Aristotle took a wider view of music than Plato and admitted a greater variety of uses for it. He was less anxious to exclude those uses which were not strictly ethical. He disapproved, indeed, of the Phrygian harmony as the expression of Bacchic excitement. He accepts, however, the function of music as a katharsis of emotion, a notion which is said to have originated with the Pythagoreans. (For a discussion of Aristotle's views on music, see W.L. Newman, _The Politics of Aristotle_, vol. i, pp. 359-369.)
Athenæus, in his frequent allusions to music, attributes to it many intellectual and emotional properties (e.g., Book XIV, Chapter XXV) and in one place refers to "melodies inciting to lawless indulgence" (Book XIII, Chapter LXXV).
We may gather from the _Priapeia_ (XXVI) that cymbals and castanets were the special accompaniment in antiquity of wanton songs and dances: "_cymbala, cum crotalis, pruriginis arma_."
The ancient belief in the moralizing influence of music has survived into modern times mainly in a somewhat more scientific form as a belief in its therapeutic effects in disordered nervous and mental conditions. (This also is an ancient belief as witnessed by the well-known example of David playing to Saul to dispel his melancholia.) In 1729 an apothecary of Oakham, Richard Broune, published a work entitled _Medicina Musica_, in which he argued that music was beneficial in many maladies. In more recent days there have been various experiments and cases brought forward showing its efficacy in special conditions.
An American physician (W.F. Hutchinson) has shown that anæsthesia may be produced with accurately made tuning forks at certain rates of vibration (summarized in the _British Medical Journal_, June 4, 1898). Ferrand in a paper read before the Paris Academy of Medicine in September, 1895, gives reasons for classing some kinds of music as powerful antispasmodics with beneficial therapeutic action. The case was subsequently reported of a child in whom night-terrors were eased by calming music in a minor key. The value of music in lunatic asylums is well recognized; see e.g., Näcke, _Revue de Psychiatrie_, October, 1897. Vaschide and Vurpas (_Comptes Rendus de la Société de Biologie_, December 13, 1902) have recorded the case of a girl of 20, suffering from mental confusion with excitation and central motor disequilibrium, whose muscular equilibrium was restored and movements rendered more co-ordinated and adaptive under the influence of music.
While there has been much extravagance in the ancient doctrine concerning the effects of music, the real effects are still considerable. Not only is this demonstrated by the experiments already referred to (p. 118), indicating the efficacy of musical sounds as physiological stimulants, but also by anatomical considerations. The roots of the auditory nerves, McKendrick has pointed out, are probably more widely distributed and have more extensive connections than those of any other nerve. The intricate connections of these nerves are still only being unraveled. This points to an explanation of how music penetrates to the very roots of our being, influencing by associational paths reflex mechanisms both cerebral and somatic, so that there is scarcely a function of the body that may not be affected by the rhythmical pulsations, melodic progressions, and harmonic combinations of musical tones. (_Nature_, June 15, 1899, p. 164.)
