XV DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 473 



The Interpi'etation of the Facts. 



The facts noAv set forth prove the existence of a number 

 of mental faculties "which either do not exist at all or exist 

 ill a very rudimentary condition in savages, but appear 

 almost suddenlj^ and in perfect development in the higher 

 ci\'ilised races. These same faculties are further characterised 

 by their sporadic character, being well developed only in a 

 very small proj^ortion of the community ; and by the enormous 

 amount of A-ariation 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 \nt\i any action of the 

 law of natural selection in the production of the facvdties 

 referred to ; and the facts, taken in their entiretj^, compel 

 us to recognise some origin for them wholly distinct from that 

 which has served to account for the animal characteristics — 

 Avhether bodily or mental — of man. 



under the 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 predisj^ositions — 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 suddenlj' 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 anj^ way on the transmission of acquii'ed 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 

 unfrequently 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 vnW, I think, be admitted that this view hardly accounts for the 

 existence of the highly peculiar human faculties in question. 



