Heredity, Variation and Genius 4 



1 



remembering, resume a long forgotten primal 

 function ? 



However that be, it is plain that in the vast 

 and varied procession of organic Nature a separate 

 reserve of reproductive capacity was found neces- 

 sary to continue progress, specialization of parts 

 tending to dissociation and consequent sterility 

 of general function in tissues as in mortals. 

 Could there be any thing more exactly and 

 intelligently specialized for its lifework than 

 a bee or anything less intelligent outside its 

 specialty ? Men are likewise more or less intel- 

 ligently specialized machines, and for the most 

 part little intelligent outside their mental auto- 

 matisms ; a new and pregnant notion springing 

 up outside the regular grooves of thought being 

 a sort of explosive shock which occasions violent 

 reactions of antipathy, contempt and angry re- 

 sistance, to be succeeded haply in due time by 

 quieter reactions of assimilation and adaptation. 



Nothing is more certain than that portions or 

 sections of the mental organization (the so-called 

 one and indivisible mind) as well as of the motor 

 organization do get set in fixed forms of auto- 

 matic activity, and that over-specialization of en- 

 quiry and thought leads to intellectual narrowness 

 and consequent absence of deep insight and wide 

 outlook ; for which reason in the mental develop- 

 ment of the human race there is always need of 

 the man of large genius, not over-specialized, to 

 absorb, collate, co-ordinate and fructify the results 



