30 ARE THE EFFECTS OF USE INHERITED ? 



by Mr. Spencer. 1 The emotional susceptibility 

 to musiCj and the delicate perceptions needed for 

 the higher branches of art, were apparently the 

 work of natural and sexual selection in the long 

 past. Civilization, with its leisure and wealth 

 and accumulated knowledge, perfects human 

 faculties by artificial cultivation, develops and 

 combines means of enjoyment, and discovers 

 unsuspected sources of interest and pleasure. 

 The sense of harmony, modern as it seems to be, 

 must have been a latent and indirect consequence 

 of the development of the sense of hearing and of 

 melody. Use, at least, could never have called 

 it into existence. Nature favours and develops 

 enjoyments to a certain extent, for they subserve 

 self-preservation and sexual and social preference 

 in innumerable ways. But modern aesthetic ad- 

 vance seems to be almost entirely due to the cul- 

 ture of latent abilities, the formation of complex 



1 Descent of Man, pp. 573, 572, and footnote. 



