US: But how came this to be concealed from Copernicus and revealed
to you?

SIR FRANCIS GALTON

Essays in Eugenics

Sir Francis Galton, born at Birmingham, England, in 1822, was a
grandson of Dr. Erasmus Darwin. He graduated from Trinity College,
Cambridge, in 1844. Galton travelled in the north of Africa, on the
White Nile and in the western portion of South Africa between 1844
and 1850. Like his immortal cousin, Charles Darwin, Sir Francis
Galton is a striking instance of a man of great and splendid
inheritance, who, also inheriting wealth, devotes it and his powers
to the cause of humanity. He published several books on heredity,
the first of which was "Hereditary Genius." The next "Inquiries
into Human Faculty," which was followed by "Natural Inheritance."
The "Essays in Eugenics" include all the most recent work of Sir
Francis Galton since his return to the subject of eugenics in 1901.
This volume has just been published by the Eugenics Education
Society, of which Sir Francis Galton is the honorary president. As
epitomised for this work, the "Essays" have been made to include a
still later study by the author, which will be included in future
editions of the book. The epitome has been prepared by special
permission of the Eugenics Education Society, and those responsible
hope that it will serve in some measure to neutralise the
outrageous, gross, and often wilful misrepresentations of eugenics
of which many popular writers are guilty.

_I.--The Aims and Methods of Eugenics_

The following essays help to show something of the progress of eugenics
during the last few years, and to explain my own views upon its aims and
methods, which often have been, and still sometimes are, absurdly
misrepresented. The practice of eugenics has already obtained a
considerable hold on popular estimation, and is steadily acquiring the
status of a practical question, and not that of a mere vision in Utopia.

The power by which eugenic reform must chiefly be effected is that of
public opinion, which is amply strong enough for that purpose whenever
it shall be roused. Public opinion has done as much as this on many past
occasions and in various countries, of which much evidence is given in
the essay on restrictions in marriage. It is now ordering our acts more
intimately than we are apt to suspect, because the dictates of