HEREDITY OF SPECIFIC TALENTS 61 



in question may be completely eliminated, or reduced to a 

 minority, as a result of this reduction of the ids. This danger 

 is excluded in cases where the determinants of the musical factor 

 are in very considerable numbers, as in the case of a genius. 

 Amphimixis, again, involves a risk, since the highly specialised 

 determinants of the musical faculty may be placed in a minority 

 by a greater mass of other determinants imported in the act of 

 fertilisation. It is to be remarked, however, in the particular 

 case of this special faculty or talent for music that those persons 

 who possess it generally ally themselves with others who share 

 their taste and faculty ; so that the chance of an elimination, or 

 rather of a " minorisation," of the determinants of the musical 

 faculty, as a consequence of amphimixis, is not here so frequent 

 as in the case of other specific faculties where less importance 

 is attached to the choice of a partner. 



If there is no " minorisation " of the determinants of a par- 

 ticular talent through amphimixis or through the reduction of 

 the ids, the specific talent in question may be evolved to any 

 possible height — at least, theoretically. Practically, a limit is 

 set to the ascendant variation of every specific talent beyond a 

 certain height, and the reason for this limitation is not difficult 

 to discover. Where, through judicious combination of partners, 

 the determinants of a specific talent have attained a degree the 

 concrete expression of which is a symphony of Beethoven or an 

 opera of Wagner, it is practically impossible for this specific 

 talent to attain the same height in the progeny of a Beethoven 

 or a Wagner. The reason is to be found in the law of the calcu- 

 lation of probabilities. Briefly, we may here say that, in order 

 that a Beethoven may reproduce a second Beethoven, or a 

 Beethoven junior greater than the senior, it would be necessary 

 that the second party to that reproduction — namely, the mother 

 — should possess determinants of the musical faculty equal to 

 those of the father. In the first place, the chance that a second 

 person could be found possessing the same potentiality of deter- 



