6 Major Leonard Darwin on 



had to express the sincere sympathy of the Society with the relatives 

 of the late Mr. John Brown, F.R.S., in their recent sad bereavement. 

 Mr. Brown was for many years one of the most active and eminent 

 members of that Society, in which he filled the offices of president 

 and treasurer with much ability. That night he (the speaker) had 

 the honour of introducing to the audience the distinguished son of 

 an illustrious father. It was safe to affirm that the name of Darwin 

 would be cherished and revered so long as science was known and 

 honoured amongst men. Descent with variation had been 

 recognised as the fundamental law of life. The terms " struggle for 

 life," " natural selection," " the survival of the fittest," had entered 

 into the very texture of their thought, and coloured all their 

 conceptions. The Darwinian theory of biology was as firmly 

 established as the Copernican theory of the heavens or the 

 Newtonian theory of gravitation. To ignore it was to place 

 oneself wholly outside the stream of modern thought. Natural 

 selection was the key to the Darwinian doctrine, namely — the 

 principle that in a state of nature those unfitted to survive were 

 eliminated in the struggle for existence, while the sturdier type 

 were perpetuated. But, as civilization developed, they saw a new 

 principle at work, and one which ran counter to natural selection. 

 Nature's somewhat ruthless methods of disposing of the unfit were 

 thwarted., .^Civilised society was confronted with the spectre of 

 the degenerate. The increase of insanity and of cancer had 

 justly alarmed the British nation. Many theories — some of them 

 fanciful, and others, perhaps, ridiculous — had been put forward 

 to account for that increase, but there could be little real doubt 

 that such increase was due mainly to the neglect of those 

 principles which the Eugenics Education Society existed to 

 formulate and to advocate. The president of that society he 

 now introduced to the audience, and in their name he offered 

 Major Darwin the heartiest of Irish welcomes. 



Major Darwin, who was received with applause, thanked 

 the president for the kind words used in reference to his father. 



