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 rôle in the struggle for existence and survival, and therefore could not increase, 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, and 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.