Soc (2008) 45:170 176
DOI 10.1007/s12115-008-9058-8
Sir Francis Galton and the Roots of Eugenics
Roger Sandall
Published online: 25 January 2008
#
Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008
The Law of Half-Intended Effects deserves to be more This list may be incomplete but it must do. Galton had
widely known. It usefully describes what happens to men that rarest of all things human, an original mind, and it is
who act intentionally, and who know more-or-less what quite possible that no scientist before or since has made so
they intend, but are shocked when things suddenly get out many lasting contributions to so many fields. When half
of control. If only he had lived long enough Sir Francis way through his life The Origin of Species appeared, in
Galton s enthusiastic promotion of eugenics might have 1859, this became a turning point. There was already a
been a good example of this in some ways it began family bond and a background of shared interests Charles
benignly enough. But its author never saw the grim Darwin was a cousin. Coming at a critical stage of both his
conclusion: the shock of the  final solution was kept for scientific career and his domestic life, the effect of Darwin s
its victims and for us. book was nothing less than momentous, shattering his
Galton was born in 1822 and died in 1911. Between those religious beliefs and turning him away from geographical
dates he explored and mapped part of Africa, wrote best- concerns towards psychological and biological research. In
selling books about travel, was a member of the Athenaeum his autobiographical Memories of My Life Galton wrote
and actively participated in the affairs of England s Royal that:  The publication in 1859 of The Origin of Species by
Society, Royal Geographical Society, and British Associa- Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental
tion, invented psychometrics, discovered correlation and development, as it did in that of human thought generally.
regression, and in the words of Nicholas Wright Gillham s Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers
2001 biography  helped to found and nurture the statistical by a single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of rebellion against
methods that today have extremely broad applications in all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated
many fields including human genetics. He was largely statements were contradicted by modern science. Galton
responsible  for the development of fingerprinting as a wrote of Darwin s book that he  devoured its contents and
forensic method and made important contributions to assimilated them as fast as they were devoured, a fact
psychology, especially in the case of mental imagery. A which may be ascribed to an hereditary bent of mind that
matter not discussed in two recent biographies, perhaps both its illustrious author and myself have inherited from
because Freud has fallen into disrepute, is the remarkable our common grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. The phrase
fact that he at least suggested simultaneously with Freud  a hereditary bent of mind is noteworthy. In his 2001 book
and perhaps even before Freud the importance of uncon- Gillham says that right from the start Galton seems  to have
scious processes in our mental life. been convinced that nature, and not nurture, determined
human ability : in 1859 Darwin provided this conviction
with theoretical justification and focus. From that time on
he proceeded to investigate, he said later, matters  clustered
round the central topics of Heredity and the possible
R. Sandall ( )
improvement of the Human Race.
Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney,
The two topics heredity and racial improvement are
Sydney, Australia
e-mail: [e-mail] however not inseparable. Why was it that the human race
Soc (2008) 45:170 176 171
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needed to be improved? What was wrong with it? in the symptoms of mental stress when he tried to concentrate,
1860s it seemed to be doing rather well. All sorts of people Galton finally took only a pass degree, dropped out of the
have contentedly studied heredity and left it at that. academic and intellectual world, and spent the next 6 years
Meliorism was hardly a feature of Darwin s own hereditar- either drifting, or, (if you prefer) deciding, while adventur-
ian inquiries, and although, on his round-the-world journey ing up the Nile and in the Middle East, exactly what he
aboard the Beagle, he was shocked by slavery in Brazil, he wanted to do.
seems to have been broadly satisfied with humanity as he His father had died leaving him comfortably off. He had
found it. How was it that for Galton the  central topic of money; he was free; he travelled. In 1845 he went to Egypt
heredity became indissolubly associated with the biological and met interesting people, including a remarkable ex-
improvement of human kind, a worthy enough project in Cambridge man named Mansfield Parkyns who he found
the abstract, but ethically hazardous in the extreme? living in Khartoum:
Doubtless there was more than one cause, but it will be
The saying was that when a man was such a reprobate
suggested here that it may possibly have originated in
that he could not live in Europe, he went to
domestic stresses and strains. Although his cousin Charles
Constantinople; if too bad to be tolerated in Con-
Darwin fathered several children (keeping them alive was
stantinople, he went to Cairo, and thenceforward under
the main challenge), Galton s situation was painfully
similar compulsion to Khartoum. Half a dozen or so of
different. For one reason or another the marriage of this
these trebly refined villains resided there as slave-
brilliant Victorian was infertile, and as each year passed
dealers; they were pallid, haggard, fever-stricken,
without issue an obsession with heredity, fertility, procre-
profane, and obscene. Mansfield Parkyns complacent-
ation, and their connecting causes and effects especially
ly tolerated and mastered them all& With all their
their effect on the reproduction of highly gifted people like
villainy there was something of interest in their talk,
himself grew and grew.
