35 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



organs did not reach their present high development through 



practice in music. 



Among the objections that may be brought up against this 

 theory, the most real is that founded on the existence of persons 

 without musical sense ; who can hear ordinary sounds and intona- 

 tions as well as musically gifted persons, but who can not define 

 musical intervals, can not take up a melody and repeat it, and can 

 not analyze harmonies. If their organs of hearing are as well de- 

 veloped as those of musicians, that would seem to be evidence that 

 the musical sense is something else than ordinary hearing, and 

 supplementary to it. But it has not been demonstrated that the 

 hearing of unmusical persons is as well developed as that of mu- 

 sicians, and I regard it as highly improbable. Although we have 

 no accurate data on the subject, the facts we have do not sus- 

 tain the proposition. The idea of unmusicality is a relative one. 

 Mozart had so wonderful a recollection of tone-pitches that he 

 could detect a difference of a quarter of a tone between a violin 

 he was playing and one which he had played on two days before. 

 Other men, whom we regard as men of high musical talent, have 

 only the weakest, or no memory at all, for absolute tone-pitches. 

 They can not tell whether a piece is played in A, C, or F, but are 

 satisfied if the tone-intervals within the piece are properly repre- 

 sented. Defects of this kind are corollaries of want of practice, 

 and result to a large extent from the considerable part which the 

 piano fills in musical teaching. The sense of players on the violin 

 — an instrument on which minute intervals of tone can be pro- 

 duced — is much clearer and more delicate than that of players on 

 the piano. The various degrees of defect in musical sense seem 

 to me to depend on a more or less imperfect structure of the or- 

 gans of hearing. Defects and aberrations appear in all parts of 

 the body, and must be particularly apt to overtake an organ which, 

 like the ear of man, is now no longer of the importance for main- 

 taining the species which it must have been several thousand 

 years ago when man was still in a state of nature. Or there may be 

 defects in the brain-centers that receive the nervous impressions, 

 or in the connections between the brain and nerves. Light is cast 

 upon these instances through the accounts of cases of aphasia and 

 musical impotency, in which, through injury to a small spot in 

 the brain, the faculty of appreciating or producing music is partly 

 or wholly removed, usually in connection with disorders of speech. 

 Besides the older observations of Kussmaul, Kast, Knoblauch, and 

 Oppenheim have made interesting contributions on this difficult 

 and complicated subject. 



Have we a right to suppose that the musical gifts of the primi- 

 tive man were the same as we have to-day ? Can we imagine that 

 men were born in the earliest ages who might have furnished a 



