History of Eugenics.

It must have surprised you as it did myself to find the new word 'Eugenics' in the title both of the Boyle lecture, delivered in Oxford about a fortnight ago, and of this. It was an accident, not a deliberate concurrence, and I accept it as a happy omen. The field of Eugenics is so wide that there is no need for myself, the second lecturer, to plant my feet in the footsteps of the first; on the contrary, it gives freedom by absolving me from saying much that had to be said in one way or another. I fully concur in the views so ably presented by my friend and co-adjutor Professor Karl Pearson, and am glad to be dispensed from further allusion to subjects that formed a large portion of his lecture, on which he is a far better guide and an infinitely higher authority than myself.

In giving the following sketch of the history of Eugenics I am obliged to be egotistical, because I page 7 kindled the feeble flame that struggled doubtfully for a time until it caught hold of adjacent stores of suitable material, and became a brisk fire, burning freely by itself, and again because I have had much to do with its progress quite recently.

The word 'Eugenics' was coined and used by me in my book Human Faculty, published as long ago as 1883, which has long been out of print; it is, however, soon to be re-published in a cheap form. In it I emphasized the essential brotherhood of mankind, heredity being to my mind a very real thing; also the belief that we are born to act, and not to wait for help like able-bodied idlers, whining for doles. Individuals appear to me as finite detachments from an infinite ocean of being, temporarily endowed with executive powers. This is the only answer I can give to myself in reply to the perpetually recurring questions of 'Why? whence? and whither?' The immediate 'whither?' does not seem wholly dark, as some little information may be gleaned concerning the direction in which Nature, so far as we know of it, is now moving. Namely towards the evolution of mind, body, and character in increasing energy and co-adaptation.

I have often wondered that the poem of Hyperion, by Keats—that magnificent torso of an incompleted work—has not been placed in the very forefront of past speculations on evolution. Keats is so thorough that he makes the very Divinities to be its product. The earliest gods such as Coelus, born out of Chaos, page 8 are vague entities, they engender Saturn, Oceanus, Hyperion, and the Titan brood, who supersede them. These in their turn are ousted from dominion by their own issue, the Olympian Gods. A notable advance occurs at each successive stage in the quality of the Diyinities. When Hyperion, newly terrified by signs of impending overthrow, lies prostrate on the earth 'his ancient mother, for some comfort yet,' the voice of Coelus from the universal space, thus 'whispered low and solemn in his ear . . . yet do thou strive for thou art capable ... my life is but the life of winds and tides, no more than winds and tides can I prevail, but thou canst.' I have quoted only disjointed fragments of this wonderful poem, enough to serve as a reminder to those who know it, but will add ten consecutive lines from the speech of the fallen Oceanus to his comrades, which give a summary of evolution as here described:

As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far
Than Chaos and black Darkness, though once chiefs,
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth
In form and shape compact and beautiful,
In Will, in action free, companionship,
And thousand other signs of purer life;
So on our heels a fresh perfection treads
A power more strong in beauty, born of us
And fated to excel us, as we pass
In glory that old Darkness.

He ends with 'this is the truth, and let it be your balm.' The poem is a noble conception, founded on the crude cosmogony of the ancient Greeks.

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The ideas have long held my fancy that we men may be the chief, and perhaps the only executives on earth. That we are detached on active service with, it may be only illusory, powers of free-will. Also that we are in some way accountable for our success or failure to further certain obscure ends, to be guessed as best we can. That though our instructions are obscure they are sufficiently clear to justify our interference with the pitiless course of Nature, whenever it seems possible to attain the goal towards which it moves, by gentler and kindlier ways. I expressed these views as forcibly as I then could in the above-mentioned book, with especial reference to improving the racial qualities of mankind, in which the truest piety seems to me to reside in taking action, and not in submissive acquiescence to the routine of Nature. It was thought impious at one time to attach lightning conductors to churches, as showing a want of trust in the tutelary care of the Deity to whom they were dedicated; now I think most persons would be inclined to apply some contemptuous epithet to such as obstinately refused, on those grounds, to erect them.

