GERMINAL SELECTION 149 



their case than it does in ours. Tlie musical sense may be compared 

 to the hand, which was developed even among the apes, but which 

 civilized Man in modern times no longer uses merely to perform its 

 original function, grasping, but also for many other purposes, such as 

 writing and playing the piano. And just as the hand did not 

 originate thi-ough the necessities of the piano, neither did the 

 extremely delicate sense of hearing of the higher animals develop 

 for the sake of music, but rather that they might recognize their 

 enemies, friends, and prey, in darkness and mist, in the forest, on 

 the heath, and at great distances. 



The case is probably the same with the rest of the special 

 psychical endowments or talents. I do not of course maintain that 

 they, like the musical sense, did not at some time play a role in the 

 struggle for existence and survival, and therefore could not in- 

 crease, but the increase was certainly not continuous, but much 

 interrupted, so that it would extend only to small groups of 

 descendants, and therefore could only contribute very slowly to the 

 elevation of the psychic capacities of a whole people. But in certain 

 individuals and families such augmentations would certainly take place 

 through germinal selection, and it seems to me probable that these 

 would never be wholly lost again, even if they appeared to be so, 

 but would be handed on, in id-minorities, through the chain of 

 generations, and would slightly raise the average of the talent in 

 question, and might even, under favourable circumstances, combine 

 in the development of a genius. We know how strongly hereditary 

 such specific talents are ; let us suppose that the determinants of, say, 

 the musical sense have, by the intra-germinal chances of nutrition, 

 been started on a path of ascending variation; they will continue 

 in this path until a halt is called from some quarter or other. This 

 can only happen if, in the reducing division, or in amphimixis, the 

 highly developed musical determinants are wholly or partly eliminated, 

 or are reduced to a minority. As long as this does not happen 

 the ascending variation will go on, arid then we may have the birth 

 of a Mozart or of a Beethoven. Personal selection will not interfere 

 either in a positive or a negative sense, since high development of the 

 musical sense has no effect either in advancing or retarding the 

 struggle for existence ; the increase will therefore go on until the 

 large majority of highly developed musical determinants, which we 

 must assume in the case of a musical genius, is reduced, or even 

 transformed into a minority, through unfavourable reducing divisions 

 of the germ-cells, and by association with the germ-cells of less. 

 musical mates. 



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