n
preferential mating or in assortative mating--is comparatively small.

FOOTNOTES:

[85] Moll has a passage on this subject, _Untersuchungen ueber die Libido
Sexualis_. Bd. I, pp. 376-381.

HEARING.

I.

The Physiological Basis of Rhythm--Rhythm as a Physiological Stimulus--The
Intimate Relation of Rhythm to Movement--The Physiological Influence of
Music on Muscular Action, Circulation, Respiration, etc.--The Place of
Music in Sexual Selection among the Lower Animals--Its Comparatively Small
Place in Courtship among Mammals--The Larynx and Voice in Man--The
Significance of the Pubertal Changes--Ancient Beliefs Concerning the
Influence of Music in Morals, Education, and Medicine--Its Therapeutic
Uses--Significance of the Romantic Interest in Music at Puberty--Men
Comparatively Insusceptible to the Specifically Sexual Influence of
Music--Rarity of Sexual Perversions on the Basis of the Sense of
Hearing--The Part of Music in Primitive Human Courtship--Women Notably
Susceptible to the Specifically Sexual Influence of Music and the Voice.

The sense of rhythm--on which it may be said that the sensory exciting
effects of hearing, including music, finally rest--may probably be
regarded as a fundamental quality of neuro-muscular tissue. Not only are
the chief physiological functions of the body, like the circulation and
the respiration, definitely rhythmical, but our senses insist on imparting
a rhythmic grouping even to an absolutely uniform succession of
sensations. It seems probable, although this view is still liable to be
disputed, that this rhythm is the result of kinaesthetic
sensations,--sensations arising from movement or tension started reflexly
in the muscles by the external stimuli,--impressing themselves on the
sensations that are thus grouped.[86] We may thus say, with Wilks, that
music appears to have had its origin in muscular action.[87]

Whatever its exact origin may be, rhythm is certainly very deeply
impressed on our organisms. The result is that, whatever lends itself to
the neuro-muscular rhythmical tendency of our organisms, whatever tends
still further to heighten and develop that rhythmical tendency, exerts
upon us a very decidedly stimulating and exciting influence.

All muscular action being stimulated by rhythm, in its simple form or in
its more developed form as music, rhythm is a stimulant to work. It has
even been argued by Buecher and by Wundt[88] that human song had its chief