22 FRANCIS GALTON 



thirty-seven pages — or 1 1 per cent, of the whole 

 book. The specific importance of the subjects here 

 dealt with is so great that these thirty-seven pages 

 outweigh all the rest of the book. We should like 

 to have had a fuller account by the author of this 

 remarkable work of 1865. He does, however, tell 

 us — and it is a very striking statement — that the 

 two articles "expressed then, as clearly as I can do 

 now, the leading principles of Eugenics." 



The chief point in which he came to differ from 

 the Macmillan articles was that he was then "too 

 much disposed to think of marriage under some regu- 

 lation, and not enough of the effects of self-interest 

 and of social and religious sentiment." I imagine 

 that the pendulum has now swung the other way, 

 and that one of the most hopeful and practical 

 schemes is the prevention of marriage among 

 habitual criminals and the feeble-minded. 



Galton attributes his work in heredity in some 

 measure to the publication of the Origin of Species, 

 which, he says, "made a marked epoch" in his 

 "mental development, as it did in that of human 

 thought generally." 



That Galton personally felt no difficulty in 

 assimilating the new doctrine, he characteristically 

 ascribes to a "bent of mind that both its illustrious 

 author" and himself had "inherited from" their 

 "common grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin." 

 But in our day the name of Galton is intimately 

 connected in our minds with the science of heredity, 

 and we forget that he, like lesser men, was a mingt 

 fired by the Origin. He was "encouraged," he 

 says, "by the new views to pursue many inquiries 



