X.] IN ANIMALS AND MAN, 39 



at the musical theme, the melody, the groundwork of all 

 music. 



Even in its savage form music becomes, to a certain extent, 

 the expression of emotion. The funeral dirge is very different 

 from the war-song or the festal song. Of course such melodies 

 are very far from attaining the marvellous precision with which 

 the highest music can not only excite the whole range of human 

 feeling, but can also represent every emotion just as a drawing 

 represents form. And music can achieve this with such fine 

 shades of expression that language is by no means its equal. 



Disregarding for the present those highly gifted minds that 

 created such music, and only considering those which enjoy 

 it, it is clear that even for the mere understanding, viz. the 

 appreciative enjoyment, of one of our great performances, there 

 is required a far higher musical sense than is necessary for the 

 comprehension of the monotonous song of a negro tribe, or a 

 simple Chinese melody, or one of those melodies in octaves 

 which played so prominent a part with the ancient Greeks. 

 In order to hear in a symphony of Beethoven or in Bach's 

 Mass in B-minor anything more than a mere confusion of 

 notes, or a roaring, heaving ocean of sound, demands a highly 

 developed musical inteUigence. 



Considering these facts, the assumption seems at first almost 

 unavoidable that musical talent in man has gradually increased 

 from the condition found in the Polynesians up to the level 

 reached by the most civiUzed nations ; and if for the moment 

 we adopt the Darwinian hypothesis as to the origin of human 

 music, it is clear that the amount of increase which has taken 

 place during this rise from the condition met with in the living 

 savage ought to be sensibly greater than that which took place 

 during the development of primitive man into the living savage. 

 It is at any rate certain that the amount of increase in the 

 musical art itself has been far greater during the second period 

 of its development than it can have been during the first. 



Hence we are led back to the question with which we started, 

 viz. how and b}^ what means can this increased refinement and 

 growth of the musical talent have been produced ? 



Sexual selection cannot possibly afford the required explana- 

 tion, even if we admit that it played a part in the origin of the 

 primitive song of ancestral man. It is not only true to-day 



