n only when
the attribute is one of greater importance, for the time being,
than most of the other attributes. If those members of the species
which have but ordinary shares of it, nevertheless survive by
virtue of other superiorities which they severally possess; then it
is not easy to see how this particular attribute can be developed
by natural selection in subsequent generations. The probability
seems rather to be, that by gamogenesis, this extra endowment will,
on the average, be diminished in posterity--just serving in the
long run to compensate the deficient endowments of other
individuals, whose special powers lie in other directions; and so
to keep up the normal structure of the species. The working out of
the process is here somewhat difficult to follow; but it appears to
me that as fast as the number of bodily and mental faculties
increases, and as fast as the maintenance of life comes to depend
less on the amount of any one, and more on the combined action of
all; so fast does the production of specialities of character by
natural selection alone, become difficult. Particularly does this
seem to be so with a species so multitudinous in its powers as
mankind; and above all does it seem to be so with such of the human
powers as have but minor shares in aiding the struggle for
life--the aesthetic faculties, for example."

Dwelling for a moment on this last illustration of the class of
difficulties described, let us ask how we are to interpret the
development of the musical faculty. I will not enlarge on the family
antecedents of the great composers. I will merely suggest the inquiry
whether the greater powers possessed by Beethoven and Mozart, by Weber
and Rossini, than by their fathers, were not due in larger measure to
the inherited effects of daily exercise of the musical faculty by their
fathers, than to inheritance, with increase, of spontaneous variations;
and whether the diffused musical powers of the Bach clan, culminating in
those of Johann Sebastian, did not result in part from constant
practice; but I will raise the more general question--How came there
that endowment of musical faculty which characterizes modern Europeans
at large, as compared with their remote ancestors. The monotonous chants
of low savages cannot be said to show any melodic inspiration; and it is
not evident that an individual