Just as we are not entitled from the ancient belief in the influence of music on morals or the modern beliefs in its therapeutic influence--even though this has sometimes gone to the length of advocating its use in impotence[118]--to argue that music has a marked influence in exciting the specifically sexual instincts, neither are we entitled to find any similar argument in the fact that music is frequently associated with the love-feelings of youth. Men are often able to associate many of their earliest ideas of love in boyhood with women singing or playing; but in these cases it will always be found that the fascination was romantic and sentimental, and not specifically erotic.[119] In adult life the music which often seems to us to be most definitely sexual in its appeal (such as much of Wagner's _Tristan_) really produces this effect in part from the association with the story, and in part from the intellectual realization of the composer's effort to translate passion into æsthetic terms; the actual effect of the music is not sexual, and it can well be believed that the results of experiments as regards the sexual influence of the _Tristan_ music on men under the influence of hypnotism have been, as reported, negative. Helmholtz goes so far as to state that the expression of sexual longing in music is identical with that of religious longing. It is quite true, again, that a soft and gentle voice seems to every normal man as to Lear "an excellent thing in woman," and that a harsh or shrill voice may seem to deaden or even destroy altogether the attraction of a beautiful face. But the voice is not usually in itself an adequate or powerful method of evoking sexual emotion in a man. Even in its supreme vocal manifestations the sexual fascination exerted by a great singer, though certainly considerable, cannot be compared with that commonly exerted by the actress. Cases have, indeed, been recorded--chiefly occurring, it is probable, in men of somewhat morbid nervous disposition--in which sexual attraction was exerted chiefly through the ear, or in which there was a special sexual sensibility to particular inflections or accents.[120] Féré mentions the case of a young man in hospital with acute arthritis who complained of painful erections whenever he heard through the door the very agreeable voice of the young woman (invisible to him) who superintended the linen.[121] But these phenomena do not appear to be common, or, at all events, very pronounced. So far as my own inquiries go, only a small proportion of men would appear to experience definite sexual feelings on listening to music. And the fact that in woman the voice is so slightly differentiated from that of the child, as well as the very significant fact that among man's immediate or even remote ancestors the female's voice can seldom have served to attract the male, sufficiently account for the small part played by the voice and by music as a sexual allurement working on men.[122] It is otherwise with women. It may, indeed, be said at the outset that the reasons which make it antecedently improbable that men should be sexually attracted through hearing render it probable that women should be so attracted. The change in the voice at puberty makes the deeper masculine voice a characteristic secondary sexual attribute of man, while the fact that among mammals generally it is the male that is most vocal--and that chiefly, or even sometimes exclusively, at the rutting season--renders it antecedently likely that among mammals generally, including the human species, there is in the female an actual or latent susceptibility to the sexual significance of the male voice,[123] a susceptibility which, under the conditions of human civilization, may be transferred to music generally. It is noteworthy that in novels written by women there is a very frequent attentiveness to the qualities of the hero's voice and to its emotional effects on the heroine.[124] We may also note the special and peculiar personal enthusiasm aroused in women by popular musicians, a more pronounced enthusiasm than is evoked in them by popular actors.
As an interesting example of the importance attached by women novelists to the effects of the male voice I may refer to George Eliot's _Mill on the Floss_, probably the most intimate and personal of George Eliot's works. In Book VI of this novel the influence of Stephen Guest (a somewhat commonplace young man) over Maggie Tulliver is ascribed almost exclusively to the effect of his base voice in singing. We are definitely told of Maggie Tulliver's "sensibility to the supreme excitement of music." Thus, on one occasion, "all her intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet--emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak: strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance. Poor Maggie! She looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by the inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the slightest perceptible quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a little forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while her eyes dilated and brightened into that wideopen, childish expression of wondering delight, which always came back in her happiest moments." George Eliot's novels contain many allusions to the powerful emotional effects of music.
It is unnecessary to refer to Tolstoy's _Kreutzer Sonata_, in which music is regarded as the Galeotto to bring lovers together--"the connecting bond of music, the most refined lust of the senses."
In primitive human courtship music very frequently plays a considerable part, though not usually the sole part, being generally found as the accompaniment of the song and the dance at erotic festivals.[125] The Gilas, of New Mexico, among whom courtship consists in a prolonged serenade day after day with the flute, furnish a somewhat exceptional case. Savage women are evidently very attentive to music; Backhouse (as quoted, by Ling Roth[126]) mentions how a woman belonging to the very primitive and now extinct Tasmanian race, when shown a musical box, listened "with intensity; her ears moved like those of a dog or horse, to catch the sound."