but I had soon quite enough of it. Still, the experience
Although it was periodically troubled, and even on two
was acceptable, for one wants to know the very worst
occasions disabled, the mind of Sir Francis Galton was one
of everything as well as the very best.
of the most prodigious of which we have any reliable
record. It developed early under the tutelage of his frail and Returning homeward via the Lebanon, Galton seems to
partially handicapped sister Adele, who made him familiar have also had an exciting time with a lady in Beirut, and it
with the alphabet by the age of 18 months. When his was there he may have got a touch of the clap. Back in
mother noticed him saving pennies at the age of four, and England he enthusiastically joined the hunting set. During
asked why, he replied:  Why, to buy honours at the these years he might have seemed to be going nowhere (his
University! By the age of five he could recite Scott s epic biographers comments are somewhat constrained) but he
poem  Marmion , and by the age of six he knew a good was certainly active.
deal of Homer. Gillham reports that:
Galton learned the Iliad and the Odyssey well. Once, African Exploration
when his father s friend Leonard Horner visited, he
repeatedly quizzed the 6-year-old on their fine points. Then life turned serious again. Livingstone had recently
One day Galton said  Pray, Mr. Horner, look at the last reached Lake Ngami near Ovamboland from the south and
line in the Twelfth Book of the Odyssey, and east. In 1850 Galton proposed to approach it from the west
scampered off. through today s Namibia, a route of some 550 miles from
Walvis Bay, making detailed maps of this entirely unexplored
This translates as  But why rehearse all this again? For
region as he went. With the support of the Royal Geographical
even yesterday I told it to them and thy noble wife in
Society he set sail from Southampton in April though not
thy house: and it liketh me not twice to tell a plain-told
before first visiting a shop in Drury Lane for theatrical
tale .
supplies. There he purchased beads and belts and other knick-
An erratic school career ( I had craved for what was knacks, including a nice little crown.
denied, namely an abundance of good English reading, This came in handy. A stickler for etiquette, especially
well-taught mathematics and solid science ) was followed when measures against witchcraft had to be taken, King
by a brush with medical school en route to university, two Nangoro of Ovamboland expected Galton to stand still while
incident-filled excursions down the Danube, and eventual he (the king) expectorated gargled water all over his guest s
enrolment in Trinity College, Cambridge. But although he face. This was to discourage any lurking evil spirits and no
had some success as a student the strain of the Mathematics doubt it did. When Galton declined to submit to this ritual,
Tripos proved too much. Affected by dizziness and other however, the king retaliated by refusing to let the exploration
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party proceed. There matters stood for some time until him their Silver Medal, and in 1856 he was made a
Nangoro, in a hospitable gesture of reconciliation, offered member of the Royal Society. These distinctions owed
Princess Chipanga to his visitor as a temporary wife:  I found much to the fame he achieved in 1853 by quickly
her installed in my tent in negress finery, raddled with red publishing a book about his exploits, Tropical South
ochre and butter, and as capable of leaving a mark on anything Africa. After reading it Charles Darwin wrote his cousin
she touched as a well-inked printer s roller. I was dressed in a congratulatory letter:
my one well-preserved suit of white linen, so I had her ejected
I last night finished your volume with such lively
with scant ceremony.
interest, that I cannot resist the temptation of expressing
By sending her packing he added insult to already
my admiration at your expedition, and at the capital
existing injury, and only when Nangoro was crowned
account you have published of it& What labours and
with the fetching little item from Drury Lane was the
dangers you have gone through: I can hardly fancy how
king sufficiently appeased to allow Galton to go on his
you can have survived them, for you did not formerly
way. There are those who might think it unmanly that
look very strong, but you must be as tough as one of
Galton preferred a clean suit to a naked princess. It may
your own African wagons! & I live at a village called
even be suspected that he was constitutionally unsuscep-
Down near Farnborough in Kent, and employ myself in
tible to her charms. Some might add that using a sextant
Zoology; but the objects of my study are very small fry,
and triangulation to calculate the dimensions of a
and to a man accustomed to rhinoceroses and lions,
Hottentot lady s buttocks from afar was downright
would appear infinitely insignificant.
