ARGUMENTATIVES

Southland Times, Issue 18945, 19 May 1923, Page 9 (Supplement)

ARGUMENTATIVES

HEREDITY AND GENIUS. 11. (By “Inquisitor”). From the strictly evolutionary standpoint the acceptance of the Weisiman theory of germinal continuity is the matter of some provisional difficulty. It might be asked as Spencer did, how was evolution possible at all unless the truth could be established of the proposition that modifications in the parent could not be transmitted into the next generation. On such a supposition many of the inherent difficulties of the theory of evolution which is in vogue to-day would certainly disappear, but those who have only served a short apprenticeship in delving into the manifold mysteries of life would have discovered very early in their efforts that Nature is a little deeper than the sciolist is prepared to give her credit for. On the transmission theory evolution from higher to lower forms simply depended U]>on the accumulation of acquired characters or structural modifications. The giraffe’s elongated neck could be explained on the grounds that his antecedents had been forced to stretch their necks in order to reach the succulent foliage of the trees on which they lived, it being presumed for some reason or other that the leaves of the trees suddenly decided to grow higher. Similarly, the kiwi’s loss of its wings and the same disabilities which the moa suffered under in the later stages of his career could be plausibly explained on the same grounds. The Darwinian explanation of the giraffe’s prodigious neck is to the effect that the longer necked animals were able to reach more leaves than their shorter necked fellows and in consequence, in the ruthless war for survival, a struggle which would be emphasised during times of scarcity, they would survive. The variation from long to short necks is explained as entirely due to germinal modifications, the environment playing a secondary and not the primary role in the drama that the Lamarckians would ascribe to it. The Darwinian explanation given for the moa’s and kiwi’s loss of the power of flight is less convincing. It is suggested that like the ostrich these birds took to running in preference to flying and consequently the individuals which utilised their food energies in leg building in preference to wing development tendered to survive.

All this is by way of introduction to the announcement that Dr. Kammerer had “been able to make genius hereditary, just as acquired characteristics in animals were transmitted to succeeding generations.” From the foregoing which is merely a casual summary of the orthodox biological view of the matter, Dr. Kammerer has apparently a very slender foundation for his extraordinary claims. The doctor would have been well advised to have demonstrated the falsity of the Darwinian position before he ventured into “demonstrating” his ability to transmit “genius.” If he ever essayed to tell us what genius was his whole quest might seem less egregious than it does, but even then it would be the task of a supreme genius himself to undertake with any hope of success. Nineteenth Century investigators who certainly lacked nothing in daring practically relegated genius to the insane aslylum, thanks chiefly to the great Italian alienist, Lombroso, and the powerful polemics of Max Naudau. To the biological school. “The bright consummate flower” of genius w’as nothing more than an accidental variation of the organism to be explained in the same way as those other sudden variations which are scientifically known as “sports.” On such a theory the appearance of a Shakespeare, a Newton or a Shelley has no more significance than the birth of the Siamese twins or the manifestation of any other abnormality. This conception is still widely accepted and to some extent this argument provides the bulwark against which the anti-eugenist marshals his forces. Eugenics is largely concerned with the elimination of those- below the normal type, but it has been stressed that many of. the supreme geniuses of all time would have suffered extinction from birth if this formula had been in operation. It is a striking fact that many individuals who would have failed to pass the most elementary medical test for physical fitness have provided the world with stores of artistic and spiritual treasures for all time. It seems to be true as Schiller has strikingly said that “the lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life.” If Dr. Kammerer is seeking to perpetuate genius along the lines of artificial selection, and it seems difficult to imagine an alternative, it is obvous that he must have probed far deeper into the mystery of heredity than it ever seemed possible could be done notwithstanding all the work of the past fifty years. Whilst Dr Kammerer, who apparently has the backing of a number of reputable scientists, may not succeed in substantiating his claim to transmit genius from father to son on Mendelian or any other principles, the study of genius itself opens up a field which may throw a lurid light on some of the more baffling of psychological problems. This has already been done to a small extent by the late F. V/. H. Myers in "Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, ’ and also by Freud and Havelock Eilis, whilst the Lombroso School, who were really the pioneers on the treatment of genius from a strictly scientific standpoint, at least did good service in the crea•tion of a brand new problem where one never existed before. One of the most striking of the contributions to the subject was that of F. W. H. Myers, one of the most-profound thinkers of the time, who strongly opposed the contentions of Lombroso and his associates that men of genius were merely eccentrics or degenerates. Touching on the origin of genius he wrote:

“I cannot accept the ordinary explanation that it is a mere sport ’ or mental byproduct, occurring as physical ’ sports ’ do in the course of evolution. I hold that in the protoplasm or the primary basis of all organic life there must have been an inherent adaptability to the manifestation of all faculties which organic life has in fact manifested. I hold, of course, that * sports ’ or variations occur, which at present are unpredictable, and which reveal in occasional offspring faculties which their parents showed no signs of possessing. But I differ from those who hold that the faculty itself thus manifested is now for the first time initiated in that stock by some change combination of hereditary elements.” Myers argued that the “sport” did not call a new faculty into being, but merely raised an existing faculty above the threshold of supraliminal consciousness. Myers, of course, took the idealistic as opposed to the materialistic view, and in addition his work is somewhat vitiated by a crude “soul” theory which he well knew could not be harmonised with the known psychological facts of his time.