these nerves mediate now came to a higher psychic valuation. Just possibly, too, the development of the organ at this stage causes a characteristic modification in the direction of the air current in the nostrils, which E. Paulsen has shown to be so important. In some of our cases, the exquisiteness of this sense in adolescence becomes remarkable. Julia Brace was at this age when she best discriminated the washed clothes of each inmate of the Hartford Asylum for the Blind. The recognition of per- sons and even objects by the emanations that appeal to the nose, which seems so incredible in the literature of hysterical distem- pers, is possible at this period if ever; and the sometimes almost convulsive intensity of malodorous sensations also belongs here. On the whole there can be no doubt that when laboratory tests have explored the gamut of nature's odors for each period of life, it will be found that closely bound up with the development of sex in man goes a great exaltation and enlargement of this spiritualization of taste, which is related to it in somewhat the same anticipatory way that sight is related to touch.
Blushing is another dermal function which undergoes dis- tinct augmentation at adolescence, suggesting a new or closer rapport between the skin and the mind. Its close connection with the sense of shame has suggested to some that it is an organic relict of an ancestral sex fear, especially in young women, in whom it is most developed. It may once have ex- tended over a larger portion of the body, and be "an atavistic trace of a more widely diffused sex erethism." 1 There is little uniformity in blushing. It may begin in a small or in a large spot, or may mottle a considerable surface and then spread up and down or around. Sometimes it acquires morbid intensity and is accompanied by tremors, pressure, giddiness, mental con- fusion, etc. Subjectively it goes with consciousness of self, or of the surface of the body. It is a great heightener of beauty, and natural selection may have much influence upon its devel- opment. Campbell ascribes it to shyness, and Melinard to the desire for concealment. The skin now becomes an organ of the mind in a new sense and reflects its inner movements in ways and degrees often very embarrassing. Not unconnected with this is the new sense of consciousness of complexion.
1G. E. Partridge: Blushing, Ped. Sem., vol. iv, p. 387 ft seq.
CHANGES IN THE SENSES AND THE VOICE 21 There is no beautifier that compares with arterial blood, and the increased vascularity and erethism of the human skin at this age, although not without analogues in the animal world, has been a theme of much literature and poetry, while the absence of it inclines to cosmetic arts. There are indications that pallor of the skin, and especially the face, occurs more often at adoles- cence, partly as a normal reaction to blushing, and partly be- cause of the increased responsiveness of the skin to states of mind opposite to those which cause blushing. So, too, chronic flushes and coldness and clamminess of parts of the dermal sur- face are more frequent and extreme.
IV. Hearing. — The ear is closely connected with the senti- ments, and there is a general truth in the trite saying that music is the language of the. feelings as speech is that of the intellect. There is reason to believe that young children hear higher tones than adults, and also that there is a pubescent stage in which the vocabulary does not grow as rapidly as before and after, but when unwonted intensity of expression is vented upon a few words and phrases which even the ear loves. One of the characteristics of slang, of which this is the culminating period, is that a few words do duty for a whole genus of psychic processes, so that verbalization, like appetite, is now peculiarly prone to ruttiness. This gullying intensity is perhaps cognate with that to yell and vent the new tendency to phonation in articulate and sometimes animal noises, not perhaps so much to gratify any ear hunger as to relieve efferent tension. Pro- clivity to ear-mindedness becomes more pronounced, and there is a new responsiveness of soul to accents, inflections, timbre, and cadences, or to speech music, which sometimes comes to have an independent value, and even where it does not rise to consciousness, has a sudden reenforcement.
Many of the emotions can almost be said to be born now, and perhaps all are intensified, so that the emotional life is far wider, more diversified, and deeper. Tone color is felt; pre- cision in articulation and pronunciation, though not often at- tained and very often actually diminished, is now felt in a new way. Friendships are affected by the quality of the voice, and the tales of sentimental maidens who fall in love with the voices of people they have never seen, are true now, if ever. As the 22 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE voice increases in range, perhaps it is not impossible that the scale of audibility falls slightly after this age and that some higher notes are lost to audition and lower ones gained, or at any rate are appreciated, after the traffic of language, spoken and heard, has sunk to a lower key.
