6o THOUGHTS UPON THE MUSICAL SENSE [X. 



music. The capacity seems to be present in a tolerably high 

 degree ; for it is known that cavalry horses often recognize 

 the signals as well as their riders and begin the appropriate 

 movements before being directed. 



The evidence is especially clear in the case of certain birds, 

 far below the above mentioned mammals in mental power, 

 that music may be heard and properly understood by organisms 

 which cannot have acquired their auditory apparatus for this 

 purpose. I am here referring to those birds which either have 

 no song of their own or a very simple one, but which are 

 nevertheless capable of imitating the more beautiful song of 

 other birds or even the melodies of human music. 



This is especially remarkable in the case of parrots, which 

 can learn to sing short melodies quite correctly. It is therefore 

 certain that they possess the apparatus necessary for hearing 

 music, although they do not sing unless taught. 



Hence the supposition appears to be well founded that man 

 possessed the auditory apparatus necessary for music before 

 he made music, and that the apparatus did not, by making 

 music, attain the degree of development it has reached. It is 

 not necessary to assume that the capacity of hearing music 

 was a primitive faculty acquired for its own sake ; it may 

 rather be conceived of as a secondary, an 'unintended,' ac- 

 cessory, as a mere incident in the evolution of the auditory 

 organ which reached its high development b}^ ministering to 

 other necessities. 



It might perhaps be objected that neither the minute struc- 

 ture of the cochlea nor the power of hearing an extensive scale 

 proves that music is perceived as music, or that we do as a 

 matter of fact hear the third or fifth which is sounded. It 

 might be conceived that the musical sense depends upon yet 

 another and unknown peculiarity of the auditory apparatus, a 

 peculiarity which has been added to the function of hearing and 

 the origin of which therefore demands some special explanation. 

 But this objection will not hold, because animals such as the 

 horse and parrot, can as a matter of fact hear music, although 

 we cannot assume thatthej^possess any special contrivance for it. 

 The basis on which this objection rests is nevertheless sound, 

 for we can never explain the faculty of hearing music by the 

 knowledge of our auditory apparatus alone. But to use this 



