ply eugenics to life only aroused ridicule
and persecution, so that he was, unfortunately, compelled by
outside pressure to bring a most instructive experiment to a
premature end. His aim and principle are set forth in an _Essay
on Scientific Propagation_, printed some forty years ago, which
discusses problems that are only now beginning to attract the
attention of the practical man, as within the range of social
politics. When Noyes turned his vigorous and practical mind to
the question of eugenics, that question was exclusively in the
hands of scientific men, who felt all the natural timidity of the
scientific man towards the realization of his proposals, and who
were not prepared to depart a hair's breadth from the
conventional customs of their time. The experiment of Noyes, at
Oneida, marked a new stage in the history of eugenics; whatever
might be the value of the experiment--and a first experiment
cannot well be final--with Noyes the questions of eugenics passed
beyond the purely academic stage in which, from the time of
Plato, they had peacefully reposed. "It is becoming clear," Noyes
states at the outset, "that the foundations of scientific society
are to be laid in the scientific propagation of human beings." In
doing this, we must attend to two things: blood (or heredity) and
training; and he puts blood first. In that, he was at one with
the most recent biometrical eugenists of to-day ("the nation has
for years been putting its money on 'Environment,' when
'Heredity' wins in a canter," as Karl Pearson prefers to put it),
and at the same time revealed the breadth of his vision in
comparison with the ordinary social reformer, who, in that day,
was usually a fanatical believer in the influence of training and
surroundings. Noyes sets forth the position of Darwin on the
principles of breeding, and the step beyond Darwin, which had
been taken by Galton. He then remarks that, when Galton comes to
the point where it is necessary to advance from theory to the
duties the theory suggests, he "subsides into the meekest
conservatism." (It must be remembered that this was written at an
early stage in Galton's work.) This conclusion was entirely
opposed to Noyes' practical and religious temperament. "Duty is
plain; we say we ought to do it--we want to do it; but we cannot.
The l