48 THOUGHTS UPON THE MUSICAL SENSE [X. 



activity, ever led to fresh combinations of the emotions which 

 became the subjects of musical themes. A psychologist might 

 be able to show us more of the constitution of this marvellous 

 mind. I will not attempt it ; I merely wish to show that the 

 increase in the musical faculty, which appears to pass from 

 father to son, can be explained, as in so many other cases, 

 entirely without the unproved assumption of the inherited 

 effects of practice. Even when the musical sense itself is 

 transmitted unaltered, viz. without increase, from father to 

 son, a considerable increase in the power of composition may 

 nevertheless be brought about by the combination of mental 

 gifts derived from the mother with the musical sense inherited 

 from the father ; and this sense will therefore gain in the son 

 a higher expression. There are many highly-gifted people 

 who are unable to compose anything original : even remark- 

 able musical talent may co-exist with an utter inability to 

 produce anything new. Examples of this are perfectly familiar. 

 But in the descendant of such person, the strong receptive 

 musical talent may be united to such a complete flexibility of 

 the mind and temperament, derived from the mother, that new 

 combinations of ideas will ever arise. This latter gift will then 

 seize upon the musical sense, and ideas which w^ere perhaps 

 of an entirely different nature in the mother, will become 

 musical ideas in the son. 



The composer not only needs the musical facult}'-, the gift of 

 originality is also indispensable. I believe that an increase in 

 the genius for music which passes from father to son depends 

 upon a new combination of mental gifts, with which of course 

 an increase in the delicacy of the musical ear itself may be 

 united ; for every inherited quality varies, and may be feebler 

 or stronger than it was in the parent. 



Let us now return to the argument that some external 

 stimulus is necessary for the development of an existing 

 musical faculty. Two facts seem to me to favour this opinion ; 

 first, that nearly all the renowned com-posers and singers of the 

 present century have come from large towns, and have thus 

 been brought up where from earliest youth they have been 

 subject to musical influences of all kinds. I have made a list 

 of ninety-eight such cases. Secondly, the fact that during the 

 nineteenth century the Jewish race first began to take part in 



