ority; but this is the last claim the
Eugenists are likely to make. One caste or one profession seeking to
rule men in such matters is like a man's right eye claiming to rule
him, or his left leg to run away with him. It is madness. We now pass
on to consider whether there is really anything in the way of Eugenics
to be done, with such cheerfulness as we may possess after discovering
that there is nobody to do it.

CHAPTER VI

THE UNANSWERED CHALLENGE

Dr. Saleeby did me the honour of referring to me in one of his
addresses on this subject, and said that even I cannot produce any but
a feeble-minded child from a feeble-minded ancestry. To which I reply,
first of all, that he cannot produce a feeble-minded child. The whole
point of our contention is that this phrase conveys nothing fixed and
outside opinion. There is such a thing as mania, which has always been
segregated; there is such a thing as idiotcy, which has always been
segregated; but feeble-mindedness is a new phrase under which you
might segregate anybody. It is essential that this fundamental fallacy
in the use of statistics should be got somehow into the modern mind.
Such people must be made to see the point, which is surely plain
enough, that it is useless to have exact figures if they are exact
figures about an inexact phrase. If I say, "There are five fools in
Acton," it is surely quite clear that, though no mathematician can
make five the same as four or six, that will not stop you or anyone
else from finding a few more fools in Acton. Now weak-mindedness, like
folly, is a term divided from madness in this vital manner--that in
one sense it applies to all men, in another to most men, in another
to very many men, and so on. It is as if Dr. Saleeby were to say,
"Vanity, I find, is undoubtedly hereditary. Here is Mrs. Jones, who
was very sensitive about her sonnets being criticised, and I found her
little daughter in a new frock looking in the glass. The experiment is
conclusive, the demonstration is complete; there in the first
generation is the artistic temperament--that is vanity; and there in
the second generation is dress--and that is vanity." We should answer,
"My friend, all is vanity, vanity and vexation of spirit--especially
when one has to listen to logic of your favourite kind. Obviously all
human beings must value themselves; and obviously there is in all such
valuation an element of weakness, since it is not the valuation of
eternal