XV 
DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 
473 
The Interpretation of the Facts. 
The facts now set forth prove the existence of a number 
of mental faculties which either do not exist at all or exist 
in a very rudimentary condition in savages, but appear 
almost suddenly and in perfect development in the higher 
civilised races. These same faculties are further chai'acterised 
by their sporadic character, being well developed only in a 
very small proportion of the community ; and by the enormous 
amount of variation in their development, the higher mani¬ 
festations of them being many times—perhaps a hundred or 
a thousand times—stronger than the lower. Each of these 
characteristics is totally inconsistent with any action of the 
law of natural selection in the production of the faculties 
referred to ; and the facts, taken in their entirety, compel 
us to recognise some origin for them wholly distinct from that 
which has served to account for the animal characteristics— 
whether bodily or mental—of man. 
under tlie law of natural selection. He says : “ It may be objected that, in 
man, in addition to the instincts inherent in every individual, special indi¬ 
vidual predispositions are also found, of such a nature that it is impossible 
they can have arisen by individual variations of the germ-plasm. On the 
other hand, these predispositions—which we call talents—cannot have arisen 
through natural selection, because life is in no way dependent on their presence, 
and there seems to be no way of explaining their origin except by an assump¬ 
tion of the summation of the skill attained by exercise in the course of each 
single life. In this case, therefore, we seem at first sight to be compelled to 
accept the transmission of acquired characters.” Weismann then goes on to 
show that the facts do not support this view ; that the mathematical, musical, 
or artistic faculties often appear suddenly in a family whose other members 
and ancestors were in no way distinguished ; and that even when hereditary 
in families, the talent often appears at its maximum at the commencement or 
in the middle of the series, not increasing to the end, as it should do if it 
depended in any way on the transmission of acquired skill. Gauss was not the 
son of a mathematician, nor Handel of a musician, nor Titian of a painter, and 
there is no proof of any special talent in the ancestors of these men of genius, 
who at once developed the most marvellous pre-eminence in their respective 
talents. And after showing that such great men only appear at certain stages 
of human development, and that two or more of the special talents are not 
uufrequently combined in one individual, he concludes thus— 
“ Upon this subject I only wish to add that, in my opinion, talents do not 
appear to depend upon the improvement of any special mental quality by 
continued practice, but they are the expression, and to a certain extent the 
bye-product, of the human mind, which is so highly developed in all 
directions. ” 
It will, I think, be admitted that this view hardly accounts for the 
existence of the highly peculiar human faculties in question. 