Dr. J. O. Reik,1 however, is inclined to think that the power of hearing the highest musical notes varies with age, perhaps being greatest in the early teens, the limit of perception declin- ing with age. This was first suggested by Dr. Clarence Blake.2 There is some reason to think, too, that there is for a short time hyperacuity of hearing and also of seeing at about this age. Dr. Reik also thinks that the auricle gradually increases both in length and width to at least the age of twenty and perhaps later, although its most rapid growth is in the early years and the annual increase is slight after fourteen. Where there is a difference between the two ears, the right is usually the larger.
Again the sounds in nature reverberate more deeply in the soul. The running brook, the waving trees and grass, the ripple of the sea, the song of birds, the noises of the tempest, now come nearer to the soul and seem to take on a more human quality. These, too, often become independent objects of at- tention and speak a language to the heart; now stillness itself may just become a sensation. Once more the range or hori- zon of auditory consciousness is rather suddenly enlarged. A series of tones, noises, and especially words, is grasped into a unity, not by association and not perhaps because the after- image of the first member of a series lingers longer to sense, but rather because the range of the mind is more extended, and the synthetic power which welds many elements into unity is strengthened. Simple rhythm and rime are appreciated long before, but now declamatory or stylistic prose becomes musical and is cadenced into wholes, as if a new sentence sense was developed. The swing and lilt of longer lines and more com- plex forms of verse in poetry are appreciated. So is harmony, while the power to apprehend all the factors of intricate musi- cal accompaniments and compositions of many parts now first 1 Report on the Examination of the Ears of 440 School Children. Johns Hopkins Hospital Bull., December, 1900, p. 318, 2 Trans. Am. Otol. Soc,, 1872.
CHANGES IN THE SENSES AND THE VOICE 23 appeals to the soul. Music, which may have been cultivated much before, now comes to mean unutterable things and ac- quires a new interest. Very often discords too become painful to an unwonted degree, and if war, love, and religion be the three factors that have cadenced the soul to the rhythm out of which music was born, this is what we should expect at this age, when the instincts which underlie all three are so greatly reenforced. Most of these new manifestations are transient in those who do not develop great musical power, but even in these they are often well unfolded for a time.
Of 556 young people, Lancaster found that 464 had an in- creased love of music, of ten amounting to a passion, which, how- ever, soon passed. The curve of this love culminates at fifteen and declines rapidly after sixteen. In many cases " everything is given up to music for a year or two, and then it is dropped." Some imagine themselves great musicians and see audiences spellbound and applauding with waving handkerchiefs. Some purchase instruments and take lessons with enthusiasm for a while, but the spell soon passes. Young children who have been made painfully nervous by music, are now filled with rapture by it, and are sometimes easily and deeply moved to tears. There is a new love of rhythm and of melody, a high sense of the possibilities of music as a means of expression, delight in opera, etc.
Music is more closely connected with pure sensation than any other art. Hearing plays a far more important part in musical esthetics than even the theory of perspective does in painting. It does not necessarily and directly excite images like poetry, or give pleasure in form like painting and statuary, although it is far more than " a psychic process collected from immediate sensation."1 In its origin it is closely connected with the dance, which has been called mute poetry. Sometimes music, but far more often words, come first, instrumental or " absolute music " arising late. It is hard to combine its esthetic, psychical, and physiological aspects in one inclusive theory, but perhaps Billroth is right that the amount of harsh- ness a hearer endures or loves is a matter of taste and habit, 1 See Billroth: Wer ist Musikalisch? oder psycho-physiologische Aphorismen tiber die Musik. Vienna, 1901.
24 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE so that the boundary between harmony and discord has often changed. So tone scales most, and harmonious interweaving next, do not rest upon fixed laws of nature, but upon esthetic principles which are subject to change and will continue to de- velop still more in the future. Of its many factors the rhythm- sense is far most common. Only two per cent of the Austrian recruits can not learn to march rhythmically and so have to be transferred to the cavalry. Among children in this country this proportion is far greater.1 The clog and jig dancing in- stinct is strongest and most often manifested at the dawn of puberty, as is the love of dancing generally. In 45 cases of enthusiasm in playing the banjo or drum, " the interest was awakened in every instance in the period of early adolescence, between the ages of thirteen and seventeen." This is usually the case, according to Sears, with interest in playing other musical instruments. He also found that of 356 cases report- ing increased interest in music, the average age in girls was twelve and in boys thirteen, and also that " a special interest in dancing is likely to arise when the child is thirteen or four- teen/' a little later in boys than in girls. Sometimes there is a sudden and revolutionary change from strong dislike to passionate and consuming love, and many devote themselves to a musical career for a time during adolescence. This calen- ture of enthusiasm may last for years even in those slightly gifted. No genius is more precocious than that for music, and with talent, progress during the early teens is often pro- digious. For the average youth there is probably no such agent of educating the heart to love of God, home, nature, country, and of cadencing the whole emotional nature, and hence there is no aspect of our educational life more sad than the neglect or perversion of musical training from this, its supreme end.
