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 kindled the feeble flame that struggled doubtfully for a time until it caught hold of adjacent stores of