98 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
ness, as some equivalent to the loss of what it forbids. It brings the tie of 
kinship into prominence and strongly encourages love and interest in family 
and race. In brief, eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness and appealing 
to many of the noblest feelings of our nature. ! 
Both Galton and Pearson are to be commended for their pains- 
taking labors in one important department of human progress. 
The biometric method as developed by Pearson and employed by 
his co-laborers is certain to prove a valuable instrument in social 
science although owing to the unreliable character of much of the 
data gathered up to the present the conclusions are far from 
satisfactory. The friction between the workers at the Galton 
Laboratory and the American workers at Cold Spring Harbor 
under Dr. Davenport is perhaps unfortunate, yet the rivalry and 
competitive criticism which is essentially a struggle for existence 
between statistics as applied to the study of hereditary qualities 
and a study of family records on the basis of the Mendelian theory 
of unit characters, will doubtless result in hastening a knowledge 
of the truth. The Memoirs issued from the Eugenics Laboratory 
are cautious and modest in their statements and conclusions, not 
pretending to discover causes but only correlations. In the 
Lecture Series, however, too often the suggestions of the Memoirs 
are given out as ascertained facts, and the animus shown in some 
of the criticisms of the Mendelian workers by those of the Galton 
Laboratory suggests a consciousness of weakness in the biometric 
methods as there used.? 
The conclusions of both Galton and Pearson concerning race- 
stock degeneration do not seem to be borne out by the Courtis 
tests in arithmetic applied to more than 40,000 children in 
widely separated schools in several states of our country and 
three schools of London. These tests do not indicate that there 
is very much difference in natural ability between the children of 
the various social classes, although they do show great differences 
in natural ability between individual pupils in all classes. Neither 
are they corroborated by use of the Binet tests on certain orphans 
1 Sociological Papers, ii, pp. 52, 53. 
2 See Eugenics Record Office, Bulletin no. 11, February, 1914. 
3 Report Investigation, New York Schools, 1912, pp. 62, 66, 74; especially tests 
on twins, pp. 71, 72. 
