X.] IN ANIMALS AND MAN. 6l 



undoubted fact as an argument for the conclusion stated above, 

 would be like maintaining that the hand was specially created 

 in order to play the piano, because we can never explain, by a 

 mere examination of its structure, the infinitely rapid move- 

 ments made by a performer. It might be argued that inasmuch 

 as the hand and fingers were never required to make such swift 

 mov ments when man existed in a primitive state, they could 

 not have been originally capable of such movements, and that 

 therefore the faculty which they now possess must have 

 depended upon sexual selection or the results of inherited 

 practice. 



The same might be said with regard to the swift movements 

 of the fingers in writing. Such arguments depend upon a 

 mistaken application of the principles of utility, a principle which 

 certainly excludes the possibility of raising an organ by the 

 process of selection above the highest point of actual utility, 

 but which by no means prevents it from acquiring new uses as 

 the result of life-long practice. 



A more serious objection maybe derived from the considera- 

 tion of those who are utterly unmusical. We cannot doubt that 

 many such people exist, even if most of them are to be accounted 

 for by want of training at the right time. Those who are totally 

 devoid of the faculty of music, can apparently hear sounds and 

 notes of every kind as fully as musical people, but they are 

 unable to discern the intervals, or to perceive and reproduce a 

 melody, much less to analyse a harmony. If then their 

 auditory organ be normally developed we are apparently con- 

 fronted with the proof that musical hearing is different from 

 ordinary hearing, and has been superadded to the latter,— that 

 therefore it cannot be merely an inevitable accessory, but has 

 sprung from a source which demands some special explana- 

 tion. 



This argument appears to be sound, but I do not believe that it 

 is so. The assumption that the hearing of unmusical people is 

 as highly developed as that of the musical is utterly unproved, 

 and I believe that it is most improbable. It is to be regretted 

 that there are no sufficiently exact researches into the ordinary 

 hearing of unmusical persons, and that we have even less 

 knowledge of the minute structure of their auditory apparatus. 

 But from what we know of musical hearing it follows that the 



