Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Volume II

POSTSCRIPT

An opponent, or partial opponent, of high authority, whose views were published some fourteen years after the above essay, must here be answered: I mean Mr. Darwin. Diligent and careful as an observer beyond naturalists in general, and still more beyond those who are untrained in research, his judgment on a question which must be decided by induction is one to be received with great respect. I think, however, examination will show that in this instance Mr. Darwin’s observations are inadequate, and his reasonings upon them inconclusive. Swayed by his doctrine of sexual selection, he has leaned towards the view that music had its origin in the expression of amatory feeling, and has been led to over-estimate such evidence as he thinks favours that view, while ignoring the difficulties in its way, and the large amount of evidence supporting another view. Before considering the special reasons for dissenting from his hypothesis, let us look at the most general reasons.

The interpretation of music which Mr. Darwin gives, agrees with my own in supposing music to be developed from vocal noises; but differs in supposing a particular class of vocal noises to have originated it – the amatory class. I have aimed to show that music has its germs in the sounds which the voice emits under excitement, and eventually gains this or that character according to the kind of excitement; whereas Mr. Darwin argues that music arises from those sounds which the male makes during the excitements of courtship, that they are consciously made to charm the female, and that from the resulting combinations of sounds arise not love-music only but music in general. That certain tones of voice and cadences having some likeness of nature are spontaneously used to express grief, others to express joy, others to express affection, and others to express triumph or martial ardour, is undeniable. According to the view I have set forth, the whole body of these vocal manifestations of emotion form the root of music. According to Mr. Darwin’s view, the sounds which are prompted by the amatory feeling only, having originated musical utterance, there are derived from these all the other varieties of musical utterance which aim to express other kinds of feeling. This roundabout derivation has, I think, less probability than the direct derivation.

This antithesis and its implications will perhaps be more clearly understood on looking at the facts under their nervo-muscular aspect. Mr. Darwin recognizes the truth of the doctrine with which the foregoing essay sets out, that feeling discharges itself in action: saying of the air-breathing vertebrata that —

“When the primeval members of this class were strongly excited and their muscles violently contracted, purposeless sounds would almost certainly have been produced; and these, if they proved in any way serviceable, might readily have been modified or intensified by the preservation of properly adapted variations.” ( The Descent of Man , vol. ii., p. 331.)

But though this passage recognizes the general relation between feelings and those muscular contractions which cause sounds, it does so inadequately; since it ignores, on the one hand, those loudest sounds which accompany intense sensations – the shrieks and groans of bodily agony; while, on the other hand, it ignores those multitudinous sounds not produced “under the excitement of love, rage, and jealousy,” but which accompany ordinary amounts of feelings, various in their kinds. And it is because he does not bear in mind how large a proportion of vocal noises are caused by other excitements, that Mr. Darwin thinks “a strong case can be made out, that the vocal organs were primarily used and perfected in relation to the propagation of the species” (p. 330).

Certainly the animals around us yield but few facts countenancing his view. The cooing of pigeons may, indeed, be named in its support; and it may be contended that caterwauling furnishes evidence; though I doubt whether the sounds are made by the male to charm the female. But the howling of dogs has no relation to sexual excitements; nor has their barking, which is used to express emotion of almost any kind. Pigs grunt sometimes through pleasurable expectation, sometimes during the gratifications of eating, sometimes from a general content while seeking about for food. The bleatings of sheep, again, occur under the promptings of various feelings, usually of no great intensity: social and maternal rather than sexual. The like holds with the lowing of cattle. Nor is it otherwise with poultry. The quacking of ducks indicates general satisfaction, and the screams occasionally vented by a flock of geese seem rather to express a wave of social excitement than anything else. Save after laying an egg, when the sounds have the character of triumph, the cluckings of a hen show content; and on various occasions cock-crowing apparently implies good spirits only. In all cases an overflow of nervous energy has to find vent; and while in some cases it leads to wagging of the tail, in others it leads to contraction of the vocal muscles. That this relation holds, not of one kind of feeling, but of many kinds, is a truth which seems to me at variance with the view “that the vocal organs were primarily used and perfected in relation to the propagation of the species.”

