or certain qualities of sound presents a
like difficulty, admitting only of a like solution. It is generally
agreed that the tones of the human voice are more pleasing than any
others. Grant that music takes its rise from the modulations of the
human voice under emotion, and it becomes a natural consequence that the
tones of that voice should appeal to our feelings more than any others;
and so should be considered more beautiful than any others. But deny
that music has this origin, and the only alternative is the untenable
position that the vibrations proceeding from a vocalist's throat are,
objectively considered, of a higher order than those from a horn or a
violin. Similarly with harsh and soft sounds. If the conclusiveness of
the foregoing reasonings be not admitted, it must be supposed that the
vibrations causing the last are intrinsically better than those causing
the first; and that, in virtue of some pre-established harmony, the
higher feelings and natures produce the one, and the lower the other.
But if the foregoing reasonings be valid, it follows, as a matter of
course, that we shall like the sounds that habitually accompany
agreeable feelings, and dislike those that habitually accompany
disagreeable feelings.

Once more, the question--How is the expressiveness of music to be
otherwise accounted for? may be supplemented by the question--How is the
genesis of music to be otherwise accounted for? That music is a product
of civilisation is manifest; for though savages have their dance-chants,
these are of a kind scarcely to be dignified by the title musical: at
most, they supply but the vaguest rudiment of music, properly so called.
And if music has been by slow steps developed in the course of
civilisation, it must have been developed out of something. If, then,
its origin is not that above alleged, what is its origin?

Thus we find that the negative evidence confirms the positive, and that,
taken together, they furnish strong proof. We have seen that there is a
physiological relation, common to man and all animals, between feeling
and muscular action; that as vocal sounds are produced by muscular
action, there is a consequent physiological relation between feeling and
vocal sounds; that all the modifications of voice expressive of feeling
are the direct results of this physiological relation; that music,
adopting all these modifications, intensifies them more and more as it
ascends to its higher and higher fo