perverse (she displayed a prodigious rump technically
known as steatopygia, and much admired locally, but it
would have been insulting and gravely misunderstood to
have simply walked up to her with a foot rule). But Travel Writing
whatever doubts one may entertain on these matters,
plenty of anecdotes make his healthy interest in the Tropical South Africa was not the only fruit of his African
opposite sex amply clear. days. In 1854 Hints for Travellers appeared in the Journal
Anyway, once his work in Namibia was done he hurried of the Royal Geographical Society, and was periodically
home to England where he found, and expeditiously expanded in book form year after year. Described by the
married, the daughter of the Dean of Peterborough. In Society s Secretary, Clements Markham, as a  very handy
Francis Galton, The Life and Work of a Victorian Genius little square book of 104 pages it sold well, became the
(1974), D. W. Forrest notes thoughtfully that  His attach- Society s most successful publication, and in 1974 was still
ment to Louisa Butler does not appear to have been a in print. This in turn led to a more ambitious book, The Art
romantic or sexual one. She was evidently plain and& he of Travel; or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild
was more handsome as a man than she beautiful as a Countries. Africa was being explored, Australia and New
woman. A photograph of the two of them together Zealand were being settled it had something for everyone.
confirms this judgment. One wouldn t wish to make too In Khartoum Mansfield Parkyns had told Galton how to
much of the matter except that for anyone hoping for keep his clothes dry in pouring rain take them off and sit on
offspring, as Galton evidently was, the combined absence them. To light a match for your pipe in a rainstorm get under
of any romantic motive or sexual attraction might be your horse s belly; and when swimming a horse across a
thought to have disadvantaged the union from the start. In river, once you ve got it started, follow behind steering
his old age he wrote in his autobiography emphasizing that forcefully with its tail. Muddy water can be filtered by
the most important thing was not the sentiments of bride sucking it through a handkerchief placed over the mouth of
and groom, but  the wider effect of an alliance between the mug. A fierce watchdog  usually desists from flying at a
each of them and a new family. But if there were no new stranger when he seats himself quietly on the ground, like
family? What then? Ulysses. To hide small things,  make a small cache by
Commending him for successfully accomplishing a bending down a young tree, tying your bundle to the top, and
journey of 1,700 miles through unknown country, and letting it spring up again. For weary travellers the kindness
for his maps ( the astronomical observations determining of the fairer sex is a boon:  Wherever you go, you will find
the latitude and longitude of places having been most kind-heartedness among women. Mungo Park is fond of
accurately made by himself ), Sir Roderick Murchison of recording his experiences of this; but I must add, that he
the Royal Geographical Society presented Galton with one seems to have been an especial favourite with the sex.
of their two annual gold medals. He was elected to the In simple matters like making tea in the bush Galton s
Council of that body in 1854, and also to the Athenaeum. precise and logical mind was quaintly displayed.  To
Soon after this the French Geographical Society awarded prepare tea for a very early breakfast, make it over night,
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173
and pour it away from the tea leaves, into another vessel& head. He wrote later:  Those who have not suffered from
In the morning simply warm it up. Tea is drunk at a mental breakdown can hardly realise the incapacity it causes,
temperature of 140°F, or 90° above an average night or, when the worst is past, the closeness of analogy between a
temperature of 50°. It is more than twice as easy to raise sprained brain and a sprained joint. In both cases, after
the temperature up to 140° than to 212°, let alone the recovery seems to others to be complete, there remains for a
trouble of tea-making. long time an impossibility of performing certain minor actions
He had married Miss Butler upon his return from Africa without pain and serious mischief, mental in the one and
in 1852, and with his travel writing and the regular bodily in the other.
