J. B. S. HALDANE 
developed to serve one function for a different one, for example 
a gill arch for grasping food, a gill slit for hearing, a walking 
leg for manipulation or flight, and a vestigial wing as a gyrostat. 
We have to ask whether we can hope for such changes of func- 
tion in man. I suggest that two important elements of human 
culture, namely music and religion, are comparable to the 
sea-lion’s capacity for balancing billiard balls. Rhythmical 
sound has a social function in co-ordinating muscular activities. 
It is not clear to me that the production or perception of melody 
or harmony has such a function. I happen to be tone-deaf. 
Similarly people can get on quite well without religion, and in 
nominally religious communities many people do so. Religion, 
like music, appeals strongly to a minority only, and leads to 
results of great cultural value in a few of them. On the other 
hand, the religious and musical minorities can sometimes be 
intolerant of the remainder. 
Kinsey and his colleagues brought to light the immense range 
of variation of sexual activity not only within a single culture, 
but a small subsection of it (such as moderately well-to-do 
practising protestant Americans of European descent with uni- 
versity education). It might have been expected that this 
activity, so necessary for the survival of a species, would have 
been standardized by evolutionary processes, at least to the 
extent that eating and breathing have been, apart from the 
further efforts of human moralists. But matrimonial fertility 
seems to be found both among persons whose sexual activity 
is restricted to once weekly or less, and those for whom Catullus’ 
request to Ipsithilla for ‘‘ Novem continuas fututiones’’ would be a 
counsel of moderation. We may expect to find comparable 
variation in other fields on the borderline of physiology and 
psychology, and must beware of accepting current criteria of 
normality. 
After these prolegomena, we must consider some alternative 
possibilities. 
(1) Man has no future. 
(2) A nuclear war will do mankind grave biological damage, 
and civilization will also have to be rebuilt from barbarism. 
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