It is impossible, within the scope of the present volume, to analyse in detail the Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded. In this present outline of eugenics it is our business, however, to show main principles, and as the principle expressed in the phrase “racial poisons” is to my mind absolutely cardinal for eugenics, it is necessary here to comment, as I have already done in the _Journal_ above quoted, upon the following most unfortunate deliverance of the Commissioners: “That both on the grounds of fact and of theory, there is the highest degree of probability that feeble-mindedness is usually spontaneous in origin--that is, not due to influences acting on the parent....” The word spontaneous has, of course, no meaning for science, or rather is a denial of the fundamental axiom of science that causation is universal. What the Commissioners mean when they say spontaneous is “sportaneous,” like the occasional production of a nectarine by a peach tree. Apart from this highly suspicious phraseology, there is the still more unfortunate fact that the Commissioners have lent their authority to the view that feeble-mindedness is not due to influences acting on the parent. The modern student of syphilis will be astonished at this pronouncement, and also the student of lead-poisoning, as we shall see in the following chapter. Every reader of Dr. Potts's admirable paper will realise that this conclusion of the Commissioners--“not due to influences acting on the parent”--is directly opposed to an extraordinary mass of evidence and to the opinion of, I suppose, every authority on the subject, British, Continental or American. The Commissioners' reference to “theory,” coupled with portions of the evidence given before them by witnesses who suppose that the alleged influence of alcohol as a cause of feeble-mindedness controverts the doctrine of the non-transmission of “acquired characters,” makes it necessary to point out for the hundredth time that, for lack of analysis and criticism of terms, the most prominent followers of Galton and Weismann persistently misunderstand their masters' teaching. The modern doctrine of the individual as the trustee of the germ-cells and of the non-transmission of acquired characters is Mr. Galton's. Mr. Galton himself does not question and never has questioned the possibility that alcohol may cause feeble-mindedness. There is no reason why he should. If we take the somewhat unusual course of consulting the words of the masters before we swear by them, we find--as has been shown--that Weismann, who subsequently stated and has so greatly supported Mr. Galton's view, has expressly repudiated the Commissioners' idea of his “theory.” The Galton-Weismann doctrine is a doctrine of heredity proper,--the organic relation of living generations. It does not assert that there are two unconnected universes--the one made of germ-plasm and the other of the rest of nature.