vacations in Europe they enjoyed together, the first 10 years
of his married life apparently went well. In this period he
made pioneering meteorological observations, discovered Galton and the Unconscious Mind
and named anticyclones, and developed synoptic weather
maps presenting barometric pressure, wind direction, Galton tells us little about the precise nature of  the
rainfall, and temperature trends. incapacity , or what  the worst was like. This makes
Mapping of all kinds interested him, along with the need sense in terms of the ethos of his time and place. Manly
to raise geography to a higher academic level: he played a fortitude required that one soldier on. Yet it was also
role in having it introduced at Oxford. Ideally he wanted a unfortunate, for of all the great Victorians perhaps no one
form of stereoscopic representation for maps, and experi- was better qualified to cast light on the pathologies of the
mented along these lines, but according to Forrest, writing mind. In the course of his many introspective  inquiries
in 1974,  His efforts appear to have remained a curiosity into human faculty (the title of some essays gathered in
and apart from a limited use in aerial reconnaissance the book form in 1883) he had looked more deeply into the
method has not been generally developed&  Today mysterious operations of the human psyche than any other
mathematized, computerized, and visually manipulable Englishman alive. It had started with word associations
topography (not least of the surface of the planet Venus) and no less a figure than Carl Gustav Jung both followed
is a natural graphic outcome of his goals. and acknowledged Galton s pioneering research.
Of Australian interest is a paper entitled The exploration In his compendious 1970 book The Discovery of the
of arid countries that he contributed to the Proceedings of Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic
the Royal Geographical Society in 1858. It recommended the Psychiatry, Henri F. Ellenberger tells us that
serial deposition of caches along the line of march;
supporting parties, who exhausted their supplies after After writing his dissertation and a few papers mostly
providing meals and caches for the entire expedition, were on clinical cases, (Jung) concentrated his work on
to be sent home after their work was done. Forrest remarks research with the word association test. This test
that  If Galton s scheme could have been applied to consisted of enunciating to a subject a succession of
Australian exploratory endeavour, his next paper, Recent carefully chosen words; to each of them the subject
discoveries in Australia, might have made less depressing had to respond with the first word that occurred to
reading. It was written for the Cornhill and described various him; the reaction time was exactly measured.
journeys into the interior including Burke s fatal attempt.
Jung once gave a full account of the history of the test.
Far more public and better known was his role at the
It was invented by Galton, who showed how it could
Royal Geographical Society during the vexed and contro-
be used to explore the hidden recesses of the mind. It
versial proceedings surrounding the search for the source of
was taken over and perfected by Wundt, who
the Nile. This involved an entire gallery of famous names
attempted to experimentally establish the laws of the
Baker, Murchison, Sir Charles Lyell, Stanley and Living-
association of ideas.
stone, Burton and Speke arguing with each other for two
decades about the Central African Lakes. In 1864 Galton In 1889 Galton, William James, and Charcot were in
was one of the notables on stage in a theatre in Bath at the Paris between August 6 to 10 to address a Congress on
public humiliation of Speke by Burton, when Speke his Physiological Psychology; not far away, from August 8 to
face  full of sorrow, yearning, and perplexity  escaped 12, also in Paris, Freud, William James, and Charcot were
from the lecture hall and was not seen alive again. addressing a Congress on Hypnotism. Discussing mesmer-
Nothing so serious happened to Galton. But in 1866, ism, Ellenberger writes that  Freud had his patients free
scheduled to read a paper about charts for sailing ships at a associations met by the analyst s free-floating attention, and
meeting of the British Association, he felt ill, arranged to have here also he had a predecessor. In his autobiography, Galton
the paper read for him by another, and hurried away. It would said that at one time in his life he was interested in
be not until 1869 that he was once more entirely right in the mesmerism and magnetized about 80 people& 
174 Soc (2008) 45:170 176
ThreegoodGaltonbiographies never mention Ellenberger s once commented on the weaknesses we have that even our
book, and only one has more than a line or two about Galton s best friends dare not mention. But before the days of scientific
connection with Freud, Jung, or the unconscious. In Francis fertility testing, and cowed by his authoritarian manner, how
Galton: the Life and Work of a Victorian Genius, D. W. could Louisa raise such matters with her husband?
