OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS 227 



men possessing it in a higher degree; it cannot be 

 granted that spontaneous variation accounts for the 

 frequent production, by such highly endowed men, 

 of men still more highly endowed. On the average, 

 the children of marriages with others not similarly 

 endowed, will be less distinguished rather than more 

 distinguished. The most that can be expected is that 

 this unusual amount of faculty shall reappear in the 

 next generation undiminished. How then shall we 

 explain cases like those of Bach, Mozart, and Bee- 

 thoven, all of them sons of men having unusual musi- 

 cal powers who were constantly exercising those 

 powers and who greatty excelled their fathers in their 

 musical powers?" " 



Refuting Spencer on this special point, Weismann 

 recognises that natural selection could not develop 

 musical aptitudes, but he denies the progressive evolu- 

 tion of musical genius, thereby avoiding to admit that 

 this is a case of heredity of acquired characters. 



He admits that musical aptitudes are as developed 

 in the best gifted savages as in our modern composers, 

 the only difference being that musical art has pro- 

 gressed more in civilised peoples and that certain indi- 

 viduals possess a keener sensitiveness. 



To the facts advanced in favour of the Lamarck- 

 ian thesis, Weismann and his followers oppose neither 

 a different interpretation, nor criticisms upon the ob- 



11 Principles of Biology, Vol. I, pp. 311-312. 



