394 THE EVOLUTION THEORY 



this can be of no importance in relation to the struggle for existence. 

 But this intensity of the power of vision has obviously not been 

 acquired for the investigation of the starry heavens, but was of 

 the greatest value in securing the existence of many of our animal 

 ancestors, and was not less important for our own. In the same 

 way our finely evolved musical ear might be regarded as a perfecting 

 of the hearing apparatus far beyond the degree necessary to existence, 

 but this is not really the case : our musical ear, too, has been inherited 

 from our animal ancestor.s, and to them, as to primitive Man, it 

 \\'as a necessity of existence. It was quite necessary for the animals 

 to distinguish the higher and lower notes of a long scale, sharply 

 and certainly, in order to be able to evade an approaching enemy, 

 or to recognize prey from afar. That we are able to make music 

 is, so to speak, only an unintentional accessory power of the hearing- 

 organs, which were originallj^ developed only for the preservation 

 of existence, just as the human hand did not become what it is 

 in order to 2^lay the piano, but to touch and seize, to make tools, 

 and so on. 



Mitjst this, then, he true aho of the human mind ? Can -it, too, 

 only be developed as far as its development is of advantage to Man's 

 power of survival 1 I believe that this is certainly the case in 

 a general way ; the intellectual powers which are the common 

 property of the human race will never rise beyond these limit.s, 

 liut this is not to say that certain individuals may not be more 

 highly endowed. The possibility of a higher development of certain 

 mental powers or of their combinations — whether it be intelligence, will, 

 feeling, inventive power, or a talent for mathematics, music or painting 

 — may be inferred with certainty- from our own principles ; for not 

 onl}^ may the variational tendencies of individual groups of deter- 

 minants in the germ-plasm be continued for a series of generations 

 without becoming injurious, that is to say, without being put a stop 

 to by personal selection, but sexual intermingling alwaj-s opens up the 

 possibility that some predominantly developed intellectual tendencies 

 {Anlagen) may combine in one way or another, and so give rise to 

 individuals of great mental superiority, in whatever direction. In 

 this way, it seems to me, the geniuses of humanitj' have arisen — 

 a Plato, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Beethoven. But they do not last ; 

 they do not transmit their greatness; if they leave descendants at all, 

 these never inherit the whole greatness of their father, and we can 

 easily understand this, since the greatness does not depend upon 

 a single character, but upon a particular combination of iiiany high 

 mental qualities [Anlagen). Geniuses, therefore, probably never raise 



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