to the

Now, how can we account for these facts on any of the known data on which we have at present to rely? In my opinion, we shall have to go far deeper down than we have been able to go by any present means of observation corpuscles, atoms, electrons, or whatever else there may be; and we shall find these subjected to subtle influences of mind and body during their formations and combinations, of which we hardly realize the importance. I believe that in these potent factors the solution of the problem may be found why one member of a family rises above others, and others do not rise above the ordinary level, but perhaps sink below it. To me it seems, when I consider this matter in regard to these difficulties, that in making a comparison with the improvement of breeding of animal stock we may be apt to be misled. We are all organic machines, so to speak; at the same time, when we come to the human being there are complexities which arise from the mental state and its moods and passions which entirely disturb our conclusions, which we should be able to form in regard to the comparatively simple machines which animals are.

In view of these difficulties of the subject, it has always seemed to me that we must not be hasty in coming to conclusions and laying down any rules for the breeding of humans and the development of a eugenic conscience. In fact, we must be on our guard against the overzeal, which Dr. Galton has very properly cautioned us against. For, after all, there is the passion of love and the forces referred to in his quotation from Bacon; and I am not sure but that nature, in its own blind impulsive way, does not manage things better than we can by any light of reason, or by any rules which we can at present lay down. I am inclined to think that, as in the past, so in the future, it may be, as Shakespeare said: "You may as well try to kindle snow by fire

As quench the fire of love by words."

BY DR. MERCIER.

Mr. Galton speaks of the laws of heredity, and dissemination of a knowledge of the laws of heredity in so far as we know them, and the qualification is very necessary. For, in so far as we know the laws, they are so obscure and complex that to us they work out as chance. We cannot detect any practical difference in the working of the laws of heredity and the way in which dice may be taken out of a lucky bag. It is quite impossible to predict from the constitution of the parents what the constitution of the offspring is going to be, even in the remotest degree. I lay that down as emphatically as I can, and I think that much widely prevailing erroneous doctrine on this head is due to the writings of Zola. I believe these writings are founded on a totally false conception as to what the laws of heredity are, and as to how they work out in the human race. He supposes that, since the parents have certain mental and moral peculiarities, the children

will reproduce them with variations. It is not so. Look around among your acquaintance: look around among the people that you know; notice the intellectual and moral character of the parents and children; and, as my distinguished predecessor, Dr. Maudsley, has said, you will find that in the same family there are antithetic extremes. It is doubtful if moral traits are hereditary.

Then there is the tendency of a high civilization to reduce the fertility of its worthier members. It does seem as if there were some such tendency. Undoubtedly, in any particular race of organisms, as in organisms in general, the lower order multiplies more freely than the highly organized. Undoubtedly, we see that insects and bacteria increase and multiply exceedingly until they become as the sands on the seashore. But the elephant produces only once in thirty years. And so it is with human beings of different grades of organization. Undoubtedly, those more highly organized are less fertile than those lowly organized. But that is not the whole history of the thing. I think we have to regard a civilized community somewhat in the light of a lamp burning away at the top, replenished from the bottom. It is true that the highest strata waste and do not reproduce themselves; and it is of necessity so, because the production of very high types of human nature is always sporadic. It never occurs in races; it always occurs in individual cases.

I know I am speaking heresy in the presence of Dr. Galton. Some of these doctrines I am enunciating ought to be qualified. But, broadly and generally, and in practice, it is so, that we cannot predict from the parentage what the offspring is going to be, and we cannot go back from the offspring and say what the parentage was. If we follow the custom of the Chinese and ennoble the parents for the achievements of their children, are we to hang the parents when the offspring commit murder?

And, finally, I would say one word about suitable and unsuitable marriages. Most of what I have to say has already been said by Dr. Galton. What are suitable and unsuitable marriages? How are we to decide? In the light of our knowledge-I had better say ignorance, I think- he would be a very bold man who would undertake the duties that were intrusted to the family council among those wise and virtuous people of whom Dean Swift has given us a description, and who should determine who should be the father and who the mother, and make marriages without consulting the individuals most concerned. I think, if that were done, it is doubtful if the result would be any better than it is at present.

