reality it is not done for quite a different reason.

We blame the popular mind overmuch. Earnest but imperfect men, with
honest and reasonable but imperfect proposals for bettering the world,
are all too apt to raise this bitter cry of popular stupidity, of the
sheep-like quality of common men. An unjustifiable persuasion of moral
and intellectual superiority is one of the last infirmities of
innovating minds. We may be right, but we must be provably,
demonstrably and overpoweringly right before we are justified in
calling the dissentient a fool. I am one of those who believe firmly in
the invincible nature of truth, but a truth that is badly put is not a
truth, but an infertile hybrid lie. Before we men of the study blame
the general body of people for remaining unaffected by reforming
proposals of an almost obvious advantage, it would be well if we were
to change our standpoint and examine our machinery at the point of
application. A rock-drilling machine may be excellently invented and in
the most perfect order except for a want of hardness in the drill, and
yet there will remain an unpierced rock as obdurate as the general
public to so many of our innovations.

I believe that if a canvass of the entire civilized world were put to
the vote in this matter, the proposition that it is desirable that the
better sort of people should intermarry and have plentiful children,
and that the inferior sort of people should abstain from
multiplication, would be carried by an overwhelming majority. They
might disagree with Plato's methods, [Footnote: _The Republic_,
Bk. V.] but they would certainly agree to his principle. And that this
is not a popular error Mr. Francis Galton has shown. He has devoted a
very large amount of energy and capacity to the vivid and convincing
presentation of this idea, and to its courageous propagation. His