Sir Francis Galton was a polymath and a gentleman scientist who was born into a well-off family in 1822. After his half-cousin Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species in 1859, Galton devoted much of the rest of his life to studying human heredity and it’s implications for society. As an influential member of the scientific community, his lectures on this topic had a wide impact.
Class and Genetic Superiority
In his Essays on Eugenics written in 1909, Galton put forward ideas that are shocking to modern sensibilities for their racism and attitude of class superiority, but apparently his ideas were well-received at the time and influenced his contemporary American eugenicists. Galton wrote in his essays, “The practice of eugenics has already exerted a considerable hold on popular estimation, and is steadily acquiring the status of a practical question, and not that of a mere vision of Utopia.”
Class Propaganda
Galton believed that his ideas must be spread among the people in order to have the desired effect, and the American Eugenics Society also considered this to be one of their primary goals. Galton wrote, “The power by which eugenic reform must chiefly be effected is that of Popular Opinion which is amply strong enough for that purpose whenever it shall be roused. It is now ordering our acts more intimately than we are apt to suspect, because the dictates of public opinion become so thoroughly assimilated that they seem to be original and individual to those who are guided by them.”
Scientific Support for Class Superiority
In his Second Huxley Lecture of the Anthropological Institute on October 29, 1901 on Hereditary Genius and Natural Inheritance, Galton encouraged the assembled scientists to undertake the study of “human improvement.” Galton divided people into classes based on income, attributing the low-income group’s plight to character flaws, such as “shiftlessness, improvidence, and drink.”
Upper Class Babies are Worth More
Galton believed that the well-off upper classes had better blood than the lower classes and no amount of education could change this. He wrote, “The brains of our nation lie in the higher of our classes.” He reasoned that if any child could excel, it would be worth investing in all children, but they can not because they did not inherit the ability. Galton figured and demonstrated with charts the national “worth” of upper-class babies compared to lower class babies. According to his calculations, 100 new upper class babies benefit the nation more than 1000 lower class babies.
Pure Blood
Marriages between like classes should be encouraged “to keep blood pure and not degenerating.” The lower class live the life of savages, Galton reported, “with vicissitudes of extreme hardship and occasional excess.” He went on to say that “From them come the battered figures who slouch through the streets and play the bully or beggar. They render no useful service, they create no wealth, more often they destroy it.”
Galton argued for state support of reproduction of the upper classes, such as helping them to establish households and begin reproducing at a younger age. This was so noble an undertaking, according to Galton, that it should be pursued with a religious zeal.
Galton’s ideas were pursued with a religious zeal by American eugenicists Harry Laughlin, Charles Davenport, and Madison Grant in the early 20th century, and echoes of these same ideas are still debated today.
Sir Francis Galton, Essays on Eugneics, 1909
