388 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1915. 



we should perhaps be in the Palaeolithic era, knowing neither metals, 

 Avriting, arithmetic, weaving, nor pottery. 



In the history of art the same is true, but with this remarkable 

 difference, that not only are gifts of artistic creation very rare, but 

 even the faculty of artistic enjoyment, not to speak of higher powers 

 of appreciation, is not attained without variation from the common 

 type. I am speaking, of course, of the non-Semitic races of modern 

 Europe, among whom the power whether of making or enjoying 

 works of art is confined to an insignificant number of individuals. 

 Appreciation can in some degree be simulated, but in our population 

 there is no widespread physiological appetite for such things. "When 

 detached from the centers where they are made by others, most of us 

 pass our time in great contentment, making nothing that is beautiful, 

 and quite unconscious of any deprivation. Musical taste is the most 

 notable exception, for in certain races — for example, the Welsh and 

 some of the Germans — it is almost universal. Otherwise, artistic 

 faculty is still sporadic in its occurrence. The case of music well 

 illustrates the application of genetic analysis to human faculty. No 

 one disputes that musical ability is congenital. In its fuller mani- 

 festation it demands sense of rhythm, ear, and special nervous and 

 muscular powers. Each of these is separable and doubtless geneti- 

 cally distinct. Each is the consequence of a special departure from 

 the common type. Teaching and external influences are powerless to 

 evoke these faculties, though their development may be assisted. The 

 only conceivable way in which the people of England, for example, 

 could become a musical nation would be by the gradual rise in the 

 proportional numbers of a musical strain or strains until the present 

 type became so rare as to be negligible. It by no means follows that 

 in any other respect the resulting population would be distinguish- 

 able from the present one. Difficulties of this kind beset the efforts 

 of anthropologists to trace racial origins. It must continually be re- 

 membered that most characters are independenth^ transmitted and 

 capable of such recombination. In the light of Mendelian knowledge 

 the discussion whether a race is pure or mixed loses almost all 

 significance. A race is pure if it breeds pure and not otherwise. 

 Historically we may know that a race like our own was, as a matter 

 of fact, of mixed origin. But a character may have been introduced 

 by a single individual, though subsequently it becomes common to the 

 race. This is merely a variant on the familiar paradox that in the 

 course of time if registration is accurate we shall all have the same 

 surname. In the case of music, for instance, the gift, originally per- 

 haps from a Welsh source, might permeate the nation, and the ques- 

 tion Avould then arise whether the nation, so changed, was the 

 English nation or not. 