BY PROFESSOR WELDON.

There are two sets of objections which have been used against the points made by Dr. Galton: One set criticises the statistical method on the ground that it cannot account for a number of phenomena. In the presence of the author of the Grammar of Science, I venture to say it is no proper part of statistics to account for anything, but it is the triumph of statistics that it can describe, and with a very fair degree of accuracy, a large number of phenomena. And, as I conceive the matter, the essential object of eugenics is not to put forward any theory of causation of hereditary phenomena; it is to diffuse the knowledge of what these phenomena really are. We may not be able to account for the formation of a Shakespeare, but we may be able to tabulate a scheme of inheritance which will indicate with very fair accuracy, the percentage of cases in which children of exceptional ability result from a particular type of marriage. If we can do that alone, we shall have made a very great advance in knowledge. And my view of Mr. Galton's object is that he wishes to point out to us the way in which that knowledge may be attained. Well, that is the answer I would give to all objections to the statistical method, based on its inability to account for phenomena. It ought not to try to account for them, but to describe them. If Dr. Mercier would consult the studies on inheritance that result from Mr. Galton's labor, he would find that they describe distribution of character in the children of parents of particular kinds in regard to a very large number of characters, mental and physical. You, yourself, Mr. Chairman, have given such a comprehensive summary of those results, most of them achieved in your own laboratory, that I need not trouble this meeting by saying any more about them.

Then there is another class of objectors, whose attitude is summarized in the most interesting series of remarks by Mr. Bateson. Because a large number of apparently simple results have been attained in experimental breeding establishments, and especially by the Austrian abbot, Gregory Mendel, it has been too lightly assumed that these phenomena have henceforward superseded the actuarial method, and that the only reliable method is experiment on simple characters, such as those initiated by Mr. Mendel and carried out by Mr. Bateson in England, in Holland by Professor Defries, and by an increasing number of men all over Europe. But the statistical method is itself necessary in order to test the results of the experiments which are supposed to supersede it. The question whether there is really an agreement between experience and hypothesis is in nearly every case hard to answer, and can be achieved only by the use of this actuarial method which Mr. Galton has taught us to apply to biological problems.

The second answer to objections of that type seems to me to be this, that while it is perfectly true that by sound actuarial methods you may deduce a justifiable result, yet from a laboratory experiment you have not arrived at the formulation of a eugenic maxim. You must look at your facts in their relation to

an enormous mass of other matter, and in order to do that you must treat large masses of your race in successive generations, and you must see whether the behavior of these large masses is such as you would expect from your limited experiment. If the two things agree, you have realized as much of the truth as would serve as a basis for generalization. But if you find there is a contradiction resulting from the facts- - from the large masses and limited laboratory experithen there is no doubt whatever that, from the point of view of human eugenics, and from the theory of evolution, the more important data are those from the larger series of material; the less important are those from laboratory experiment.

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BY MR. H. G. WELLS.

We can do nothing but congratulate ourselves upon the presence of one of the great founders of sociology here today, and upon the admirable address he has given us. If there is any quality of that paper more than another upon which I would especially congratulate Dr. Galton and ourselves, it is upon its living and contemporary tone. One does not feel that it is the utterance of one who has retired from active participation in life, but of one who remains in contact with and contributing to the main current of thought. One remarks that ever since his Huxley Lecture in 1901, Dr. Galton has expanded and improved his propositions.