V. The Voice. — Here best we may consider the voice, which, as the facts of deaf-mutism show, is developed under the tutelage of the ear. The first sounds in the insect world seem to be sexual, for they are made only by the male and only 1 Studies in Rhythm, by Charles H. Sears. Fed. Sem., March, 1901, espe- cially p. 19 tt seq.
CHANGES IN THE SENSES AND THE VOICE *5 at sexual maturity. Stridulation, which may have developed from the rattling of the parts of a horny sheath caused by locomotion, is made in many ways, but always by rubbing serrated or pectinated edges, whether of wings, thighs, or body, which perhaps fiddle on each other alternately. Some cicadae can be heard a mile, and were kept in cages for their song by the Greeks and Chinese. Other insects approximate a true voice by sexual calls made by forcing air through their spira- cles with abdomens distended as resonators, so that more than half the body is a musical instrument. The note of these in- struments, like that of bees in humming, is modified by excite- ment, and often seems to express feeling. Some think the noise of the death-tick a sexual call. Some fish make noises audible for many fathoms, and male frogs chirp and croak in the spring. Most clucks, chirps, crowing, and whistling, as well as songs, are commonly love calls. A former test of a good bird singer, Darwin tells us, was to see if it will continue to sing while the cage is swung around the owner's head, and birds matched in rivalry will sometimes sing for hours till one drops exhausted or dead. A canary sang continuously for four- teen hours. The best singers are commonly not brilliant in hue, but charm with their voice. If song is not confined to the breeding season, the very voice often changes then. Drum- ming, rattling quills, the whirring of the birds made by feathers especially shaped to cut the air, as they plunge or turn in it, like most noises in the insect world which is so similar to that of birds, primarily serve the reproductive function. The larynx of some animals enlarges during rut, and others are mute save in the breeding season. The voice is often to strike terror be- fore battle or in challenge. Some monkeys make the woods vocal in the spring. Darwin holds that music, instead of origi- nating in speech cadences, as Spencer thinks, sprung from and is reminiscent of the psychoses of old courtships of a long- past age. However this may be, sound in both the animal and human world is a potent agent of love. The song of crickets, birds, and the pleasure of the other sex in hearing it, suggests to Weismann that not only the voice but other kinds of musical organs have a sexual origin as mediations of selection. Whether we hold with Darwin that song was developed by sexual selection and language was evolved from it, or with 41 26 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE Spencer, Schweibe, and others, that speech was primary, or even with Weismann that the musical sense has no necessary relation to sexual life, but was a complementary product of the organ of audition, we know that timbre alone has great power in arousing or arresting sexual feeling and that music and love are closely associated. Tissot l thinks birds have a change of voice yearly, and that its relative loss in many species out of the breeding season is a disease. This has been noted in canaries and other captive birds, and especially when molting. Other animals show similar phenomena in the season of molting and shedding the coat.
It is impossible to glance at the later theories concerning the origin of speech and the recent studies of vocalization among animals without being convinced that, of all the many factors involved in this very complex theme, sex has played a far more important role than has even yet been recognized. Its profound modification by castration, and by abnormalities of the vita sexualis, the change of voice that accompanies puberty and its modification at senescence, the volumi- nousness of song and sex-calls among animals in the breeding season, all suggest that while it is as yet by no means proven that voice orig- inated as a sex charm, this factor has nevertheless had immense influ- ence in its development. During menstruation it is often less brilliant, thin, and more prone to be flat in singers, and is often sharp in states of dysmenorrhoea. The pubertal change is almost as much less marked in the female as the mammary change is in the male. Before this period the larynx of the sexes differs but little, and from three to eleven the change in both sexes is slight. Puberty, however, brings a sudden enlargement of the glottis, which in the male nearly doubles its propor- tions, and in girls enlarges in the ratio of from five to seven. Its transverse diameter remains more nearly the same for both sexes. It has been thought that the shriller, higher pitch of the female voice, ob- servant in many animals as well as in man, has had something to do in determining the sharper quality of feminine terminations in the lan- guages, where gender is thus distinguished. The voice is more devel- oped in civilized than in savage races, and is probably slowly becoming lower in pitch in Europe.
