8' THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and peoples of Northern Asia, do we read of love-songs; and 

 then, strange to say, these are mentioned as mostly coming, not 

 from men, but from women. Out of all the testimonies there is 

 not one which tells of a love-song spontaneously commenced by a 

 man to charm a woman. Entirely absent among the rudest types 

 and many of the more developed types, amatory musical utter- 

 ance, where first found, is found under a form opposite to that 

 which Mr. Darwin's hypothesis implies; and we have to seek 

 among civilized peoples before we meet, in serenades and the like, 

 music of the kind which, according to his view, should be the 

 earliest.* 



Even were his view countenanced by the facts, there would 

 remain unexplained the process by which sexually-excited sounds 

 have been evolved into music. In the foregoing essay I have 

 indicated the various qualities, relations, and combinations of 

 tones, spontaneously prompted by emotions of all kinds, which 

 exhibit, in undeveloped forms, the traits of recitative and melody. 

 To have reduced his hypothesis to a shape admitting of comparison, 

 Mr. Darwin should have shown that the sounds excited by sexual 

 emotions possess these same traits ; and, to have proved that his 

 hypothesis is the more tenable, should have shown that they pos- 

 sess these same traits in a greater degree. But he has not at- 

 tempted to do this. He has simply suggested that instead of hav- 

 ing its roots in the vocal sounds caused by feelings of all kinds, 

 music has its roots in the vocal sounds caused by the amatory 

 feeling only : giving no reason why the effects of the feelings at 

 large should be ignored, and the effects of one particular feeling 

 alone recognized. 



' j 



Nineteen years after my essay on " The Origin and Function 

 of Music " was published, Mr. Edmund Gurney criticised it in an 

 article which made its appearance in the Fortnightly Review for 

 July, 1876. Absorption in more important work prevented me 

 from replying. Though, some ten years ago, I thought of de- 

 fending my views against those of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Gurney, 

 the occurrence of Mr. Darwin's death obliged me to postpone for 

 a time any discussion of his views ; and then, the more recent 

 unfortunate death of Mr. Gurney caused a further postponement. 

 I must now, however, say that which seems needful, though there 

 is no longer any possibility of a rejoinder from him. 



* After the above paragraphs had been sent to the printers I received from an Ameri- 

 ican anthropologist, the Rev. Owen Dorsey, some essays containing kindred evidence. Of 

 over three dozen songs and chants of the Omaha, Ponka, and other Indians, in some cases 

 given with music and in other cases without, there are but five which have any reference 

 to amatory feeling ; and while in these the expression of amatory feeling comes from 

 women, nothing more than derision of them comes from men. 



