266 HERBERT SPENCER'S THEORY 



music to a triumphant conclusion, he set himself to 

 find out and expound the function of music. On 

 this second quest he goes off in the same temper, the 

 same cold, deadly zeal, as on the first, and in the 

 same way brings it to a victorious conclusion. Yet 

 it was an imaginary scent he was following all the 

 time, and an illusionary rabbit in which he set his 

 teeth, and whose imagined heart he drains of blood 

 to its last drop. There was no rabbit because there is 

 no function. A function, as we all understand the 

 word and as it is defined in the Oxford Dictionary, is 

 "the special kind of activity proper to anything: the 

 mode of action by which it fulfils its purpose." Thus, 

 the function — the use, the purpose — and thing — 

 organ or what not — are one and indivisible as in the 

 eye and seeing, the ear and hearing, the wings and 

 flying, and so on. Undoubtedly the word is some- 

 times used in a somewhat different or a more extended 

 sense, and is made to mean the use or purpose which 

 a thing may acquire, and in such cases what is called 

 a function may be one of several functions. But 

 Herbert Spencer does not use the word in this sense 

 when he writes of the function he thinks he has 

 discovered, which, as it happens, is not even a 

 function of music. 



To give the gist of the matter contained in a great 

 many pages of argument, he contends that the culti- 

 vation of music must really have some effect on the 

 mind, and this being so, what more natural than to 

 suppose this to be the developing our perceptions of 

 the meanings of inflections of voice and giving us a 



