226 THE THEORIES OF EVOLUTION 



may mention psychical characters, instincts, etc., which 

 occupy a very particular place and seem to be more 

 evidently hereditary than some others. This is what 

 Spencer has to say upon the heredity of musical apti- 

 tudes: "It is very questionable whether, taking the 

 musical career as a whole, it has any advantage over 

 other careers in the struggle for existence and multi- 

 plication. Still more if we look back to those early 

 stages through which the faculty must have passed 

 before definite perception of melody was arrived at, 

 we fail to see how those possessing the rudimentary 

 faculty in a somewhat greater degree than the rest 

 would thereby be enabled the better to maintain them- 

 selves and their children. There is no explanation 

 but that the habitual association of certain cadences 

 of speech with certain emotions, has slowly established 

 in the race an organised and inherited connection be- 

 tween such cadences and such emotions ; that the com- 

 bination of cadences, more or less idealised, which con- 

 stitutes melody, has all along had a meaning in the 

 average mind, only because of the meaning which 

 cadences had acquired in the average mind; and that 

 by the continual hearing and practice of melody there 

 has been gained and transmitted an increasing mu- 

 sical sensibility. Confirmation of this view may be 

 drawn from individual cases. Grant that among a 

 people endowed with musical faculty to a certain de- 

 gree, spontaneous variation will occasionally produce 



