The Factors of Organic Evolution. Spencer Herbert

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СКАЧАТЬ and mental attributes. Now it is unquestionably true that, other things equal, each of these attributes, giving its possessor an extra chance of life, is likely to be transmitted to posterity. But there seems no reason to suppose that it will be increased in subsequent generations by natural selection. That it may be thus increased, the individuals not possessing more than average endowments of it, must be more frequently killed off than individuals highly endowed with it; and this can happen only when the attribute is one of greater importance, for the time being, than most of the other attributes. If those members of the species which have but ordinary shares of it, nevertheless survive by virtue of other superiorities which they severally possess; then it is not easy to see how this particular attribute can be developed by natural selection in subsequent generations. The probability seems rather to be, that by gamogenesis, this extra endowment will, on the average, be diminished in posterity – just serving in the long run to compensate the deficient endowments of other individuals, whose special powers lie in other directions; and so to keep up the normal structure of the species. The working out of the process is here somewhat difficult to follow; but it appears to me that as fast as the number of bodily and mental faculties increases, and as fast as the maintenance of life comes to depend less on the amount of any one, and more on the combined action of all; so fast does the production of specialities of character by natural selection alone, become difficult. Particularly does this seem to be so with a species so multitudinous in its powers as mankind; and above all does it seem to be so with such of the human powers as have but minor shares in aiding the struggle for life – the æsthetic faculties, for example.”

      Dwelling for a moment on this last illustration of the class of difficulties described, let us ask how we are to interpret the development of the musical faculty. I will not enlarge on the family antecedents of the great composers. I will merely suggest the inquiry whether the greater powers possessed by Beethoven and Mozart, by Weber and Rossini, than by their fathers, were not due in larger measure to the inherited effects of daily exercise of the musical faculty by their fathers, than to inheritance, with increase, of spontaneous variations; and whether the diffused musical powers of the Bach clan, culminating in those of Johann Sebastian, did not result in part from constant practice; but I will raise the more general question – How came there that endowment of musical faculty which characterizes modern Europeans at large, as compared with their remote ancestors. The monotonous chants of low savages cannot be said to show any melodic inspiration; and it is not evident that an individual savage who had a little more musical perception than the rest, would derive any such advantage in the maintenance of life as would secure the spread of his superiority by inheritance of the variation. And then what are we to say of harmony? We cannot suppose that the appreciation of this, which is relatively modern, can have arisen by descent from the men in whom successive variations increased the appreciation of it – the composers and musical performers; for on the whole, these have been men whose worldly prosperity was not such as enabled them to rear many children inheriting their special traits. Even if we count the illegitimate ones, the survivors of these added to the survivors of the legitimate ones, can hardly be held to have yielded more than average numbers of descendants; and those who inherited their special traits have not often been thereby so aided in the struggle for existence as to further the spread of such traits. Rather the tendency seems to have been the reverse.

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      It is probable that this shortening has resulted not directly but indirectly, from the selection of individuals which were noted for tenacity of hold; for the bull-dog's peculiarity in this respect seems due to relative shortness of the upper jaw, giving the underhung structure which, involving retreat of the nostrils, enables the dog to continue brea

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It is probable that this shortening has resulted not directly but indirectly, from the selection of individuals which were noted for tenacity of hold; for the bull-dog's peculiarity in this respect seems due to relative shortness of the upper jaw, giving the underhung structure which, involving retreat of the nostrils, enables the dog to continue breathing while holding.

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