The modern development of music and harmony (p. 19) is undeniable, but
why could it only have been brought about by the help of the inheritance
of the effects of use? Why are we to suppose that "minor traits" such as
the "aesthetic perceptions" cannot have been evolved by natural selection
(p. 20) or by sexual selection? Darwin holds that our musical faculties
were developed by sexual preference long before the acquisition of
speech. He believes that the "rhythms and cadences of oratory are
derived from previously developed musical powers"--a conclusion "exactly
opposite" to that arrived at by Mr. Spencer.[12] The emotional
susceptibility to music, and the delicate perceptions needed for the
higher branches of art, were apparently the work of natural and sexual
selection in the long past. Civilization, with its leisure and wealth
and accumulated knowledge, perfects human faculties by artificial
cultivation, develops and combines means of enjoyment, and discovers
unsuspected sources of interest and pleasure. The sense of harmony,
modern as it seems to be, must have been a latent and indirect
consequence of the development of the sense of hearing and of melody.
Use, at least, could never have called it into existence. Nature favours
and develops enjoyments to a certain extent, for they subserve
self-preservation and sexual and social preference in innumerable ways.
But modern aesthetic advance seems to be almost entirely due to the
culture of latent abilities, the formation of complex associations, the
selection and encouragement of talent, and the wide diffusion and
imitation of the accumulated products of the well-cultivated genius of
favourably varying individuals. The fact that uneducated persons do not
enjoy the higher tastes, and the rapidity with which such tastes are
acquired or professed, ought to be sufficient proof that modern culture
is brought about by far swifter and more potent influences than
use-inheritance. Neither would this hypothetical factor of evolution
materially aid in explaining the many other rapid changes of habit
brought about by education, custom, and the changed conditions of
civilization generally. Powerful tastes--as is incontestably shown in
the cases of alcohol and tobacco--lie latent for ages, and suddenly
become manifest when suitable conditions arise. Every discovery, and
each step in social and moral evolution, produces its wide-spreading
train of consequences. I see no reason why use-inheritance need be
credited with any share in the cumulative results of the invention of
printing and the steam-engine and gunpowder, or of freedom and security
under representative government, or of science and art and the partial
emancipation of the mind of man from superstition, or of the innumerable
other improvements or changes that take place under modern civilization.
Mr. Spencer suggests an inquiry whether the greater powers possessed by
eminent musicians were not mainly due to the inherited effect of the
musical practice of their fathers (p. 19). But these great musicians
inherited far more than their parents possessed. The excess of their
powers beyond their parents' must surely be attributed to spontaneous
variation; and who shall say that the rest was in any way due to
use-inheritance? If, too, the superiority of geniuses proves
use-inheritance, why should not the inferiority of the sons of geniuses
prove the existence of a tendency which is the exact opposite of
use-inheritance? But nobody collects facts concerning the degenerate
branches of musical families. Only the favourably varying branches are
noticed, and a general impression of rapid evolution of talent is thus
produced. Such cases might be explained, too, by the facts that musical
faculty is strong in both sexes, that musical families associate
together, and that the more gifted members may intermarry. Great
musicians are often astonishingly precocious. Meyerbeer "played
brilliantly" at the age of six. Mozart played beautifully at four. Are
we to suppose that the effect of the _adult_ practice of parents was
inherited at this early age? If use-inheritance was not necessary in the
case of Handel, whose father was a surgeon, why is it needed to account
for Bach?