35 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE MUSICAL SENSE IN ANIMALS AND MEN.* 



By AUGUST WEISMANN. 



THE author, having argued at length that the development of 

 the musical sense is not a result of sexual selection ; that it is 

 not a faculty essential to the preservation of the race ; and that, 

 as it exists naturally in individuals previous to being cultivated, 

 it is not a faculty that grows with the growth of the race — seeks 

 an explanation of its existence in regarding it as simply a by- 

 product of our organs of hearing. These organs, he goes on to 

 say, are necessary in the struggle for existence, and may therefore 

 have originated and been developed to a high degree in the pro- 

 cess of selection. No one can be made to believe that the hand 

 of man was formed with reference to playing the piano. It is 

 adapted to grasping and to delicate touch ; and, since these facul- 

 ties are of great use in the struggle for existence, there was noth- 

 ing in the way of making a finer fashioning of the hand already 

 present in animals, agreeable with that process. In this way it 

 has become finely fingered, delicate, and flexible as we know it, 

 and as we find it even in the lowest savages. We can do with this 

 hand a great many things that were not contemplated — if we may 

 be permitted the expression — in its structure ; among others, play 

 the piano, that instrument having been invented ; and a wild 

 African, if we drill him to it from childhood, can, under the con- 

 ditions of modern piano technics, learn it as well as a civilized 

 child. The same is the case, I believe, to a considerable degree, 

 in the artistic musical sense. That is, in a certain sense, a hand 

 with which we play on the soul, but a hand that was not origi- 

 nally designed for that purpose — that is, did not originate out of 

 the necessity of our discovering music, but out of entirely differ- 

 ent necessities. This assertion is in need of a fuller demonstration. 

 Our musical faculties consist of two parts : one, the organs of hear- 

 ing proper — the outer, middle, and inner ear, which translate the 

 different tones into nerve-movements ; and the second, of the brain 

 part, which converts these nerve - movements, when they have 

 passed through the auditory nerve, into tone-perceptions, and the 

 auditory center of the brain. 



The first part of this duality — the organ of hearing proper — is 

 not, so far as we know, much more highly developed in man than 

 in many animals ; and is not in other ways so constructed that we 

 can conclude that it contains any different capacity from that of 

 those animals for hearing music. The higher animals can also 

 enjoy music, as my house-cat shows, when she comes at the play- 



* From an article in the Deutsche Rundschau. 



