Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/21

 EUGENICS 9

I know I am speaking heresy in the presence of Dr. Gallon. 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 parent- age 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 mar- riage. 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 establish- ments, 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 num- ber 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