The hypothesis that music had its origin in the amatory sounds made by the male to charm the female, has the support of the popular idea that the singing of birds constitutes a kind of courtship – an idea adopted by Mr. Darwin when he says that “the male pours forth his full volume of song, in rivalry with other males, for the sake of captivating the female.” Usually, Mr. Darwin does not accept without criticism and verification, the beliefs he finds current; but in this case he seems to have done so. Even cursory observation suffices to dissipate this belief, initiated, I suppose, by poets. In preparation for dealing with the matter I have made memoranda concerning various songbirds, dating back to 1883. On the 7th of February of that year I heard a lark singing several times; and, still more remarkably, during the mild winter of 1884 I saw one soar, and heard it sing, on the 10th January. Yet the lark does not pair till March. Having heard the redbreast near the close of August, 1888, I noted the continuance of its song all through the autumn and winter, up to Christmas eve, Christmas day, the 29th of December, and again on the 18th January, 1889. How common is the singing of the thrush during mild weather in winter, everyone must have observed. The presence of thrushes behind my house has led to the making of notes on this point. The male sang in November, 1889; I noted the song again on Christmas eve, again on the 13th January, 1890, and from time to time all through the rest of that month. I heard little of his song in February, which is the pairing season; and none at all, save a few notes early in the morning, during the period of rearing the young. But now that, in the middle of May, the young, reared in a nest in my garden, have sometime since flown, he has recommenced singing vociferously at intervals throughout the day; and doubtless, in conformity with what I have observed elsewhere, will go on singing till July. How marked is the direct relation between singing and the conditions which cause high spirits, is perhaps best shown by a fact I noted on the 4th December, 1888, when, the day being not only mild but bright, the copses on Holmwood Common, Dorking, were vocal just as on a spring day, with a chorus of birds of various kinds – robins, thrushes, chaffinches, linnets, and sundry others of which I did not know the names. Ornithological works furnish verifying statements. Wood states that the hedge-sparrow continues “to sing throughout a large portion of the year, and only ceasing during the time of the ordinary moult.” The song of the blackcap, he says, “is hardly suspended throughout the year;” and of caged birds which sing continuously, save when moulting, he names the grosbeak, the linnet, the goldfinch, and the siskin.

I think these facts show that the popular idea adopted by Mr. Darwin is untenable. What then is the true interpretation? Simply that like the whistling and humming of tunes by boys and men, the singing of birds results from overflow of energy – an overflow which in both cases ceases under depressing conditions. The relation between courtship and singing, so far as it can be shown to hold, is not a relation of cause and effect, but a relation of concomitance: the two are simultaneous results of the same cause. Throughout the animal kingdom at large, the commencement of reproduction is associated with an excess of those absorbed materials needful for self-maintenance; and with a consequent ability to devote a part to the maintenance of the species. This constitutional state is one with which there goes a tendency to superfluous expenditure in various forms of action – unusual vivacity of every kind, including vocal vivacity. While we thus see why pairing and singing come to be associated, we also see why there is singing at other times when the feeding and weather are favourable; and why, in some cases, as in those of the thrush and the robin, there is more singing after the breeding season than before or during the breeding season. We are shown, too, why these birds, and especially the thrush, so often sing in the winter: the supply of worms on lawns and in gardens being habitually utilized by both, and thrushes having the further advantage that they are strong enough to break the shells of the hybernating snails: this last ability being connected with the fact that thrushes and blackbirds are the first among the singing birds to build. It remains only to add that the alleged singing of males against one another with the view of charming the females is open to parallel criticisms. How far this competition happens during the pairing season I have not observed, but it certainly happens out of the pairing season. I have several times heard blackbirds singing alternately in June. But the most conspicuous instance is supplied by the redbreasts. These habitually sing against one another during the autumn months: reply and rejoinder being commonly continued for five minutes at a time.