The direct pursuit of studies in Eugenics, as to what could practically be done, and the amount of change in racial qualities that could reasonably be anticipated, did not at first attract investigators. The idea of effecting an improvement in that direction was too much in advance of the march of popular imagination, so I had to wait. In the meantime I occupied myself with collateral problems, more especially with that of dealing page 10 measurably with faculties that are variously distributed in a large population. The results were published in my 'Natural Inheritance' in 1889, and I shall have occasion to utilize some of them later on, in this very lecture. The publication of that book proved to be more timely than the former. The methods were greatly elaborated by Professor Karl Pearson, and applied by him to Biometry. Professor Weldon of this University, whose untimely death is widely deplored, aided powerfully. A new science was thus created primarily on behalf of Biometry, but equally applicable to Eugenics, because their provinces overlap.

The publication of Biometrika in which I took little more than a nominal part, appeared in 1901.

Being myself appointed Huxley Lecturer before the Anthropological Institute in 1901 I took for my title 'The possible improvement of the Human Breed under the existing conditions of Law and Sentiment' (Nature November 1, 1901, Report of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington for the same year).

The next and a very important step towards Eugenics was made by Professor Karl Pearson in his Huxley lecture of 1903 entitled 'The Laws of Inheritance m Man' (Biometrika vol. iii). It contains a most valuable compendium of work achieved and of objects in view; also the following passage (p. 159), which is preceded by forcible reasons for his conclusions:

We are ceasing as a nation to breed intelligence as we did fifty to a hundred years ago. The mentally page 11 better stock in the nation is not reproducing itself at the same rate as it did of old; the less able, and the less energetic are more fertile than the better stocks. No scheme of wider or more thorough education will bring up, in the scale of intelligence, hereditary weakness to the level of hereditary strength. The only remedy, if one be possible at all, is to alter the relative fertility of the good and the bad stocks in the community.

Again in 1904, having been asked by the newly-formed Sociological Society to contribute a memoir, I did so on 'Eugenics, its definition, aim, and scope'. This was followed up in 1905 by three memoirs, 'Restrictions in Marriage,' 'Studies in National Eugenics,' and 'Eugenics as a factor in Religion ', which were published in the Memoirs of that Society with comments thereon by more than twenty different authorities (Sociological Papers published for the Sociological Society (Macmillan), vols, i and ii). The subject of Eugenics being thus formally launched, and the time appearing ripe, I offered a small endowment to the University of London to found a Research Fellowship on its behalf. The offer was cordially accepted, so Eugenics gained the recognition of its importance by the University of London, and a home for its study in University College. Mr. Edgar Schuster, of this University, became Research Fellow in 1905, and I am much indebted to his care in nurturing the young undertaking and for the memoirs he has contributed, part of which must remain for a short time longer unpublished.

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When the date for Mr. Schuster's retirement approached it was advisable to utilize the experience so far gained in reorganizing the Office. Professor Pearson and myself, in consultation with the authorities of the University of London, elaborated a scheme at the beginning of this year, which is a decided advance, and shows every sign of vitality and endurance. Mr. David Heron, a Mathematical Scholar of St. Andrews, is now a Research Fellow; Miss Ethel Elderton, who has done excellent and expert work from the beginning, is deservedly raised to the position of Research Scholar; and the partial services of a trained Computer have been secured. An event of the highest importance to the future of the Office is that Professor Karl Pearson has undertaken, at my urgent request, that general supervision of its work which advancing age and infirmities preclude me from giving. He will, I trust, treat it much as an annexe to his adjacent biometric laboratory, for many studies in Eugenics might, with equal propriety, be carried on in either of them, and the same methods of precise analysis which are due to the mathematical skill and untiring energy of Professor Pearson are used in both. The Office now bears the name of the Eugenics Laboratory, and its temporary home is in 88 Gower Street. The phrase 'National Eugenics 'is defined as' the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally'.

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The Laboratory has already begun to publish memoirs on its own account, and I now rest satisfied in the belief that, with a fair share of good luck, this young Institution will prosper and grow into an important centre of research.