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Show 470 DARWINISM CHAl'. following a trail, all are fairly proficient, an.d .the diffe~en~cs of endowment do not probably exceed the h:r~nts. of van~t10n in animals above referred to. So, in animal mstmct or mtellicrence we find the same general level of development. Every w~·en ~akes a fairly good nest like its ~ellows; eve~y fox has an average amount of the sagacity of 1ts race; wh1l~ all the hicrher birds and mammals have the necessary affcctwns and in~tincts needful for the protection and bringing-up of their offspring. . ... But in those specially developed facult10s. of civihs.e<~ man which we have been considering, the case IS very different. They exist only in a small proportion of individ?-al~, .while the difference of capacity between these favoured md1v1duals and the averao·e of mankind is enormous. Taking first the mathematica.l f~culty, probably fewer than one in a hundred really possess it, the great bulk of the p.opulation ~aving no natura.l ability for the study, or fcelmg the slightest interest in it. 1 And if we attempt to measure the amount of variation in the faculty itself between a firstclass mathematician and the ordinany run of people who find any kind of calcubtion confusing and altogether de~oid of interest, it is probable that the former could not be estimated at less than a hundred times the latter, and perhaps a thousand times would more nearly measure the difference between them. The artistic faculty appears to agree pretty closely with the mathematical in its frequency. The boys and girls who, going beyond the mere conventional designs of children, ?ntw what they see, not what they know to be the shape of thmgs ; who naturally sketch in perspective, because it is thus they see objects; who see, and represent in their sketches, the li <>·ht and shade as well as the mere outlines of objects; a11d who can draw recognisable sketches of every one they know, nrc certainly very few compared with those who are totally incap- 1 This is the estimate furnished me by two mathematical masters in one of our great public schools of the proportion of boys who have any special taste or capacity for mathematical tndies. Many .more, of course,_ cau I ll· drilletl into a fair knowledge of elementary mathematics, but only tin ;; Slllall proportion possess the natural faculty which renders it po~siJ:>le for th em ever to rank high as mathematicians, to take any pleasure 1n It, or to do any original mathematical work. XV DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 471 able o~ anything of the kind. From some inquiries I have made m schools, and from my own observation, I believe that tho c who are endowed with this natural artistic talent do not exc~ed, even if they come up to, one per cent of the whole populatwn. The variations in the amount of artistic faculty arc certainly very great, even if we do not take the extremes. The aradations of power between the ordinary man or woman "who do?s not ?raw," an:l w.hosc attempts at representing any obJect, ammate or mannnate, -,vould be laughable, and the average ~ood artist who, with a few bold strokes, can produce a rocogrusable ~nd even effective sketch of a land. capo, a street, or an a~1rnal, are very numerous; and we can hardly mea ·ure the difference between them at less than fifty or a hundred fold. The musical faculty is undoubtedly, in its lower forms, less m~common than either of the preceding, hut it still differs essentially from the necessary or useful faculties in that it is almost entirely wanting in one-half even of civilised men. For every person who draws, as it were instinctively, there are probably five or ten who sing or play without havino· been taught and from mere innate love and perception of 1~1elody and harmony.1 On the other hand, there arc probably about as many who seem absolutely deficient in musical perception, who take little pleasure in it, who cannot perceive eli cords or remember tunes, and who could not learn to ing or play with any amount of study. The gradations, too, arc here <Jnitc ~ts great as in mathematics or pictorial art, and tho special faculty of the great musical composer must be reckoned many hundreds or perhap thousands of times gre<ttor than that of the ordinary " unmusical " per on above referred to. It a.ppoars then, that, both on account of the limited number of persons gifted with tho mathoma.tical, the artistic, or the musical faculty, as well as from tho enormous variations in its development, the. c montn.l powers difl'cr widely from those which arc essential to man, and arc, for the mo~t part, common to him and the lower animals; a11d that th y could 1 I am informetl, however, by a lllllsic IWLRter in a large school that only about one per cent l1ave real or de ' it led lllusical talent, t.:orresponding t.:uriously with the estimate of tlJe lllathematician~. |
