You cannot discern his 'points' by simple
inspection. You cannot see _a priori_ why a Hanoverian bandsman and his
heavy, ignorant, uncultured wife, should conspire to produce a Sir
William Herschel. If you tried to improve the breed artificially, either
by choice from outside, or by the creation of an independent moral
sentiment, irrespective of that instinctive preference which we call
Falling in Love, I believe that so far from improving man, you would
only do one of two things--either spoil his constitution, or produce a
tame stereotyped pattern of amiable imbecility. You would crush out all
initiative, all spontaneity, all diversity, all originality; you would
get an animated moral code instead of living men and women.
Look at the analogy of domestic animals. That is the analogy to which
breeding reformers always point with special pride: but what does it
really teach us? That you can't improve the efficiency of animals in any
one point to any high degree, without upsetting the general balance of
their constitution. The race-horse can run a mile on a particular day at
a particular place, bar accidents, with wonderful speed: but that is
about all he is good for. His health as a whole is so surprisingly
feeble that he has to be treated with as much care as a delicate exotic.
'In regard to animals and plants,' says Sir George Campbell, 'we have
very largely mastered the principles of heredity and culture, and the
modes by which good qualities may be maximised, bad qualities
minimised.
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