack 

 made on Galton's scientific creed than at the idle criticism of their own 

 work. Galton himself wrote the following letter published in The Times 

 of June 3rd : 



ALCOHOLISM AND OFFSPRING. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. 



Sir, Mr Crackanthorpe's letter under the above heading casts doubt on the value of 

 biometric conclusions because they are " based on the ' law of averages,' which again is based on 

 the 'theory of probabilities,' which again is based on mathematical calculations of a highly 

 abstract order." So far as I can understand this account it seems to me inaccurate, but I have 

 no idea of what is meant by "law of averages." Allow me to give my own version of biometric 

 methods — i.e. that they are primarily based on observations, after they have been marshalled 

 in order of their magnitudes — the little figures, say, coining first and the larger ones last — by 

 drawing diagrams, and by countings. This much suffices to give a correct idea of the distribution 

 of any given set of variables ; it is also sufficient to give a fair idea of the closeness of correla- 

 tion, or of kinship, between any two sets of variables. Here exact correspondence counts as 1, 

 no correspondence at all as 0, and intermediate degrees are counted by intermediate decimal 

 fractions. However, in usual biometric computations, where large numbers of figures are 



* He sent round the very morning his letter appeared in The Times to 42, Rutland Gate to 

 borrow the memoir "as he thought he ought to see it." 



