The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)Spencer, Herbert
Science
The Principles of Biology, Volume 1 (of 2)
Spencer, Herbert
Biology
transmitted an increasing musical sensibility. Confirmation of this view
may be drawn from individual cases. Grant that among a people endowed with
musical faculty to a certain degree, spontaneous variation will
occasionally produce men possessing it in a higher degree; it cannot be
granted that spontaneous variation accounts for the frequent production, by
such highly-endowed men, of men still more highly endowed. On the average,
the children of marriages with others not similarly endowed, will be less
distinguished rather than more distinguished. The most that can be expected
is that this unusual amount of faculty shall re-appear in the next
generation undiminished. How then shall we explain cases like those of
Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, all of them sons of men having unusual musical
powers who were constantly exercising those powers, and who greatly
excelled their fathers in their musical powers? What shall we say to the
facts that Haydn was the son of an organist, that Hummel was born to a
music master, and that Weber's father was a distinguished violinist? The
occurrence of so many cases in one nation within a short period of time,
cannot rationally be ascribed to the coincidence of "spontaneous
variations." It can be ascribed to nothing but inherited developments of
structure caused by augmentations of function.
But the clearest proof that structural alterations caused by alterations of
function are inherited, occurs when the alterations are morbid. I had
originally named in this place the results of M. Brown-Sequard's
experiments on guinea-pigs, showing that those which had been artificially
made epileptic had offspring which were epileptic; and I name them again
though his inference is by many rejected. For, as exemplified a few pages
back, strong evidence is often disregarded for trivial reasons by those who
dislike the conclusion drawn. Just naming this evidence and its possible
invalidity, let me pass to some results of experiences recently set forth
by Dr. Savage, President of the Neurological Society. In an essay on
"Heredity and Neurosis" published in _Brain_, Parts LXXVII, LXXVIII, 1897,
he says:--"We recognise the transmission of a tendency to develop gout, and
we recognise that the disease produced by the individual himself differs
little from that which may have been inherited." [That is, acquired gout
may be transmitted as constitutional gout.] "I have seen several patients
whose history I have been able to examine carefully, in whom mental tricks
have been transmitted from one generation to another." In the "musical
prodigies" descending from musical parents, "there seemed to be a
transmission of a greatly increased aptitude or tendency which is all one
is contending for." "Though there is, in my opinion, power to transmit
acquired peculiarities, yet the tendency is to transmit a predisposition."
(pp. 19-21.) And an authority on nervous diseases who is second to
none--Dr. Hughlings Jackson--takes the same view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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