Forrest quotes the conclusion of a paper by Galton about his Examining peerages that became extinct, he satisfied
word association research:  Perhaps the strongest impression himself that sterile women were the cause. Poor peers,
left by these experiments regards the multifariousness of the especially those of middling circumstance raised to the
work done by the mind in a state of half-unconsciousness, and peerage, married rich heiresses. What they got was money,
the valid reason they afford for believing in the existence of not children, for an heiress  who is the sole issue of a
still deeper strata of mental operations, sunk wholly below the marriage, would not be so fertile as a woman who has many
level of consciousness, which may account for such mental brothers and sisters& Marriage to an heiress, while
phenomena as cannot otherwise be explained. (My emphasis, financially advantageous, brought with it the potential
RS) incubus of a barren union&   a union like his own. In
Mental phenomena such as what? One would like to his conclusion he wrote emphatically that  Although many
know. But this Galton declined to say. Although by 1877 he men of eminent ability& have not left descendants behind
had a mass of information about word associations, them, it is not because they are sterile, but because they are
introspectively drawn from the margins of his own apt to marry sterile women& 
unconscious, he drew back from printing more than a Louisa was no heiress. But she otherwise appeared to fit
discreet selection of the alarming things he had found. the pattern, and would have to be punished. So would her
One s private associations were too personal to have much late, frail, father. And so would Galton s older and partially
scientific value, he said, excusing himself from publication: disabled sister Adele, who had first recognised and single-
 It would be too absurd to print one s own associations handedly nurtured his greatly gifted mind.
singly. They lay bare the foundations of a man s thoughts
with curious distinctness, and exhibit his mental anatomy
with more vividness and truth than he would probably care A Difficult Personality
to publish to the world.
Karl Pearson, Galton s disciple, who wrote a four-volume
biography published between 1914 and 1930, spoke benev-
Hereditarian Obsessions olently of Galton s character and personality: he describes him
as  affectionate and  modest . The testimony of several
Modern biographies are sometimes loaded with bedroom family members supports this and is entirely along the same
gore, and most of the time we want less of it. Regarding lines. Yet his obsessions were of a kind that left little room for
Galton however one would like to know more. D. W. ordinary human much less humane considerations. Louisa
Forrest, in 1974, did at least recognise the possible Galton kept a diary of daily events, and from its pages she
connection between his  obsessional characteristics , his appears to have accepted her situation without rancour. But
mounting anxiety about having children, his mental the evidence suggests her husband had a cruel streak.
breakdown between 1866 and 1869, and his turn from When a field assistant who had helped him in Africa
meteorological and geographical research to unrelentingly appealed for help in turn, Galton, a rich man, turned him down
focus on heredity, fertility, and the need for the intellectual with a miserly rebuke. Upon his death he willed his servant of
classes to keep breeding:  His growing interest in heredity 40 years the merest pittance. He pursued the American jour-
dates from about the time when it was evident that his nalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley, of Stanley and
marriage was likely to prove infertile. There is no reason to Livingstone fame, with a vindictiveness inspired by little but
suppose that the marriage was not consummated. It is more the man s desire to conceal his illegitimacy, a hidden fact
likely that the infertility was genetic: neither of his brothers Galton resolved to expose. The opinions of Galton s critics
had children and none of Louisa s sisters. underline these tendencies. Clements Markham of the Royal
Poor Louisa! There are numerous photographs of Galton Geographical Society, for example, acknowledged that Galton
himself but few showing his wife. One that may date from was both clever and perfectly straight in all his dealings, but
around 1870 shows a face resigned and dolorous the strain added that  he was essentially a doctrinaire not endowed with
she was under must have been extreme. If they were childless, much sympathy. He was not adapted to lead or influence men.
thought Galton, there must be an obvious reason (and it He could make no allowance for the failings of others and had
couldn t be him). In the next few years a stream of articles and no tact.
