Galton proposes that "Some society should undertake three scientific
services: the first, by means of a moderate number of influential local
agencies, to institute continuous enquiries into the facts of human
heredity; the second to be a centre of information on heredity for breeders
of animals and plants; and the third to discuss and classify the facts that
were collected" (loc. cit., page 124).) would have awfully laborious work,
and I doubt whether you could ever get efficient workers. As it is, there
is much concealment of insanity and wickedness in families; and there would
be more if there was a register. But the greatest difficulty, I think,
would be in deciding who deserved to be on the register. How few are above
mediocrity in health, strength, morals and intellect; and how difficult to
judge on these latter heads. As far as I see, within the same large
superior family, only a few of the children would deserve to be on the
register; and these would naturally stick to their own families, so that
the superior children of distinct families would have no good chance of
associating much and forming a caste. Though I see so much difficulty, the
object seems a grand one; and you have pointed out the sole feasible, yet I
fear utopian, plan of procedure in improving the human race. I should be
inclined to trust more (and this is part of your plan) to disseminating and
insisting on the importance of the all-important principle of inheritance.
I will make one or two minor criticisms. Is it not possible that the
inhabitants of malarious countries owe their degraded and miserable
appearance to the bad atmosphere, though this does not kill them, rather
than to "economy of structure"? I do not see that an orthognathous face
would cost more than a prognathous face; or a good morale than a bad one.
That is a fine simile (page 119) about the chip of a statue (412/4.
"...The life of the individual is treated as of absolutely no importance,
while the race is as everything; Nature being wholly careless of the former
except as a contributor to the maintenance and evolution of the latter.
Myriads of inchoate lives are produced in what, to our best judgment, seems