394 THE EVOLUTION THEORY 



this can be of no iiiiportauce in relation to the struggle for existence. 

 But this intensity of the power of vision has obviously not been 

 acquired for the investigation of the starry heavens, Ijut was of 

 the greatest value in securing the existence of many of our animal 

 ancestors, and was not less important for our own. In the same 

 way our finely evolved musical ear might be regarded as a perfecting 

 of the hearing apparatus far beyond the degree necessary to existence, 

 but this is not really the case : our musical ear, too, has been inherited 

 from our animal ancestors, and to them, as to primitive Man, it 

 was a necessity of existence. It was quite necessary for the animals 

 to distinguish the higher and. lower notes of a long scale, sharply 

 and certainly, in order to be able to evade an approaching enemj^, 

 or to recognize prey from afar. That we are able to make music 

 is, so to speak, only an unintentional accessory power of the hearing- 

 organs, which were originalh' developed onlj' for the preservation 

 of existence, just as the human hand did not become what it is 

 in order to ploy the piano, but to touch and seize, to make tools, 

 and so on. 



Must thif<,theii, he true also of the human mind? Can it, too, 

 only be developed as far as its development is of advantage to Man's 

 power of survival ? I believe that this is certainly the case in 

 a general way ; the intellectual powers which are the common 

 property of the human race will never rise beyond these limits, 

 but this is not to say that certain individuals may not be more 

 highly endowed. The possiljility of a higher development of certain 

 mental powers or of their combinations — whether it be intelligence, will, 

 feeling, inventive power, or a talent for mathematics, music or painting 

 : — may be inferred with certaint}' from our own principles ; for not 

 only may the variational tendencies of individual groups of deter- 

 minants in the germ-plasm be continued for a series of generations 

 without becoming injurious, that is to sa}', without being put a stop 

 to by personal selection, but sexual intermingling alwa3^s opens up the 

 possibility that some predominantly developed intellectual tendencies 

 (Anlagen) may combine in one way or another, and so give rise to 

 individuals of great mental superiorit}', in Avhatever direction. In 

 this way, it seems to me, the geniuses of humanity have arisen — 

 a Plato, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Beethoven. But they do not last ; 

 they do not transmit their greatness; if they leave descendants at all, 

 these never inherit the wltole greatness of their father, and Ave can 

 easily understand this, since the greatness does not depend upon 

 a single character, but upon a particular combination of man}^ high 

 mental qualities {Anlagen). Geniuses, therefore, probably never raise 



