PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 33 
even the faculty of artistic enjoyment, not to speak of higher powers 
of appreciation, is not attained without variation from the common 
type. I am speaking, of course, of the non-Semitic races of modern 
Europe, among whom the power whether of making or enjoying works 
of art is confined to an insignificant number of individuals. Apprecia- 
tion can in some degree be simulated, but in our population there is 
no widespread physiological appetite for such things. When detached 
from the centres where they are made by others most of us pass our 
time in great contentment, making nothing that is beautiful, and quite 
unconscious of any deprivation. Musical taste is the most notable 
exception, for in certain races—for example, the Welsh and some 
of the Germans—it is almost universal. Otherwise artistic faculty is 
still sporadic in its occurrence. The cost of music well illustrates the 
application of genetic analysis to human faculty. No one disputes 
that musical ability is congenital. In its fuller manifestation it 
demands sense of rhythm, ear, and special nervous,and muscular 
powers. Hach of these is separable and doubtless genetically distinct. 
Hach is the consequence of a special departure from the common type. 
Teaching and external influences are powerless to evoke these faculties, 
though their development may be assisted. The only conceivable 
way in which the people of England, for example, could become a 
musical nation would be by the gradual rise in the proportional numbers 
of a musical strain or strains until_the present type became so rare 
as to be negligible. It by no means follows that in any other respect 
the resulting population would be distinguishable from the present one. 
Difficulties of this kind beset the efforts of anthropologists to trace 
racial origins. It must continually be remembered that most characters 
are independently transmitted and capable of such recombination. In 
the light of Mendelian knowledge the discussion whether a race is pure 
or mixed loses almost all significance. A race is pure if it breeds pure 
and not otherwise. Historically we may know that a race like our 
Own was, as a matter of fact, of mixed origin. But a character may 
have been introduced by a single individual, though subsequently it 
becomes common to the race. This is merely a variant on the familiar 
paradox that in the course of time if registration is accurate we shall 
all have the same surname. In the case of music, for instance, the 
gift, originally perhaps from a Welsh source, might permeate the 
nation, and the question would then arise whether the nation, so 
changed, was the English nation or not. 
Such a problem is raised in a striking form by the population of 
modern Greece, and especially of Athens. The racial characteristics 
of the Athenian of the fifth century B.c. are vividly described by 
_ Galton in ‘ Hereditary Genius.’ The fact that in that period a 
population, numbering many thousands, should have existed, capable 
1914. D 