books dealt with matters of descent and fertility in a way that But more than a lack of tact an unmanageable fixation
inescapably impugned his wife. In a revealing moment he was involved in the scientific writing he now produced. His
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175
wife s father, Dean of Peterborough, had died of heart disease to reproduce. In his 1873 essay  Hereditary Improvement he
just before Galton married Louisa. In Hereditary Genius insists that those of feeble constitution must embrace celibacy
(1869) Galton wrote that Divines like his father-in-law were  lest they should bring beings into existence whose race is
weak and unprolific men who bred weak and unprolific predoomed to destruction by the laws of nature. They won t
children. They  usually have wretched constitutions ; those actually be forcefully eliminated or not yet. But it is the
of high moral character are usually unstable; and while a bounden duty of those in power to  breed out feeble
pious disposition was not uncommon,  there are also fre- constitutions, and petty and ignoble instincts, and to breed in
quent cases of sons of pious parents who turned out badly. those which are vigorous and noble and social. And just as
Perhaps this was just Galton s now habitual anti-clericalism his own sister Adele would be forced into celibacy under such
with a hereditarian slant. Elsewhere, for example, he would a regime, there were also races that were  predoomed 
write that  The religious instructor in every creed is one who Princess Chipanga s among them.  Whenever a low race is
makes it his profession to saturate his pupils with prejudice. A preserved under conditions of life that exact a high level of
vast and perpetual clamour arises from the pulpits of endless efficiency, it must be subjected to rigorous selection. The few
proselytising sects, the priests all crying with one consent best specimens of that race can alone be allowed to become
 This is the way!  He wrote lots of this kind of thing, very parents, and not many of their descendants can be allowed to
similar in spirit to Richard Dawkins The God Delusion today. live.
But a Voltairean piece mocking the inefficacy of prayer With remarkable equanimity Forrest describes the direc-
seemingly went out of its way to wound his wife. tion Galton wanted England to take. Caste sentiment would
Speaking personally, and as a secularist, I have no doubt be deliberately cultivated. The nation would be scoured for
that much he said was true. There may well be a placebo the names and addresses of gifted people who would be
effect; yet I feel reasonably confident that prayers for the urged to intermarry. The intellectual aristocracy would
sick are not empirically efficacious. But what was the point receive special benefits; England s  untouchables would
he was making? Wasn t infertility, broadly speaking and receive nothing at all; and endowments would maintain a
within the understanding of the conventionally religious privileged Brahmin caste in healthy circumstances enabling
Louisa, a form of  sickness ? Didn t he regard Louisa as it to multiply in comfort. Nothing more strikingly reveals
suffering from it, and wasn t it extremely likely that she Galton s political naiveté than his conclusion; and nothing
was praying nightly to be healed? He was publicly more vividly exposes the doctrinaire perfectionist mind:  I
ridiculing the one private consolation she possessed. do not see why any insolence of caste should prevent the
The case of his older sister Adele is equally disturbing. gifted class, when they had the power, from treating their
With a spinal curvature  that frequently forced her to lie on compatriots with all kindness, so long as they maintained
her back on a board , she represented congenital disability celibacy. But if these continued to procreate children,
within his own family. As a child his nursery was in her inferior in moral, intellectual and physical qualities, it is
room.  Delly was the woman who first fostered his talents, easy to believe the time may come when such persons
who set him to memorising Scott and Homer, and as would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have
Gillham shows,  these early intellectual feats partially forfeited all claims to kindness.
reflected Delly s hard pushing. Nor did she neglect the Three things are perhaps worth noting here. The first is
sciences, teaching him a little about birds and insects as Galton s insistence in 1904 that eugenics  must be
well as geology. Her reward was an essay declaring that introduced into the national conscience, like a new
 Our human civilised stock is far more weakly through religion, adding that  it has indeed strong claims to
congenital imperfection than that of any other species of become an orthodox religious tenet of the future. Dis-
animals, whether wild or domestic. Something from the placed religious fervour is combined with a moral passion
haunts of the unconscious appears to be operating here to install a secular conscience as adamantine as any
something not at all agreeable.  The proportion of weakly Christian conscience that preceded it, but with a difference:
and misshapen individuals , he writes,  it not to be salvation is offered only to the genetically elect.
estimated by those whom we meet in the streets; the worst Secondly there is the man in the white suit fearful Miss
cases are out of sight. Can he have been implying that they Chipanga will leave her stain. This is a minor and largely
were concealed inside parental homes like his own? symbolic matter: yet caste always fetishizes purity and the
evils of pollution, and one feels that the psychology of
pollution runs deeply through Galton s eugenic program
Eugenics too. Serious Hindu caste rules forbid human contact of
various kinds for fear that the purer and nobler Brahmins
So what should be done? People like Delly must be prevented will be defiled. A neurotic aversion to having one s clothing
from breeding: only the genetically perfect should be allowed soiled belongs with this prohibition.
