X.] IN ANIMALS AND MAN 37 



not only take place by a rise in the greatest heights attained 

 by human intellect, but also by a rise in the general average. 



We will now leave this aspect of our subject : my object was 

 merely to show that the human intellect must have been im- 

 proved during many thousands of generations by the process 

 of selection, and this can hardly be doubted. 



A very different answer must be given if we ask whether it 

 is possible to conceive of a similar origin for every kind ot 

 talent and faculty possessed by civilized man, if we enquire 

 whether the musical, artistic, poetic, and mathematical talents 

 can have originated in a similar process of selection, it is 

 clear that they did not arise in this way. Such talents may, 

 now and then, have been useful or even of decisive importance 

 in the struggle for existence, but as a rule they are not so. 

 And no one will be prepared to assert that musical or poetic 

 gifts mean an unusually good chance of founding a family, 

 although this is perhaps more nearly true to-day than it was in 

 the times of Schiller, Haydn, and Mozart, or still earlier. But 

 even to-day the man with a practical turn of mind stands a 

 greater chance of material success than one whose talents are 

 of a more visionary kind. Talents for music, art, poetry, and 

 mathematics do not contribute towards the preservation of the 

 human species, and therefore they cannot have arisen by the 

 operation of natural selection. 



Perhaps, however, the development of the musical sense in 

 man depends on sexual selection, as we have seen that it does 

 in insects and birds. Darwin held this view; he supposed 

 that the primitive song of man originated in courtship. I am 

 doubtful whether this opinion can be sustained, but the point 

 will be referred to further on. If, however, the theory be 

 accepted, if we admit that sexual selection played a decisive 

 part in the first development of human song, even then we 

 have gained very little as an explanation of the origin of our 

 own music, because sexual selection is insufficient to explain 

 the immense growth which must have taken place in the 

 musical sense since the earliest times, if we admit its existence 

 in primitive man. 



We might perhaps be inclined to maintain that such a 

 growth of the musical sense has actually occurred, when, 

 without referring to primitive man, we simply compare the 