This is particularly the case in regard to his recognition of different types in the community, and of the need of a separate system of breeding in relation to each type. The Huxley Lecture had no recognition of that, and its admission does most profoundly modify the whole of this question of eugenics. So long as the consideration of types is not raised, the eugenic proposition is very simple: superior persons must mate with superior persons, inferior persons must not have offspring at all, and the only thing needful is some test that will infallibly detect superiority. Dr. Galton has resorted in the past to the device of inquiring how many judges and bishops and such-like eminent persons a family can boast; but that test has not gone without challenge in various quarters. Dr. Galton's inquiries in this direction in the past have always seemed to me to ignore the consideration of social advantage, of what Americans call the "pull" that follows any striking success. The fact that the sons and nephews of a distinguished judge or great scientific man are themselves eminent judges or successful scientific men may after all, be far more due to a special knowledge of the channels of professional advancement than to any distinctive family gift. I must confess that much of Dr. Galton's classical work in this direction seems to me to be premature. I have been impressed by the idea and even now I remain under the sway of the idea that our analysis of human faculties is entirely inadequate for the purpose of tracing hereditary influence. I think we want a much more elaborate analysis to give us the elements of heredity- an analysis of which we have at present only the first beginnings in the valuable work of the Abbé Loisy that Mr. Bateson has recently revived.

Even the generous recognition of types that Dr. Galton has now made does not altogether satisfy my inquiring mind. I believe there still remain further depths of concession for him. At the risk of being called a crank," I must object that even that considerable list of qualities Dr. Galton tells us that everyone would take into account does not altogether satisfy me. Take health, for example. Are there not types of health? The mating of two quite healthy persons may result in disease. I am told it does so in the case of the interbreeding of healthy white men and healthy black women about the Tanganyka region; the half-breed children are ugly, sickly, and rarely live. On the other hand, two not very healthy persons may have mutually corrective qualities, and may beget sound offspring. Then what right have we to assume that energy and ability are simply qualities? I am not even satisfied by the suggestion Dr. Galton seems to make that criminals should not breed. I am inclined to believe that a large proportion of our present-day criminals are the brightest and boldest members of families living under impossible conditions, and that in many desirable qualities the average criminal is above the average of the law-abiding

poor and probably of the average respectable person. Many eminent criminals appear to nie to be persons superior in many respects in intelligence, initiative, originality to the average judge. I will confess I have never known either.

Let me suggest that Dr. Galton's concession to the fact that there are differences of type to consider is only the beginning of a very big descent of concession, that may finally carry him very deep indeed. Eugenics, which is really only a new word for the popular American term stirpiculture," seems to me to be a term that is not without its misleading implications. It has in it something of that same lack of a fine appreciation of facts that enabled Herbert

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Spencer to coin those two most unfortunate terms, evolution and "the survival of the fittest." The implication is that the best reproduces and survives. Now really it is the better that survives, and not the best. The real fact of the case is that in the all-around result the inferior usually perish, and the average of the species rises, but not that any exceptionally favorable variations get together and reproduce. I believe that now and always the conscious selection of the best for reproduction will be impossible; that to propose it is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality implies. The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failures, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.

BY DR. ROBERT HUTCHISON.

My only claim to address a meeting on this subject is that not only, in common with all physicians, am I acquainted with the factors that make for physical deterioration, but I have devoted special attention to certain factors which I believe play a large part in the production of human types. I refer to feeding. I believe we have, in treating this subject, to consider two lines in which a society like this might work. It has to consider, first, the raw material of the race - and that I believe to be the view which commends itself especially to Dr. Galton and, second, the conditions under which that raw material grows up. believe, speaking as a physician, and judging from the raw material one sees, for example, in the children's hospitals, that it is not so necessary to improve the raw material, which is not so very bad after all, as it is to improve the environment in which the raw material is brought up. Of all the factors in that environment, that which is of the greatest importance in promoting bad physical and bad mental development is, I believe, the food factor. If you would give me a free hand in feeding, during infancy and from ten to eighteen years of age, the raw material that is being produced, I would guarantee to give you quite a satisfactory race as the result. And I think we should do more wisely in concentrating our attention on things such as those, than in losing ourselves in a mass of scientific questions relating to heredity, about which, it must be admitted, in regard to the human race, we are still profoundly in ignorance.

BY DR. WARNER.

