In Pursuit of the Gene

24 ¨ REVERSION TO THE MEAN
Fortified by his new theory of heredity, Galton was now prepared to set
forth a specific agenda to improve the situation. On the one hand, the state
would encourage intermarriage and reproduction of the gifted. On the
other, it would discourage, or outlaw, if necessary, procreation of the untalented.
As a first step, government would create a national register, a
“golden book” as he called it, of the naturally gifted. This would be part of
a broad effort to collect and publish the pedigrees of gifted families, fully illustrated
with measurements and photographs. He was anxious to assure
skeptics that there would be “no coercion in the matter of marriage” and,
in fact, “no direct steps at first beyond simple enquiry.” All boys at school
would be tested, examined, and classified as to their natural physical and
mental gifts, and the most promising registered. Two generations hence, he
anticipated, the lists would contain 1 percent of the population, an estimated
300,000 “magnificent specimens of manhood and womanhood.” Like
the residents of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, the children of the gifted
would be above average, “on the whole, better in every respect than the
children of other people—stronger, healthier, brighter, more honest and
more pleasant.” 3
The idea was “not to begin by breaking up old feelings of social status,”
he hastened to reassure his highly privileged readership, but rather “to
build up a caste within each of the groups into which rank, wealth, and pursuits
already divide society.” Ultimately, the upper classes would be divided
according to ability, and those with natural gifts would be given special
privileges. The gifted would soon begin to prefer their own company, for
not only would “they succeed better by themselves,” but “their own society
would be by far the more cultured and pleasant.” 4 The inevitable result
would be the formation of a caste of the naturally gifted, and it was his
hope that the “sentiment of caste” would encourage them to intermarry.
When the gifted were firmly ensconced in their seats of power, nothing
would prevent them from treating their inferiors with “all kindness, so
long as they maintained celibacy.” However, he warned, if undesirables
“continued to procreate children, inferior in moral, intellectual and physical
qualities, it is easy to believe the time may come when such persons
would be considered as enemies to the State.” State control of breeding was