Lancaster, "Psychology of Adolescence," _Pedagogical Seminary_,
July, 1897.

II.

Summary--Why the Influence of Music in Human Sexual Selection is
Comparatively Small.

We have seen that it is possible to set forth in a brief space the facts
at present available concerning the influence on the pairing impulse of
stimuli acting through the ear. They are fairly simple and uncomplicated;
they suggest few obscure problems which call for analysis; they do not
bring before us any remarkable perversions of feeling.

At the same time, the stimuli to sexual excitement received through the
sense of hearing, although very seldom of exclusive or preponderant
influence, are yet somewhat more important than is usually believed.
Primarily the voice, and secondarily instrumental music, exert a distinct
effect in this direction, an effect representing a specialization of a
generally stimulating physiological influence which all musical sounds
exercise upon the organism. There is, however, in this respect, a definite
difference between the sexes. It is comparatively rare to find that the
voice or instrumental music, however powerful its generally emotional
influence, has any specifically sexual effect on men. On the other hand,
it seems probable that the majority of women, at all events among the
educated classes, are liable to show some degree of sexual sensibility to
the male voice or to instrumental music.

It is not surprising to find that music should have some share in arousing
sexual emotion when we bear in mind that in the majority of persons the
development of sexual life is accompanied by a period of special interest
in music. It is not unexpected that the specifically sexual effects of the
voice and music should be chiefly experienced by women when we remember
that not only in the human species is it the male in whom the larynx and
voice are chiefly modified at puberty, but that among mammals generally it
is the male who is chiefly or exclusively vocal at the period of sexual
activity; so that any sexual sensibility to vocal manifestations must be
chiefly or exclusively manifested in female mammals.

At the best, however, although aesthetic sensibility to sound is highly
developed and emotional sensibility to it profound and widespread,
although women may be thrilled by the masculine voice and men charmed by
the feminine voice, it cannot be claimed that in the human species hearing
is a powerful factor in mating.