Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/32

26 sense, owe their origin biologically to recombinations of characters which have existed from time immemorial in separate races. No doubt the great men which arise in human societies from time to time may be explained in the same manner, so far as they are regarded as biological phenomena.

This possibility of producing what is virtually new by recombination must now be considered. Through the work done by various breeders, beginning with Mendel, we know much about the manner of such combinations, and how to get rid of undesirable units. Where the cases have been simple almost ideal success has been attained: and in complicated cases it has been possible to produce definite results by concentrating attention on special characters. Thus Bateson in his presidential address before the zoological section of the British Association in 1904, said:

We come then to the conclusion that in the case of man, as with domesticated animals and cultivated plants, it is possible to get rid of many undesirable qualities, to combine others which are desirable, and to maintain indefinitely that which has been once secured. Where there is bisexual inheritance we can not have strictly pure lines, to be sure, but it is possible to have lines which are pure within practical limits. That is to say, we may have a race of people none of whom have a certain hereditary taint, all of whom have a certain hereditary quality. Beyond this, we would not go, were it possible; for no one would wish to sacrifice the interesting diversity of human types which makes life chiefly worth while. In our national aspirations, we have recognized the ideal of a moderate unity of type; thus all Englishmen will agree that a true, full-blooded countryman of theirs should possess certain attributes, and will admit that those who fail in this are not strictly of the elect. All Frenchmen, typically, should have a certain vivacity not found among the Englishmen, and so on throughout the series.

Thus the ideal of a relatively pure race of high quality is by no means a new one; but what is new is the practical knowledge of how this may be brought about, with the certain expectation of much more