10 TABOO AND GENETICS 



always been and always will be of fundamental 

 importance. It is always the product of the 

 germplasm which concerns us, and we are 

 interested in the germ-cells themselves only in 

 relation to their capacity to produce individuals 

 of value to society. 



So let us not go erring about in the philo- 

 sophical ether, imagining that because the 

 amceba may not be specialized for anything 

 over and above nutrition and reproduction that 

 these are necessarily the " main business " or 

 " chief ends " of human societies. Better say 

 that although we have become developed and 

 specialized for a million other activities we are 

 still bound by those fundamental necessities. 

 As to " Nature's purposes " about which the 

 older sex literature has had so much to say, the 

 idea is essentially religious rather than scientific. 

 If such " purposes " indeed exist in the universe, 

 man evidently does not feel particularly bound 

 by them. We do not hesitate to put a cornfield 

 where " Nature " had a forest, or to replace a 

 barren hillside by the sea with a city. 



Necessities and possibilities, not " purposes " 

 in nature, claim our attention — reproduction 

 being one of those embarrassing necessities, 

 viewed through the eyes of man, the one evalu- 

 ating animal in the world. Thus in reasoning 

 from biology to social problems, it is fundamental 

 to remember that man as an animal is tremen- 



