I have no patience with the hypothesis occasionally expressed, and often implied, especially in tales written to teach children to be good, that babi… - Francis Galton

What nature does blindly, slowly, and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.

As these lines are being written, the circumstances under which I first clearly grasped the important generalisation that the laws of Heredity were solely concerned with deviations expressed in statistical units, are vividly recalled to my memory. It was in the grounds of Naworth Castle, where an invitation had been given to ramble freely. A temporary shower drove me to seek refuge in a reddish recess in the rock by the side of the pathway. There the idea flashed across me, and I forgot everything else for a moment in my great delight.

The long period of the dark ages... is due... in a very considerable degree, to the celebacy enjoined by religious orders on their votaries. Whenever a man or woman was possessed of a gentle nature that fitted... deeds of charity, to meditation, to literature, or to art... they had no refuge elsewhere than in the bosom of the Church. ...celibacy. ...thus, by a policy so singularly unwise and suicidal... the Church brutalized the breed of our forefathers. ...as if she had aimed at selecting the rudest portion of the community to be alone the parents of future generations. She practised the arts which breeders would use, who aimed at creating ferocious, currish, and stupid natures. ...
The policy of the religious world in Europe... by means of persecutions... brought thousands of the foremost thinkers and men of political aptitudes to the scaffold, or imprisoned them during a large part of their manhood, or drove them as emigrants into other lands. ...Hence the Church, having first captured all the gentle natures and condemned them to celibacy, made another sweep of her huge nets ...to catch those who were the most fearless, truth-seeking, and intelligent ...and therefore the most suitable parents of a high civilization, and put a strong check, if not a direct stop, to their progeny. Those she reserved... to breed the generations of the future, were the servile, the indifferent, and again, the stupid. Thus, as she... brutalized human nature by her system of celibacy applied to the gentle, she demoralised it by her system of persecution of the intelligent, the sincere, and the free.