HEREDITY — BATESON". 38T 



tell US that an average of four children under present conditions is 

 sufficient to keep the number constant, and as the expectation of life 

 is steadily improving we may perhaps contemplate some diminution 

 of that number Avithout alarm. 



In the study of history biological treatment is only beginning to be 

 applied. For us the causes of the success and failure of races are 

 physiological events, and the progress of man has depended upon a 

 chain of these events, like those which have resulted in the " improve- 

 ment " of the domesticated animals and plants. It is obvious, for 

 example, that had the cereals never been domesticated cities could 

 scarcely have existed. But we may go further, and say that in tem- 

 perate countries of the Old World (having neither rice nor maize) 

 populations concentrated in large cities have been made possible by 

 the appearance of a "thrashable" wheat. The ears of the wild 

 wheats break easily to pieces, and the grain remains in the thick husk. 

 Such wheat can be used for food, but not readily. Ages before 

 u'ritten history began, in some unknown place, plants, or more likely 

 a plant, of wheat lost the dominant factor to which this brittleness is 

 due, and the recessive, thrashable wheat resulted. Some man noticed 

 this Avonderful novelt}^, and it has been disseminated over the earth. 

 The original variation may well have occurred once only in a single 

 germ-cell. 



So must it have been with man. Translated into terms of factors, 

 how has that progress in control of nature which we call civilization 

 been achieved? By the sporadic appearance of variations mostly, 

 perhaps all, consisting in a loss of elements, which inhibit the free 

 working of the mind. The members of civilized communities, when 

 they think about such things at all, imagine the process a gradual 

 one, and that they themselves are active agents in it. Few, however, 

 contribute anything but their labor; and except in so far as they have 

 freedom to adopt and imitate, their physiological composition is that 

 of an earlier order of beings. Annul the work of a few hundreds — I 

 might almost say scores — of men, and on what plane of civilization 

 should we be? "VVe should not have advanced beyond the medieval 

 stage without printing, chemistry, steam, electricity, or surgery 

 worthy the name. These things are the contributions of a few ex- 

 cessively rare minds. Galton reckoned those to whom the term 

 " illustrious " might be applied as one in a million, but in that number 

 he is, of course, reckoning men famous in ways which add nothing to 

 universal progress. To improve by subordinate invention, to dis- 

 cover details missed, even to apply knowledge never before applied, 

 all these things need genius in some degree, and are far beyond the 

 powers of the average man of our race ; but the true pioneer, the man 

 whose penetration creates a new world, as did that of Newton and of 

 Pasteur, is inconceivably rare. But for a few thousands of such men 



