Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/258

252 his conclusions, so far as they rested on a definite basis of fact, confirmed the thesis maintained by Darwin and more fully enforced in 'Man and Woman,' his position would have been unimpeachable. If, again, he had refrained altogether from attempting to interpret his own data—a task for which, it is obvious, he was singularly ill-prepared—and had put them forth simply as a study in natural selection—which is what they really are—his position would, again, have been altogether justifiable. But as the matter stands he has enmeshed himself in a tangle of misapprehensions, confusions and errors from which it must be very difficult to extricate him.

It may be well to summarize briefly the main points set forth in the foregoing pages.

1. In opposition to the doctrine of Darwin, more fully set forth in my 'Man and Woman,' that the variational tendency is, on the whole, more marked in men than in women, Professor Pearson resolved to show that this is one of 'the worst of the pseudo-scientific superstitions.'

2. Unfortunately, however, it never occurred to him to define what ho meant by 'variation,' nor to ascertain what the writers whom he was opposing meant by the term. A very little consideration suffices to show that a typical variation, in what may fairly be called its classic sense, is a congenital organic character on which selection works, while, as understood by Professor Pearson, though without definite statement, a typical variation is a character—of almost any kind, occurring at any period of life—produced by selection. 'To the biometrician,' Professor Pearson has recently stated, 'variation is a quantity determined by the class or group without reference to its ancestry.' That is to say, it need not be organic or congenital, and it must usually be modified, and sometimes entirely produced, by its environment. This definition may be better than the more classical conception of a variation. But it is certainly very different. To suppose that conclusions reached concerning this kind of variation can be used to overthrow conclusions reached concerning the other kind is obviously unreasonable.

3. Having silently adopted this conception of a variation, Professor Pearson proceeds to inquire what 'different degrees of variability are secondary sexual characters' and not 'characteristics which are themselves characteristics of sex'; and is hereby led into various eccentricities of assertion which it is unnecessary to recapitulate.