176 Soc (2008) 45:170 176
Thirdly there is the mental crisis brought about by his When he writes, late in life, that the effect of Darwinism
failure to have children an anxiety born of Galton s self- was  to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a
imposed rule for the intellectual elite: Go forth and single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of rebellion against all
multiply. Having broken his own reproductive ordinance ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated state-
he comes out of the crisis more than ever determined to ments were contradicted by modern science , we see a
stop untermenschen breeding, swamping the elite, drown- radical antinomian spirit unleashed; and when we are told
ing the genes of übermenschen in a tide of mediocrity. And that eugenics  must be introduced into the national con-
we all know where that led. science, like a new religion, adding that  it has indeed
strong claims to become an orthodox religious tenet of the
future, we see displaced religious zeal put at the service of
Galton s Legacy political compulsion: allied to old-time German nationalism,
it is unsurprising that it led, step by step, to policies of racial
I have had a copy of Inquiries into Human Faculty on my exclusion and finally annihilation.
shelf for many years. But it was not until recently that I Like others today one thinks again of Richard Dawkins
began to read about Sir Francis Galton himself. This was the Galton showed a curious inability to distinguish the undoubted
direct result of a remarkable stage production featuring value of Christianity s ethical teachings from its more dubious
writer actor Brian Lipson in Sydney in June July 2006. It ontological and theological claims, or to understand that by
was a very clever one-man show in which an actor impec- aggressively knocking the props out from under the latter he
cably dressed in Victorian daywear impersonated Galton for could bring the whole civilizational structure down in ruins.
about an hour and a half. He carried out experiments, talked But then he had no philosophical insight whatever. And no
about his research and inventions, enthused about eugenics sense of necessary institutional care. At present Western
and the breeding of better people for a better world all the civilization is like an aircraft on auto-pilot, its moral course
while speaking Victorian prose with great skill and convic- fixed in the Christian era, with nobody now understanding
tion (the title of the show was A Large Attendance in the where the navigational settings came from or how to adjust
Antechamber. To explain what that title means is too difficult them, and fast running out of fuel. Despite his many valuable
here; suffice to say that it reflects an aspect of Galton s view scientific contributions, Galton s blindness to the prerequisites
of the sequential structure of mental activity). of both political and moral order certainly contributed its
Designed primarily for comic effect, Mr. Lipson s portion to this bleak state of affairs.
extended dramatic sketch emphasized oddity on the one
hand (the correct procedure for scientific tea-making) and
outrageously un-PC research on the other indeed, racial
profiling takes on a new meaning after one has seen
Galton s photographic studies of various ethnic groups,
Karl Pearson s four-volume The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis
Jews included, compiled when researching his typically
Galton, 1914 1930, is the foundation of all subsequent biographies.
19th century belief that appearance was an infallible guide Among recent works, D. W. Forrest s 1974 Francis Galton: the Life
and Work of a Victorian Genius, is the most readable. Nicholas Wright
to moral character. At the end of the show the character of
Gillham s 2001 A life of Sir Francis Galton is the most comprehen-
Lipson/Galton (the actor whimsically admits to being a
sive. Michael Bulmer s 2003 Francis Galton: Pioneer of Heredity and
little confused about his identity when onstage) appeared
Biometry is the most suitable for scientific readers, with systematic
with a sign on his back reading  I am mad . treatments of Galton s work on the mechanism of heredity, evolution-
ary problems, statistics, and biometry. It should also be mentioned that
At first I felt that Lipson s interpretation, though brilliant,
the website www.galton.org claims to have all Galton s published
smacked altogether too much of the cliché of the mad sci-
works, plus Karl Pearson s biography, in its files.
entist. After immersing myself in Galtoniana I am less sure,
but if Galton was mad, using the term loosely of course, what
did his madness consist of? The answer is I think one entirely
compatible with the other madnesses, or fanatical barbarisms,
that knocked Western civilization sideways during the 20th Roger Sandall taught classical sociology in the Department of
Anthropology at the University of Sydney from 1973 to 1993. The
century, each of them dethroning religion as a moral guide and
author of The Culture Cult, a critique of romantic primitivism
source of authority and enthusiastically endorsing a secular
(Westview 2001), he writes on social and cultural matters at his
substitute: communism, fascism, and the less organised but
website www.culturecult.com. This article appeared originally in
ubiquitous romantic primitivism we endure today. different form in Quadrant, March, 2007.