Essays Upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems. Weismann August
generations, that is, by the exercise of the brain in the same specific direction.
It appears to me that talent consists in a happy combination of exceptionally high gifts, developed in one special direction. At present, it is of course impossible to understand the physiological conditions which render the origin of such combinations possible, but it is very probable that the crossing of the mental dispositions of the parents plays a great part in it. This has been admirably and concisely expressed by Goethe in describing his own characteristics—
Vom Vater hab’ ich die Statur
Des Lebens ernstes Führen,
Vom Mütterchen die Frohnatur
Die Lust zum Fabuliren, etc.
The combination of talents frequently found in one individual, and the appearance of different remarkable talents in the various branches of one and the same family, indicate that talents are only special combinations of certain highly-developed mental dispositions which are found in every brain. Many painters have been admirable musicians, and we very frequently find both these talents developed to a slighter extent in a single individual. In the Feuerbach family we find a distinguished jurist, a remarkable philosopher, and a highly-talented artist; and among the Mendelssohns a philosopher as well as a musician.
The sudden and yet widespread appearance of a particular talent in correspondence with the general intellectual excitement of a certain epoch points in the same direction. How many poets arose in Germany during the period of sentiment which marked the close of the last century, and how completely all poetic gifts seem to have disappeared during the Thirty Years’ War. How numerous were the philosophers that appeared in the epoch which succeeded Kant; while all philosophic talent seemed to have deserted the German nation during the sway of the antagonistic ‘exact science,’ with its contempt for speculation.
Wherever academies are founded, there the Schwanthalers, Defreggers, and Lenbachs emerge from the masses which had shown no sign of artistic endowment through long periods of time53. At the present day there are many men of science who, had they lived at the time of Bürger, Uhland, or Schelling, would probably have been poets or philosophers. And the man of science also cannot dispense with that mental disposition directed in a certain course, which we call talent, although the specific part of it may not be so obvious: we may, indeed, go further, and maintain that the Physicist and the Chemist are characterized by a combination of mental dispositions which differ from those of the Botanist and the Zoologist. Nevertheless, a man is not born a physicist or a botanist, and in most cases chance alone determines whether his endowments are developed in either direction.
Lessing has asked whether Raphael would have been a less distinguished artist had he been born without hands: we might also enquire whether he might not have been as great a musician as he was painter if, instead of living during the historical high-water mark of painting, he had lived, under favourable personal influences, at the time of highly-developed and widespread musical genius. A great artist is always a great man, and if he finds the outlet for his talent closed on one side, he forces his way through on the other.
From all these examples I wish to show that, in my opinion, talents do not appear to depend upon the improvement of any special mental quality by continued practice, but they are the expression, and to a certain extent the bye-product, of the human mind, which is so highly developed in all directions.
But if any one asks whether this high mental development, acquired in the course of innumerable generations of men, is not dependent upon the hereditary effects of use, I would remind him that human intelligence in general is the chief means and the chief weapon which has served and still serves the human species in the struggle for existence54. Even in the present state of civilization—distorted as it is by numerous artificial encroachments and unnatural conditions—the degree of intelligence possessed by the individual chiefly decides between destruction and life; and in a natural state, or still better in a state of low civilization, this result is even more striking.
Here again, therefore, we encounter the effects of natural selection, and to this power we must attribute, at any rate, a great part of the phenomena we have been discussing, and it cannot be shown that—in addition to its operation—the transmission of characters acquired by practice plays any part in nature.
I only know of one class of changes in the organism which is with difficulty explained by the supposition of changes in the germ; these are the modifications which appear as the direct consequence of some alteration in the surroundings. But our knowledge on this subject is still very defective, and we do not know the facts with sufficient precision to enable us to pronounce a final verdict as to the cause of such changes: and for this reason, I do not propose to consider the subject in detail.
These changes—such, for example, as are produced by a strange climate—have been always looked at under the supposition that they are transmitted and intensified from generation to generation, and for this reason the observations are not always sufficiently precise. It is difficult to say whether the changed climate may not have first changed the germ, and if this were the case the accumulation of effects through the action of heredity would present no difficulty. For instance, it is well known that increased nourishment not only causes a plant to grow more luxuriantly, but it alters the plant in some distinct way, and it would be wonderful indeed if the seeds were not also larger and better furnished with nutritive material. If the increased nourishment be repeated in the next generation, a still further increase in the size of the seed, in the luxuriance of the plant, and in all other changes which ensue, is at any rate conceivable if it is not a necessity. But this would not be an instance of the transmission of acquired characters, but only the consequence of a direct influence upon the germ-cells, and of better nourishment during growth.
A similar interpretation explains the converse change. When horses of normal size are introduced into the Falkland Islands, the next generation is smaller in consequence of poor nourishment and the damp climate, and after a few generations they have deteriorated to a marked extent. In such a case we have only to assume that the climate which is unfavourable and the nutriment which is insufficient for horses, affect not only the animal as a whole, but also its germ-cells. This would result in the diminution in size of the germ-cells, the effects upon the offspring being still further intensified by the insufficient nourishment supplied during growth. But such results would not depend upon the transmission by the germ-cells of certain peculiarities due to the unfavourable climate, which only appear in the full-grown horse.
It must be admitted that there are cases, such as the climatic varieties of certain butterflies, which raise some difficulties against this explanation. I myself, some years ago, experimentally investigated one such case55, and even now I cannot explain the facts otherwise than by supposing the passive acquisition of characters produced by the direct influence of climate.
It must be remembered, however, that my experiments, which have been repeated upon several American species by H. W. Edwards, with results confirmatory of my own in all essential respects, were not undertaken with the object of investigating the question from this point of view alone. New experiments, under varying conditions, will be necessary to afford the true explanation of this aspect of the question; and I have already begun to undertake them.
Leaving on one side, for the moment, these doubtful, and insufficiently investigated cases, we may still maintain that the assumption that changes induced by external conditions in the organism as a whole, are communicated to the germ-cells after the manner indicated in Darwin’s hypothesis of pangenesis,—is wholly unnecessary for the explanation of these phenomena. Still we cannot exclude the possibility of such a transmission occasionally occurring, for, even if the greater part of the effects must be attributed to natural selection, there might be a smaller part in certain cases which depends on this exceptional factor.
A complete and satisfactory refutation of such an opinion cannot be brought forward at present: we can only point out that such an assumption introduces new and entirely obscure forces, and that innumerable cases exist in which we can certainly exclude all assistance from the transmission of acquired characters. In most cases of variation in colour we have
[The author refers to the Academy of Arts at Munich. S. S.]
Compare Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man.’
‘Studien zur Descendenztheorie, I. Ueber den Saison-Dimorphismus der Schmetterlinge.’ Leipzig, 1875. English edition translated and edited by Professor Meldola, ‘Studies in the Theory of Descent,’ Part I.