Even did the evidence support the popular view, adopted by Mr. Darwin, that the singing of birds is a kind of courtship – even were there good proof, instead of much disproof, that a bird’s song is a developed form of the sexual sounds made by the male to charm the female; the conclusion would, I think, do little towards justifying the belief that human music has had a kindred origin. For, in the first place, the bird-type in general, developed as it is out of the reptilian type, is very remotely related to that type of the Vertebrata which ascends to Man as its highest exemplar; and, in the second place, song-birds belong, with but few exceptions, to the single order of Insessores – one order only, of the many orders constituting the class. So that, if the Vertebrata at large be represented by a tree, of which Man is the topmost twig, then it is at a considerable distance down the trunk that there diverges the branch from which the bird-type is derived; and the group of singing-birds forms but a terminal sub-division of this branch – lies far out of the ascending line which ends in Man. To give appreciable support to Mr. Darwin’s view, we ought to find vocal manifestations of the amatory feeling becoming more pronounced as we ascend along that particular line of inferior Vertebrata out of which Man has arisen. Just as we find other traits which pre-figure human traits (instance arms and hands adapted for grasping) becoming more marked as we approach Man; so should we find, becoming more marked, this sexual use of the voice, which is supposed to end in human song. But we do not find this. The South-American monkeys (“the Howlers,” as they are sometimes called), which, in chorus, make the woods resound for hours together with their “dreadful concert,” appear, according to Rengger, to be prompted by no other desire than that of making a noise. Mr. Darwin admits, too, that this is generally the case with the gibbons: the only exception he is inclined to make being in the case of Hylobates agilis , which, on the testimony of Mr. Waterhouse, he says ascends and descends the scale by half-tones. ⁵⁴ This comparatively musical set of sounds, he thinks, may be used to charm the female; though there is no evidence forthcoming that this is the case. When we remember that in the forms nearest to the human – the chimpanzees and the gorilla – there is nothing which approaches even thus far towards musical utterance, we see that the hypothesis has next to none of that support which ought to be forthcoming. Indeed in his Descent of Man , vol. ii., p. 332, Mr. Darwin himself says: – “It is a surprising fact that we have not as yet any good evidence that these organs are used by male mammals to charm the females:” an admission which amounts to something like a surrender.

Even more marked is the absence of proof when we come to the human race itself – or rather, not absence of proof but presence of disproof. Here, from the Descriptive Sociology , where the authorities will be found under the respective heads, I quote a number of testimonies of travellers concerning primitive music: commencing with those referring to the lowest races.

