24 FRANCIS GALTON 



selection. He gives, too, a characteristic explana- 

 tion of that human attribute commonly known as 

 Original Sin, the quality, in fact, which makes men 

 yield to base desires against and in spite of their 

 sense of what is right. He says^ that here "the 

 development of our nature under Darwin's law of 

 natural selection has not yet overtaken the develop- 

 ment of our religious civilisation. " It may be more 

 briefly described as the conflict between the 

 individual desires with the tribal instincts. It must 

 be remembered that for all this discussion Galton 

 had no Descent of Man to guide him. 



I shall come back later to his clear and courageous 

 statement of eugenics in 1865. Meanwhile I must 

 speak of heredity, a word, by the way, introduced 

 by Galton, and for which he seems to have been 

 taken to task. 



With regard to the machinery of reproduction 

 the essay is remarkable for containing what is 

 practically identical with Weismann's continuity 

 of the germ-cell, and Galton's priority is acknow- 

 ledged by that author. But in science the credit 

 goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the 

 man to whom the idea first occurs. Not the man 

 who finds a grain of new and precious quality, 

 but to him who sows it, reaps it, grinds it and feeds 

 the world on it. This is true of this very Mac- 

 millan's Magazine article. Who would know of 

 these admirable views on Hereditary Genius and 

 Eugenics, if this were Galton's only utterance ? 

 This is the grain which has increased and multi- 



1 Macmillan's Magazine, xii., p. 327. 



