8o PRODUCTION OF NATIONALITY 



voice of England/' the " name to resound for ages." 

 The piece of Miltonoplasm, for so I may call the 

 fertilized egg-cell by which, on this Laputan theory, 

 Milton was determined, required the presence of a 

 peculiar environment for nine months before it could 

 be born as a healthy human child, the whole past 

 history of the English language and of contemporary 

 English " Kultur " to make it an English speaking 

 boy, the Hebrew cosmogony, the poets of Greece 

 and of Rome and of Italy, our own Shakespeare and 

 the multitudinous splendour of the Elizabethan age, 

 the struggle between Puritanism and the Church, 

 between King and Parliament, the rise and fall of 

 the Commonwealth, a vast turmoil of epic days, to 

 shape the poet's mind and to inform his music with 

 colour and passion, with stately harmonies and the 

 light of heaven and the depths of hell. "Potential- 

 ities and aptitudes! " Grant that they were fixed 

 at the moment of conception, and what further are 

 we ? The whole past history of sentient man, pre- 

 served and perfected from age to age in his traditions 

 and his religion, in comely speech and in the treasures 

 of literature were needed, to make the possible real. 

 I view the clamorous pretensions of the Mendelian 

 eugenists with a mixture of hope and fear. Of 

 hope, for among them are very able, patient and 

 devoted biologists. They are pressing nature close 

 with experiments, hot-foot on many processes that 

 were vague and mysterious even to Darwin. They 

 have given us, I hear, a rust-proof wheat, many 

 quaint flowers and a prescription for breeding streaky 

 bacon, and they will give us much more. But, on 

 their own showing, and Professor Bateson himself 



