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376
Hereditary Genius
human control. The power of the director of an establishment for
breeding fish is of exactly the same quality as that of a cook in her
kitchen. Both director and cook require certain elements to work
upon; but, having got them, they can create a fish or a dinner, as the
case may be, according to a predetermined pattern.
Now, all generation is physiologically the same,¹ and therefore the
reflections raised by what has been stated of fish are equally
applicable to the life of man. The entire human race, or any one of its
varieties, may indefinitely increase its numbers by a system of early
marriages, or it may wholly annihilate itself by the observance of
celibacy; it may also introduce new human forms by means of the
intermarriage of varieties and of a change in the conditions of life. It
follows that the human race has a large control over its future forms
of activity,—far more than any individual has over his own, since the
freedom of individuals is narrowly restricted by the cost, in energy, of
exercising their wills. Their state may be compared to that of cattle in
an open pasture, each tethered closely to a peg by an elastic cord.
These can graze in any direction, for short distances, with little effort,
because the cord stretches easily at first; but the further they range,
the more powerfully does its elastic force pull backwards against
them. The extreme limit of their several ranges must lie at that
distance from the peg where the maximum supply of nervous force
which the chemical machinery of their bodies can evolve, is only just
equivalent to the outflow required to resist the strain of the cord.
Now, the freedom of humankind, considered as a whole, is far
greater than this; for it can gradually modify its own nature, or, to
keep to the previous metaphor, it can cause the pegs themselves to
be continually shifted. It can advance them
1
The Address of the President of the Royal Society, 1867, in presenting the Copley
medal to Von Baer.
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