“The songs of the natives [of Australia].. are chiefly made on the spur of the moment, and refer to something that has struck the attention at the time.” “The Watchandies seeing me much interested in the genus Eucalyptus soon composed a song on this subject.” The Fuegians are fond of music and generally sing in their boats, doubtless keeping time, as many primitive peoples do. “The principal subject of the songs of the Araucanians is the exploits of their heroes:” when at work their “song was simple, referring mostly to their labour,” and was the same “for every occasion, whether the burden of the song be joy or sorrow.” The Greenlanders sing of “their exploits in the chase” and “chant the deeds of their ancestors.” “The Indians of the Upper Mississippi vocalize an incident, as – ‘They have brought us a fat dog,’:” then the chorus goes on for a minute. Of other North-American Indians we read – “the air which the women sang was pleasing.. the men first gave out the words, which formed a consummate glorification of themselves.” Among the Carriers (of North America) there are professed composers, who “turn their talent to good account on the occasion of a feast, when new airs are in great request.” Of the New Zealanders we read: – “The singing of such compositions [laments] resembles cathedral chanting.” “Passing events are described by extemporaneous songs, which are preserved when good.” “When men worked together appropriate airs were sung.” When presenting a meal to travellers, women would chant – “What shall be our food? shell fish and fern-root, that is the root of the earth.” Among the Sandwich Islanders “most of the traditions of remarkable events in their history are preserved in songs.” When taught reading they could not “recite a lesson without chanting or singing it.” Cook found the Tahitians had itinerant musicians who gave narrative chants quite unpremeditated. “A Samoan can hardly put his paddle in the water without striking up some chant.” A chief of the Kyans, “Tamawan, jumped up and while standing burst out into an extempore song, in which Sir James Brooke and myself, and last not least the wonderful steamer, was mentioned with warm eulogies.” In East Africa “the fisherman will accompany his paddle, the porter his trudge, and the housewife her task of rubbing down grain, with song.” In singing, the East African “contents himself with improvising a few words without sense or rhyme and repeats them till they nauseate,” Among the Dahomans any incident “from the arrival of a stranger to an earthquake” is turned into a song. When rowing, the Coast-negroes sing “either a description of some love intrigue or the praise of some woman celebrated for her beauty.” In Loango “the women as they till the field make it echo with their rustic songs.” Park says of the Bambarran – “they lightened their labours by songs, one of which was composed extempore; for I was myself the subject of it.” “In some parts of Africa nothing is done except to the sound of music.” “They are very expert in adapting the subjects of these songs to current events.” The Malays “amuse all their leisure hours.. with the repetition of songs, which are for the most part proverbs illustrated… Some that they rehearse in a kind of recitative at their bimbangs or feasts are historical love-tales.” A Sumatran maiden will sometimes begin a tender song and be answered by one of the young men. The ballads of the Kamtschadales are “inspired apparently by grief, love, or domestic feeling;” and their music conveys “a sensation of sorrow and vague, unavailing regret.” Of their love-songs it is said “the women generally compose them.” A Kirghiz “singer sits on one knee and sings in an unnatural tone of voice, his lay being usually of an amorous character.” Of the Yakuts we are told “their style of singing is monotonous.. their songs described the beauty of the landscape in terms which appeared to me exaggerated.”

In these statements, which, omitting repetitions, are all which the Descriptive Sociology contains relevant to the issue, several striking facts are manifest. Among the lowest races the only musical utterances named are those which refer to the incidents of the moment, and seem prompted by feelings which those incidents produce. The derivation of song or chant from emotional speech in general, thus suggested, is similarly suggested by the habits of many higher races; for they, too, show us that the musically-expressed feelings relevant to the immediate occasion, or to past occasions, are feelings of various kinds: now of simple good spirits and now of joy or triumph – now of surprise, praise, admiration, and now of sorrow, melancholy, regret. Only among certain of the more advanced races, as the semi-civilized Malays and peoples of Northern Asia, do we read of love-songs; and then, strange to say, these are mentioned as mostly coming, not from men, but from women. Out of all the testimonies there is not one which tells of a love-song spontaneously commenced by a man to charm a woman. Entirely absent among the rudest types and many of the more developed types, amatory musical utterance, where first found, is found under a form opposite to that which Mr. Darwin’s hypothesis implies; and we have to seek among civilized peoples before we meet, in serenades and the like, music of the kind which, according to his view, should be the earliest. ⁵⁵

Even were his view countenanced by the facts, there would remain unexplained the process by which sexually-excited sounds have been evolved into music. In the foregoing essay I have indicated the various qualities, relations, and combinations of tones, spontaneously prompted by emotions of all kinds, which exhibit, in undeveloped forms, the traits of recitative and melody. To have reduced his hypothesis to a shape admitting of comparison, Mr. Darwin should have shown that the sounds excited by sexual emotions possess these same traits; and, to have proved that his hypothesis is the more tenable, should have shown that they possess these same traits in a greater degree. But he has not attempted to do this. He has simply suggested that instead of having its roots in the vocal sounds caused by feelings of all kinds, music has its roots in the vocal sounds caused by the amatory feeling only: giving no reason why the effects of the feelings at large should be ignored, and the effects of one particular feeling alone recognized.

