Abstract
NOW that the public has become familiar with the word eugenics, it is right that an exposition of its meaning by Sir Francis Galton, the founder of the science, should be easily accessible, and this the Eugenics Education Society has wisely provided by the publication of “Essays in Eugenics.” The first essay is on “The Improvement of the Human Breed, under Existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment.” It was delivered as the second Huxley lecture before the Anthropological Institute on October 29, 1901. Then follow “Eugenics: its Definition, Scope, and Aims,” “Restrictions in Marriage,” “Studies in National Eugenics,” and “Eugenics as a Factor in Religion,” read before the Sociological Society in 1904 and onwards. After this comes the Herbert Spencer lecture delivered before the University of Oxford in 1907, on “Probability, the Foundation of Eugenics,” and the volume is concluded by an address to a meeting of the Eugenics Education Society in 1908 on “Local Associations for Promoting Eugenics.” The volume, of which the titles quoted give an indication of the contents, forms an admirable introduction to the subject. The host of objections which immediately spring to the mind and tongue of ordinary educated people on first receiving the idea of conscious selective breeding in man are here met with easily intelligible arguments and with common sense. It is to this and to the moderation with which the author expounds his thesis that the present wide realisation of its practicability must be due.
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References
(1) "Essays in Eugenics." By Sir Francis Galton, F.R.S. Pp. vi+109. (London: The Eugenics Education Society, 1909.)
The Mendel Journal, No. 1, October, 1909. Pp. 216. (London and Manchester: Published for the Mendel Society by Taylor, Garnett, Evans, and Co.) Price 2s. 6d. net.
Biometrika, vol. vii., parts i. and ii., July and October, 1909. Pp. 236. (Cambridge: University Press.) Price 20s. net.
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S., E. Eugenics, Mendelism, and Biometry 1 . Nature 82, 251–252 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/082251a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/082251a0