82 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



paign, the Drama, the Statue, the Church, even though 

 all admittedly artificial, are yet natural, and their 

 artificiality must acknowledge the overlordship of their 

 naturalness. 



To objectify as much as possible the apparently 

 infinite and infinitely varied productivity of nature, even 

 within the limits of the human species, send your 

 thoughts hastily to just a few representatives of the 

 world's supremely great men. In the field of war and 

 conquest take Napoleon and Alexander; in that of 

 government think of Lincoln and Hideyoshi; in litera- 

 ture, of Goethe and Shakespeare; in science and dis- 

 covery, of Newton and Columbus; in delineative art, 

 of Rembrandt and Michelangelo. And on the dark 

 side think of Cesare Borgia and Nero. I protest 

 against the strong tendency of recent biology to be- 

 come so absorbed with "analyzing the germ plasm" as 

 to become obsessed with a doctrine that makes it neces- 

 sary either to "explain" these mighty figures in terms 

 of hereditary units of some sort, or pronounce them 

 mere accidents, or "by-products of natural selection" 

 or "epiphenomena," so not falling within the pale of 

 scientific interest and treatment ! 



With the greatest deliberation I express the opinion 

 that the history of science from its dawn until now 

 is nowhere disfigured by a more monstrous folly than 

 that of the germ-plasm theory in its extreme form, 

 for it is largely responsible for the theory held by 

 much of recent biology that the higher manifestations 