Nineteen years after my essay on “The Origin and Function of Music” was published, Mr. Edmund Gurney criticized it in an article which made its appearance in the Fortnightly Review for July 1876. Absorption in more important work prevented me from replying. Though, some ten years ago, I thought of defending my views against those of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Gurney, the occurrence of Mr. Darwin’s death obliged me to postpone for a time any discussion of his views; and then, the more recent unfortunate death of Mr. Gurney caused a further postponement. I must now, however, say that which seems needful, though there is no longer any possibility of a rejoinder from him.

Some parts of Mr. Gurney’s criticism I have already answered by implication; for he adopts the hypothesis that music originated in the vocal utterances prompted by sexual feeling. To the reasons above given for rejecting this hypothesis, I will add here, what I might have added above, that it is at variance with one of the fundamental laws of evolution. All development proceeds from the general to the special. First there appear those traits which a thing has in common with many other things; then those traits which it has in common with a smaller class of things; and so on until there eventually arise those traits which distinguish it from everything else. The genesis which I have described conforms to this fundamental law. It posits the antecedent fact that feeling in general produces muscular contraction in general; and the less general fact that feeling in general produces, among other muscular contractions, those which move the respiratory and vocal apparatus. With these it joins the still less general fact that sounds indicative of feelings vary in sundry respects according to the intensity of the feelings; and then enumerates the still less general facts which show us the kinship between the vocal manifestations of feeling and the characters of vocal music: the implication being that there has gone on a progressive specialization. But the view which Mr. Gurney adopts from Mr. Darwin is that from the special actions producing the special sounds accompanying sexual excitement, were evolved those various actions producing the various sounds which accompany all other feelings. Vocal expression of a particular emotion came first, and from this proceeded vocal expressions of emotions in general: the order of evolution was reversed.

To deficient knowledge of the laws of evolution are due sundry of Mr. Gurney’s objections. He makes a cardinal error in assuming that a more evolved thing is distinguished from less evolved things in respect of all the various traits of evolution; whereas, very generally, a higher degree of evolution in some or most respects, is accompanied by an equal or lower degree of evolution in other respects. On the average, increase of locomotive power goes along with advance of evolution; and yet numerous mammals are more fleet than man. The stage of development is largely indicated by degree of intelligence; and yet the more intelligent parrot is inferior in vision, in speed, and in destructive appliances, to the less-intelligent hawk. The contrast between birds and mammals well illustrates the general truth. A bird’s skeleton diverges more widely from the skeleton of the lower vertebrates in respect of heterogeneity than does the skeleton of a mammal; and the bird has a more developed respiratory system, as well as a higher temperature of blood, and a superior power of locomotion. Nevertheless, many mammals in respect of bulk, in respect of various appliances (especially for prehension), and in respect of intelligence, are more evolved than birds. Thus it is obviously a mistake to assume that whatever is more highly evolved in general character is more highly evolved in every trait.

Of Mr. Gurney’s several objections which are based on this mistake here is an example. He says – “Loudness though a frequent is by no means a universal or essential element, either of song or of emotional speech” (p. 107). Under one of its aspects this criticism is self-destructive; for if, though both relatively loud in most cases, song and emotional speech are both characterized by the occasional use of subdued tones, then this is a further point of kinship between them – a kinship which Mr. Gurney seeks to disprove. Under its other aspect this criticism implies the above-described misconception. If in a song, or rather in some part or parts of a song, the trait of loudness is absent, while the other traits of developed emotional utterance are present, it simply illustrates the truth that the traits of a highly-evolved product are frequently not all present together.

A like answer is at hand to the next objection he makes. It runs thus: —

“In the recitative which he [Mr. Spencer] himself considers naturally and historically a step between speech and song, the rapid variation of pitch is impossible, and such recitative is distinguished from the tones even of common speech precisely by being more monotonous” (p. 108).