When I had the pleasure of reading the proof of Mr. Galton's paper, I devoted what time I could to thinking carefully over what might be expected to be the practical outcome of what I had understood from that paper, if I had read it aright. And a careful reading of Mr. Galton's paper shows that he purposely deals with only a portion of the means of developing a good nation, and that portion is marriage selection. I also gather that the tendency of the paper is to advocate the marriage between those who are most highly evolved in their respective families. But there is a point in this connection which I think is apt to be overlooked, and that is the examples we have of dangers from intermarriage between highly evolved members of two families. A considerable number of degenerates come under my observation and come to me professionally. They are mostly children; and, as far as possible, I get what knowledge I can of their families both on the paternal and the maternal side. It happens in a very considerable proportion that the father and mother are the best of the families from

which they themselves have proceeded. Where a man has evolved from a humble class to a high form of mental work, and his life has attracted the feeling or affection of a lady who has evolved rather higher mental faculties than the rest of her family, there is danger. It happens very often that the parents of degenerate children are the best of their respective families. I do not go into any details, but I could give you a string of cases, straight off, to show how frequent it is among the families of men who have risen, that the first of all, if he is a male, is feeble-minded, or degenerate. There is also the great question of the girls, as well as the boys, in their personal evolution. It has been constantly said that one reason why apparently the girls' capacity is less than the boys' capacity for many sorts of work is that their mothers have not been educated. Now, I should like to ask Mr. Galton whether the girls inherit through the mother or through the father. For myself, I extremely doubt the general view.

BY MR. ELDERTON.

An important item in the study of heredity is the heredity of disease; and, if so, life-insurance offices might be of use with certain statistics. Certificates of death are given to them which are put away with the original proposal papers, filled up when the insurance was taken out, which state the cause of death of parents, brothers, and sisters, and their ages at death; also their ages when the person effected the insurance, if they were still living. Locked up in that sort of information are many data for the study of heredity in relation to disease. From this source also might be thrown light on a question of great importance — the correlation between specific diseases and fertility.

One point in conclusion: Dr. Hutchison spoke of the greater importance of environment, but in that he would hardly get actuaries to agree with him. Their observation, based on life-insurance data, would seem to show that environment operates as a mere modificatory factor after heredity has done its work.

BY BENJAMIN KIDD.

It is, I am sure, a peculiar satisfaction to have from Mr. Galton this important and interesting paper. No man of science in England has done more to encourage the study of human faculty by exact methods, and I hope the Sociological Society will endeavor to follow the example he has set us. The only item of criticism I would offer would be to say that we must not, perhaps, be sanguine in expecting too much at present from eugenics founded on statistical and actuarial methods in the study of society. We must have a real science of society before the science of eugenics can hope to gain authority. The point of Mr. Galton's paper is, I think, that, however we may differ as to other standards, we are, at all events, all agreed as to what constitutes the fittest and most perfect individual. I am not quite convinced of this. Much obscurity at present exists in sociological studies from confusing two entirely different things, namely, individual efficiency and social efficiency. Mr. Galton's fable of the animals will help me to make my meaning clear. It will be observed that he has considered the animals as individuals. If, however, we took a social type like the social insects, a contradiction which, I think, possibly underlies his example, might be visible. For instance, it is well known that all the qualities of the bees are devoted to attaining the highest possible efficiency of their societies. Yet these qualities are by no means the qualities which we would consider as contributing to a perfect individual. If the bees at some earlier stage of evolution understood eugenics, as we now understand the subject, what peculiar condemnation, for instance, would they have visited on the queen bee, who devotes her life solely to breeding? I am afraid, too, that the interesting habits of the drones would have received special condemnation from the unctuous rectitude of the time. What would have been thought even of the workers as perfect individuals with their undeveloped bodies and aborted instincts? And yet all these things have contributed in a high degree to social efficiency, and have undoubtedly made the type a winning one in evolution.

The example will apply to human society. Statistical and actuarial methods