Eugenics as a Creed and the Last Decade of Galton's Life 407 



discussed, the greatest possible precision has to be reached, and the measure of the accuracy so 

 determined has to be ascertained; then elaborate mathematical methods must be employed, 

 which cannot be briefly described except in highly technical terras. 



I do not at all agree that " the relation of parental alcoholism to offspring is quite beyond 

 the ken " of biometric methods. The memoir that is criticised discusses that relation in regard 

 to offspring in their early life. The simple question, divested of all connotation, whether or no 

 adult offspring suffer, and in what degree, seems to me perfectly within the ken of biometry. 

 But the interpretation of the results so obtained is quite another consideration. 



Francis Galton. 



My admiration for Galton was never higher than when I read this letter. 

 He had a right to be indignant, but he very quietly expressed his complete 

 dissent from the views of the Chairman of his Society. 



The controversy concerning the memoirs on alcoholism of the Eugenics 

 Laboratory continued almost to the end of 1 9 1 0. There was in the Temperance 

 Press a good deal of the usual type of biased criticism ; it was even boldly 

 asserted that the memoirs had been published in opposition to the wish of 

 Sir Francis Galton, and the manifest antagonism of the Eugenics Education 

 Society to these memoirs needed some public statement ; there were those 

 who thought that the Laboratory had some relation to the Society, or even 

 that the former was in rebellion against the latter, its supposed creator ! The 

 point had been reached when the paths of Society and Laboratory must 

 diverge, a point I had foreseen, but had not expected to meet with quite so 

 early on the journey. Galton was indeed in a difficult position : on the one 

 hand there was a small group of workers endeavouring to the best of their 

 ability to apply his own methods to reach safe conclusions with regard to 

 important social problems ; on the other hand he had called into existence 

 a very miscellaneous group of persons — held together by a faith which had 

 not yet its "confession" — many of whom had little scientific training and 

 still less capacity for judging statistical work ; a few were cranks, and some 

 of these were rendered septic by their own verbosity. 



This body Galton felt to be needful as a force to spread Eugenic ideas. 

 He was only slowly learning that a " confession " is requisite to hold 

 together the members of a sect, and that without this there will be just as 

 many creeds taught as there are individual propagandists. To this miscel- 

 laneous crowd Galton's name was merely a symbol or flag ; they had never 

 studied his scientific methods, nor did they know the stress he had laid on 

 various results deduced from them*. To them Eugenics was a matter of 

 sentiment and of " general impressions," and they were not prepared to 

 submit their sacred opinions to any numerical test, nor were they " sufficiently 

 masters of themselves to discard contemptuously whatever may be found 

 untrue" (see our Vol. n, p. 297). Not yet had Galton given up hope that 



* One member doubted whether psychical characters were inherited at the same rate as 

 physical ; another whether "nature" was markedly more influential than "nurture," although 

 he did not know what Galton understood by "nurture"; a third muttered "lies, damned lies 

 and statistics," regardless of the truth that the trouble is not that figures lie, but that liars 

 figure. In short, all that Galton held certain, and therefore held most dear, was called in 

 question by members of the very society he had brought into being. 



