WCP2895

[1]¹

NETHERBY,

VICTORIA ROAD, S.

SOUTHSEA.

5^th Jan 1908

My dear Sir

I read with great pleasure your kindly article in the Fortnightly Review.² May I thank you for it. The pleasure is intensified by the fact that that I believed you disapproved of me altogether, and I would very gladly have merited your approval. I felt sure I was right in the points mentioned by you in the Fortnightly, and consequently I feel I felt somewhat sore. Will you please forgive me? I am beginning to suspect that [2] I am an ill-conditioned fellow. In just the same way I suspected Lankester³ of careless injustice some years ago and wrote about him in a way he made me regret by heaping unlimited kindness, as coal of fire, on my head.

Professor Meldola⁴ wrote me the other day that he had been discussing Mendelism with you. I daresay you saw the correspondence in Nature. We had a meeting at the Linnean afterwards ^{at which I read a paper} which was followed by a discussion in which Lankester, Poulton,⁵ & others took part.

Mendelism appears to me an absurdly over-rated fad which might be disregarded were it not that it has directed — with other kindred [3] fads — attention from more important problems.

It has always seemed to me that the most important thing about biology is the light it sheds on mind. If we could only convince people of its tremendous part played by ‘acquirement’ in man — if we could only draw attention to the fact that the mental characteristics of the various races depend mainly on acquirement, it would be possible to achieve a real advance on one pleasant system of training the young by noting how good results were achieved in past times. Education would then rest on the bed-rock — biology. But at present while Mendelism, biometry, ^mutation and the rest hold the field it seems impossible to [4] interest men of sicence in the matter. We have no journal in which such question can be brought out. At my suggestion Lankester is trying to found one. But it is a question of finance. I think it should be financially successful. People are interested in such questions as education & ‘physical deterioration’ but have no guidance. The Royal Commissions of recent times give an indication of the interest. I have done a good deal of work in connection with the last — on feeble-minded persons, and I believe its decisions will be such as to enhance the interest in biology.

With renewed thanks

Believe me | Yours very truly | G. Archdall Reid⁶ [signature]