But Mr. Gurney overlooks the fact that while, in recitative, some traits of developed emotional utterance are not present, two of its traits are present. One is that greater resonance of tone, caused by greater contraction of the vocal chords, which distinguishes it from ordinary speech. The other is the relative elevation of pitch, or divergence from the medium tones of voice: a trait similarly implying greater strain of certain vocal muscles, resulting from stronger feeling.

Another difficulty raised by Mr. Gurney he would probably not have set down had he been aware that one character of musical utterance which he thinks distinctive, is a character of all phenomena into which motion enters as a factor. He says: – “Now no one can suppose that the sense of rhythm can be derived from emotional speech” (p. 110). Had he referred to the chapter on “The Rhythm of Motion” in First Principles , he would have seen that, in common with inorganic actions, all organic actions are completely or partially rhythmical – from appetite and sleep to inspirations and heart-beats; from the winking of the eyes to the contractions of the intestines; from the motions of the legs to discharges through the nerves. Having contemplated such facts he would have seen that the rhythmical tendency which is perfectly displayed in musical utterance, is imperfectly displayed in emotional speech. Just as under emotion we see swayings of the body and wringings of the hands, so do we see contractions of the vocal organs which are now stronger and now weaker. Surely it is manifest that the utterances of passion, far from being monotonous, are characterized by rapidly-recurring ascents and descents of tone and by rapidly-recurring emphases: there is rhythm, though it is an irregular rhythm.

Want of knowledge of the principles of evolution has, in another place, led Mr. Gurney to represent as an objection what is in reality a verification. He says: —

“Music is distinguished from emotional speech in that it proceeds not only by fixed degrees in time, but by fixed degrees in the scale. This is a constant quality through all the immense quantity of embryo and developed scale-systems that have been used; whereas the transitions of pitch which mark emotional affections of voice are, as Helmholtz has pointed out, of a gliding character” (p. 113).

Had Mr. Gurney known that evolution in all cases is from the indefinite to the definite, he would have seen that as a matter of course the gradations of emotional speech must be indefinite in comparison with the gradations of developed music. Progress from the one to the other is in part constituted by increasing definiteness in the time-intervals and increasing definiteness in the tone-intervals. Were it otherwise, the hypothesis I have set forth would lack one of its evidences. To his allegation that not only the “developed scale-systems” but also the “embryo” scale-systems are definite, it may obviously be replied that the mere existence of any scale-system capable of being written down, implies that the earlier stage of the progress has already been passed through. To have risen to a scale-system is to have become definite; and until a scale-system has been reached vocal phrases cannot have been recorded. Moreover had Mr. Gurney remembered that there are many people with musical perceptions so imperfect that when making their merely recognizable, and sometimes hardly recognizable, attempts to whistle or hum melodies, they show how vague are their appreciations of musical intervals, he would have seen reason for doubting his assumption that definite scales were reached all at once. The fact that in what we call bad ears there are all degrees of imperfection, joined with the fact that where the imperfection is not great practice may remedy it, suffice of themselves to show that definite perceptions of musical intervals were reached by degrees.

Some of Mr. Gurney’s objections are strangely insubstantial. Here is an example: —

“The fact is that song, which moreover in our time is but a limited branch of music, is perpetually making conscious efforts; for instance, the most peaceful melody may be a considerable strain to a soprano voice, if sung in a very high register: while speech continues to obey in a natural way the physiological laws of emotion” (p. 117).

That in exaggerating and emphasizing the traits of emotional speech, the singer should be led to make “conscious efforts” is surely natural enough. What would Mr. Gurney have said of dancing? He would scarcely have denied that saltatory movements often result spontaneously from excited feeling; and he could hardly have doubted that primitive dancing arose as a systematized form of such movements. Would he have considered the belief that stage-dancing is evolved from these spontaneous movements to be negatived by the fact that a stage-dancer’s bounds and gyrations are made with “conscious efforts”?