60 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



matical, metaphysical, oratorical, and other talents. Just as 

 little as the " man in the street " could compose the Ninth 

 Symphony of Beethoven, or exhibit the mathematical genius 

 of a Herschell, a Curnot, or a Poincare, just as Httle could " any 

 doctor of philosophy " think out the system of Immanuel Kant, 

 or " any politician " display the oratorical gifts of a Demos- 

 thenes or a CSicero. And how are we to explain this extra- 

 ordinary development of specific talents, so diverse in their 

 nature, if not by the hypothesis of a heterogeneous germ-plasm, 

 composed of well-defined and sharply difierentiated elements ? 

 How can we explain that one genius, such as Charles Darwin, 

 should possess an extraordinarily developed faculty for pro- 

 longed and detailed biological research; while another genius, 

 such as Richard Wagner, should possess a correspondingly 

 developed faculty for such totally different achievements ? 

 Obviously, the psychical organisation of the former possessed a 

 solid majority of determinants of one specific talent, and the 

 psychical organisation of the latter a solid majority of determi- 

 nants of another specific talent. 



The germ-plasm theory also explains how the development of 

 a specific talent or faculty may attain the colossal proportions 

 which the musical talent attained in the case of Bach and 

 Beethoven. Supposing that a progressive variation of the 

 specific determinants of the musical talent sets in as the result 

 of perturbation in the intragerminal nutrition, such a variation 

 can theoretically be evolved to any possible height, seeing that 

 a greater or lesser development of the musical talent is not a 

 matter of biological importance either for the individual or for 

 the species. The only limitations to this ascendant variation 

 of the musical talent are those which amphimixis or the reduc- 

 tion of the ids during maturation may impose. The reduction 

 of the ids by half involves a risk if the musical faculty be but 

 slightly or, at all events, not sufficiently developed ; for there 

 is here evidently a chance that the determinants_^of^the faculty 



