220 THE ORIGIN AST) FUNCTION OF MUSIC. 



at a public meeting is interrupted by some squabble among. 

 those he is addressing, his comparatively level tones will 

 be in marked contrast with the rapidly changing one of the 

 disputants. And among children, whose feelings are less 

 under control than those of adults, this peculiarity is still 

 more decided. During a scene of complaint and recrimi- 

 nation between two excitable little girls, the voices may be 

 heard to run up and down the gamut several times in each 

 sentence. In such cases we once more recognise the same 

 law : for muscular excitement is shown not only in strength 

 of contraction but also in the rapidity with which different 

 muscular adjustments succeed each other. 



Thus we find all the leading vocal phenomena to have a 

 physiological basis. They are so many manifestations of 

 the general law that feeUng is a stimulus to muscular action 

 —a law conformed to throughout the whole economy, not 

 of man only, but of every sensitive creature — a law, there- 

 fore, which Ues deep in the nature of animal organization. 

 The expressiveness of these various modifications of voice 

 is therefore innate. Each of us, from babyhood uj) wards, 

 has been spontaneously making them, when under the va- 

 rious sensations and emotions by which they are produced. 

 Having been conscious of each feeling at the same time 

 that we heard ourselves make the consequent sound, we 

 have acquired an established association of ideas between 

 such sound and the feeling which caused it. When the 

 like sound is made by another, we ascribe the like feeling 

 to him ; and by a further consequence we not only ascribe 

 to him that feeling, but have a certain degree of it aroused 

 in ourselves : for to become conscious of the feeling which 

 another is exj^eriencing, is to have that feeling awakened 

 in our o^vn consciousness, which is the same thing as expe- 

 riencing the feeling. Thus these various modifications of 

 voice become not only a language through which we un- 

 derstand the emotions of others, but also the means of ex- 

 citing our sympatliy with such emotions. 



