The contrast between Galtonism and Mendelism may be illustrated by an example, which, if not a strict analogy, has in it something illuminating, especially for those who do not know too much of the subject. Galton seems to me like a mediæval chemist, while Mendel is a modern one. Galton can observe, or can follow the changes that occur when two compounds are mixed. But he knows nothing of the mechanism of what occurs. But the Mendelian is like a modern chemist who calls
the chemical elements to his aid, and is able to express the result of the experiment in terms of these elements. This is an enormous advantage, and if my analogy is to be trusted, it would seem as though a progressive study of heredity must necessarily be on Mendelian lines.
But it obviously does not follow that the laborious and skilful work of Galton and his school is wasted. Those who wish to have made plain to them how Biometrics may illuminate a problem which cannot as yet be solved in Mendelian fashion, should read Dr. Schuster’s most interesting book on eugenics. I am thinking especially of the question as to the heredity of tuberculosis and cancer. The relation between Galtonism and Mendelism is also well and temperately discussed in the late Mr. Lock’s Recent Progress in the Study of Variation, 1906.
But it is time to speak of Galton as a eugenist—on which if we look to the distant future his fame will rest. For no one can doubt that the science of eugenics must become a great and beneficent force in the evolution of man.
We must be persistent in urging its value, but we must also be patient. We should remember how young is the subject. As recently as 1901 Galton was, in his Huxley Lecture, compelled to speak of eugenics in these terms: [30]
“It has not hitherto been approached along the ways that recent knowledge has laid open, and it occupies in consequence a less dignified position in
scientific estimation than it might. It is smiled at as most desirable in itself, and possibly worthy of academic discussion, but absolutely out of the question as a practical problem.” After explaining that the object of his discourse was to “show cause for a different opinion,” he goes on with what, in his restrained style, is strong language: “I shall show that our knowledge is already sufficient to justify the pursuit of this perhaps the grandest of all objects.” [31a]
At the close of the lecture he speaks out as to the difficulties and the pre-eminent value of eugenics, and once more of the oppressive “magnitude of the enquiry.”
No one who reads this lecture of Sir Francis Galton’s is likely to let eugenics go with a smile, and a remark that it is not a practical problem. It is one of the functions of the Eugenics Education Society to spread the sanely scientific views here set forth by Galton, and as far as I am able to judge, the Society has and is doing sound work in this direction.
In another essay, [31b] Galton discusses the meaning of the ‘eu’ in eugenics in a characteristic way. He imagines an attempt among the animals in the Zoological Gardens to establish a code of absolute morality. With customary love of detail he supposes the inquiry to be undertaken by some animal, such as a sparrow or a rat, which is intelligent and has easy access to all the cages, and is therefore