Intricate as is the anatomy of the larynx at puberty, these changes are easy to understand. Its skeleton grows forward, giving greater prominence to the Adam's apple, where the vocal cords have their anterior insertion in the thyroid cartilage. In the female larynx the same change occurs, but is much less marked and generally more grad- ual, the larynx remaining a little higher up in the neck. The growth 1 Essai sur la Mue de la Voix. Encyclopedic des Sciences Me"d., 1840, viii, CHANGES IN THE SENSES AND THE VOICE 27 to double the length or more involves the fall of an octave in the pitch of the voice and a more or less prolonged period before fulness and quality are well established on the new basis. The first symptom of the impending change is slight hyperemia of the larynx, which causes the voice to become slightly raucous and hoarse. This may vanish in a few days, when it is noticed that the voice is a little lower but more uncertain. Often the vocal cords and cartilages to which they are attached do not grow in exact proportion the one to the other. The tension is unsteady and the voice occasionally breaks to a childish treble, often with notes higher than were normal before the change began. Slowly phonation takes on a distinctly adult character. Those probably go too far who assert that as the voice goes down in pitch it keeps exact pace step by step with genital development, and that the deeper it is the more complete the unfoldment of virility. Bierent even goes so far as to think it a general rule, although not without numerous exceptions, that a very robust man with very abundant hair and well- developed sexual functions usually has a bass voice, and that dark- haired people usually are bassos or contraltos, and blondes are more likely to have high vofces. Tenors, at any rate, need to be far more careful to avoid errors and excess in order to keep their voice at the top of its condition than those who sing bass. According to Delauney, the voice of those made eunuchs before puberty is always between tenor and soprano, because the larynx does not develop and the voice re- mains childish. Despite the fact that ovariotomy is now so frequent, its effects on the voice are not clear. It seems probable, however, that it causes a slightly more masculine timbre without involving much change of pitch. Masini has shown that the voices of prostitutes tend to be still more mannish.
The influence of anomalies in the development of the sex organs upon character and all the secondary sexual qualities is very marked and almost inevitable. Castration before puberty, very common in some parts of Italy, even by barbers, whose signs still advertise com- petitively the cheapness of the operation, which is performed not only to make singers for the famous Sistine choirs and elsewhere, but to supply the market in Oriental seraglios, etc., arrests the larynx at about two-thirds its normal diameter and prevents change of voice, and may even cause its pitch to grow actually higher. Vocal spasms, persistent hiccup, the harsh voice of women of the street, are also in close sym- pathetic relation with the state of the organs of reproduction. From a table of Marro,1 based however on only about one hundred cases, it would appear that the voice of Italian girls begins to descend at twelve or thirteen, and may reach its lowest point as late as sixteen or seven- teen. Vierordt's table upon this point is based on still fewer cases, and is far more indeterminate.
The best attempt yet made to determine the changes in chil- dren's voices as modified by age through the period of muta- 1 La Pubert£, p II.
28 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE tion is that of Paulsen,1 who carefully tested 250 individuals in each school class in Kiel, or in all 2,685 boys between six and fifteen, and 2,259 girls frorn six to fourteen. He used only children with intact respiratory and vocal apparatus, and with the aid of a singing-master utilized for upper and lower limits only those notes that could be produced without special effort. Children in the two lowest classes sang simple songs variously pitched for the purpose, and older children sang the scales in the vowel a. He found that 50 per cent began to quaver at the age of thirteen; 70 per cent at fourteen; 80 per cent at fifteen. During change he found the throat often swol- len, but not the cords, which McKenzie said were affected. Control is lost but afterward regained. Girls from six to nine increase in height only, then drop to g, where they remain till thirteen, when their lower limit falls to e, deepening in all only two and a half notes. The boys' voices on the average were more limited both up and down. Their increase upward at first keeps pace with that of the girls, but the greatest height is reached a year later, at twelve; then it sinks through four and a half notes, till at thirteen its greatest depth attained is at d. Near the end of the childish period the voice has a range of nearly three octaves. Girls reach their greatest range at thir- teen, and boys at fourteen.
