Taboo and Genetics | Page 5

are in a sense "immortal" or deathless. In a
one-celled individual, there is no distinction between germinal and bodily functions. In
the more complicated organisms, however, there are innumerable kinds of cells, a few
(the germ cells) specialized for reproduction, the others forming the body which eats,
moves, sees, feels, and in the case of man, thinks. But the germ-cells or germplasm
continue to be immortal or deathless in the same sense as in the simplest organisms. The
body, in a historical sense, grew up around the germ-cells, taking over functions a little at
a time, until in the higher animals nutrition and other activities and a large part even of
the reproductive process itself is carried on by body-cells.
When we think of a man or woman, we think of an individual only one of whose
innumerable activities--reproduction--is carried on by germ-cells, and this one only at the
very beginning of the life of a new individual. Human societies, needless to remark, are
not organized by germplasms, but by brains and hands--composed of body cells. If these
brains and hands--if human bodies--did not wear out or become destroyed, we should not
need to trouble ourselves so much about the germplasm, whose sole function in human
society is to replace them.
Since the individual human bodies and minds which seek after the things to which we
mortals attach value--moral worth, esthetic and other pleasure, achievement and the
like--do have to be replaced every few years, the germplasms from which new
individuals must come have always been and always will be of fundamental importance.
It is always the product of the germplasm which concerns us, and we are interested in the
germ-cells themselves only in relation to their capacity to produce individuals of value to
society.
So let us not go erring about in the philosophical ether, imagining that because the
amoeba may not be specialized for anything over and above nutrition and reproduction
that these are necessarily the "main business" or "chief ends" of human societies. Better
say that although we have become developed and specialized for a million other activities
we are still bound by those fundamental necessities. As to "Nature's purposes" about
which the older sex literature has had so much to say, the idea is essentially religious
rather than scientific. If such "purposes" indeed exist in the universe, man evidently does
not feel particularly bound by them. We do not hesitate to put a cornfield where "Nature"
had a forest, or to replace a barren hillside by the sea with a city.
Necessities and possibilities, not "purposes" in nature, claim our attention--reproduction
being one of those embarrassing necessities, viewed through the eyes of man, the one
evaluating animal in the world. Thus in reasoning from biology to social problems, it is
fundamental to remember that man as an animal is tremendously differentiated in
functions, and that most of the activities we look upon as distinctively human depend
upon the body rather than the germ-cells.

It follows that biology is the foundation rather than the house, if we may use so crude a
figure. The solidity of the foundation is very important, but it does not dictate the details
as to how the superstructure shall be arranged.
Civilization would not be civilization if we had to spend most of our time thinking about
the biological basis. If we wish to think of "Nature's" proscriptions or plans as controlling
animal life, the anthropomorphism is substantially harmless. But man keeps out of the
way of most of such proscriptions, has plans of his own, and has acquired considerable
skill in varying his projects without running foul of such biological prohibitions.
It is time to abandon the notion that biology prescribes in detail how we shall run society.
True, this foundation has never received a surplus of intelligent consideration. Sometimes
human societies have built so foolishly upon it that the result has been collapse.
Somebody is always digging around it in quest of evidence of some vanished idyllic state
of things which, having had and discarded, we should return to. This little excursion into
biology is made in the full consciousness that social mandates are not to be found there.
Human projects are the primary material of social science. It is indispensable to check
these against biological fact, in order to ascertain which are feasible and which are not.
The biological basis may help in explaining old social structures or in planning new ones;
but much wild social theory has been born of a failure to appreciate the limitations of
such material.
All the so-called higher animals, mammals and others, are divided into two sexes, male
and female. Besides the differentiation of germ-cells there are rather obvious differences
in the bodies of the two sexes. In common with many other mammals, the