Individual differences are very great: at ten, e. g., of girls 5.6 per cent can sing only an octave or less; 85.6 per cent from one to two octaves; and 8.8 over two octaves; while of boys at ten, 12.5 can not exceed an octave; 83.7 sing between one and two octaves; and only 3.9 per cent sing over two octaves. Eliminating individual differences, the following table gives the range available for singing for each age and for both sexes. The first table represents the actual range minimal and max- imal, and the second the limits within which average children can safely sing; the staff being appended for convenience.
1 Ueber die Singstimme der Kinder. Pfliiger's Archiv, 1895, vol. xi, p. 407.
CHANGES IN THE SENSES AND THE VOICE 29 GIRLS.
h d2 ges.
d2 II.
AGE.
Bovs.
6.
di-g1 7- 8.
9- IO.
TC d1 GIRLS.
d2 f2 d1 r3 C2 d1 e2 r1 d2 d1 f2 rl e2 di"2 f3 C1 e2 h f2 r\ /, /, Q,^ & y gr or h fi / SJ2 3° THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOLESCENCE Other studies show slightly different limits. Behnke and Lenox Brown 1 found that from seven to ten the difference in the sexes began to be marked, and from ten to thirteen gave boys a practical range of from a to d, and girls from c to f. Another investigator concludes that in the fifth year children command from four to six notes, at eight years from seven to nine, and at twelve from eleven to fourteen notes. Vierordt thinks girls produce their highest notes at the age of ten. Muller measured the length of the vocal cords and found that just before puberty it was.7 in. in boys and.625 in. in girls. Later the relation of the length of these cords was as 7: 5 at rest, and as 3: 2 in tension. The mean length at rest in males he found to be.728, and in females.495, and at greatest ten- sion.912 and.616 respectively.2 Since the important work of G. Manuel Garcia,3 we understand the mechanism of falsetto, or head and chest tones. We need, but still lack, a study of the adolescent voice as thorough and painstaking as that which Garbini 4 has made of the child's voice to the age of six.
Mutation is often very gradual. Perhaps a slight hoarse- ness is noticed for a few days or weeks, and the voice is then found to be permanently lowered. Sometimes the voice is literally broken, perhaps into three or even more parts, with gaps between them, and slowly the intervals fill in. Some boys sing treble till nineteen. McKenzie found that of 300 choir boys only 17 per cent really showed a " tip over " of voice. Some voices are raucous, and there is more or less irritation, loss of control, and cases are on record where six or seven years elapsed before phonation was established on the new basis. Some, on the other hand, girls far more often than boys, continue to sing through these changes with no apparent injury. The voice grows powerful and rich in both sexes, and its timbre as well as its pitch changes.
Pubescent boys are especially prone to yell and indulge in vocal gymnastics of a drastic kind. They often become experts in imitating animals, the other sex, instruments, locomotives, and sounds in nature.
1 The Child's Voice. London, 1885.
2 The Physiology of the Human Voice. Phil. Trans., 1896, p. 551.
3 Observations on the Human Voice. Prqc. Royal Soc. of London, vol. vii, 4 Evoluzione della voce nella infanzia. Verona, 1892.
CHANGES IN THE SENSES AND THE VOICE 31 The intense emotions, such as jealousy and rage, are vocally simulated, and there are innumerable affectations and a new vocal consciousness. Tones in conversation with the other sex, as appears from our returns, may be almost oleaginous or excessively deep and hard, according to temperament and occasion. Articulation otten suffers for a season. Inflection is sometimes reduced and then excessive. Girls simper, affect boyish phonation, and then may become mincing and overnice. Speech, music, cadence, rhythm, and perhaps rate of utterance, are re- constructed. Many bad habits, some suggesting arrest, are settled into. Voices may become nasal, throaty, coarse, aspirate, guttural. Vowel- ization lacks resonance, or pronunciation is slovenly, etc. In common conversation, young people often seem playing on the voice as if to explore its possibilities in all directions. In all these respects the voice at the season of change is very responsive to bodily states, reflecting the general tone, mood, sentiment, feeling, and state of health as at no other age of life. On cloudy days and in hot weather and when hungry, children easily flat, and tense, nervous states give the voice a strident^ perhaps sharp or neurasthenic tang, so that regimen, dress, food, sleep,