I have found little evidence to show that music, except in occasional cases, exerts even the slightest specifically sexual effect on men, whether musical or unmusical. But I have ample evidence that it very frequently exerts to a slight but definite extent such an influence on women, even when quite normal. Judging from my own inquiries it would, indeed, seem likely that the majority of normal educated women are liable to experience some degree of definite sexual excitement from music; one states that orchestral music generally tends to produce this effect; another finds it chiefly from Wagner's music; another from military music, etc. Others simply state--what, indeed, probably expresses the experience of most persons of either sex--that it heightens one's mood. One lady mentions that some of her friends, whose erotic feelings are aroused by music, are especially affected in this way by the choral singing in Roman Catholic churches.[127] In the typical cases just mentioned, all fairly normal and healthy women, the sexual effects of music though definite were usually quite slight. In neuropathic subjects they may occasionally be more pronounced. Thus, a medical correspondent has communicated to me the case of a married lady with one child, a refined, very beautiful, but highly neurotic, woman, married to a man with whom she has nothing in common. Her tastes lie in the direction of music; she is a splendid pianist, and her highly trained voice would have made a fortune. She confesses to strong sexual feelings and does not understand why intercourse never affords what she knows she wants. But the hearing of beautiful music, or at times the excitement of her own singing, will sometimes cause intense orgasm.
Vaschide and Vurpas, who emphasize the sexually stimulating effects of music, only bring forward one case in any detail, and it is doubtless significant that this case is a woman. "While listening to a piece of music X changes expression, her eyes become bright, the features are accentuated, a smile begins to form, an expression of pleasure appears, the body becomes more erect, there is a general muscular hypertonicity. X tells us that as she listens to the music she experiences sensations very like those of normal intercourse. The difference chiefly concerns the local genital apparatus, for there is no flow of vaginal mucus. On the psychic side the resemblance is marked." (Vaschide and Vurpas, "Du Coefficient Sexual de l'Impulsion Musicale," _Archives de Neurologie_, May, 1904.)
It is sometimes said, or implied, that a woman (or a man) sings better under the influence of sexual emotion. The writer of an article already quoted, on "Woman in her Psychological Relations" (_Journal of Psychological Medicine_, 1851), mentions that "a young lady remarkable for her musical and poetical talents naïvely remarked to a friend who complimented her upon her singing: 'I never sing half so well as when I've had a love-fit.'" And George Eliot says. "There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not make a man sing or play the better." While, however, it may be admitted that some degree of general emotional exaltation may exercise a favorable influence on the singing voice, it is difficult to believe that definite physical excitement at or immediately before the exercise of the voice can, as a rule, have anything but a deleterious effect on its quality. It is recognized that tenors (whose voices resemble those of women more than basses, who are not called upon to be so careful in this respect) should observe rules of sexual hygiene; and menstruation frequently has a definite influence in impairing the voice (H. Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, p. 290). As the neighborhood of menstruation is also the period when sexual excitement is most likely to be felt, we have here a further indication that sexual emotion is not favorable to singing. I agree with the remarks of a correspondent, a musical amateur, who writes: "Sexual excitement and good singing do not appear to be correlated. A woman's emotional capacity in singing or acting may be remotely associated with hysterical neuroses, but is better evinced for art purposes in the absence of disturbing sexual influences. A woman may, indeed, fancy herself the heroine of a wanton romance and 'let herself go' a little in singing with improved results. But a memory of sexual ardors will help no woman to make the best of her voice in training. Some women can only sing their best when they think of the other women they are outsinging. One girl 'lets her soul go out into her voice' thinking of jamroll, another thinking of her lover (when she has none), and most, no doubt, when they think of nothing. But no woman is likely to 'find herself' in an artistic sense because she has lost herself in another sense--not even if she has done so quite respectably."
The reality of the association between the sexual impulse and music--and, indeed, art generally--is shown by the fact that the evolution of puberty tends to be accompanied by a very marked interest in musical and other kinds of art. Lancaster, in a study of this question among a large number of young people (without reference to difference in sex, though they were largely female), found that from 50 to 75 per cent of young people feel an impulse to art about the period of puberty, lasting a few months, or at most a year or two. It appears that 464 young people showed an increased and passionate love for music, against only 102 who experienced no change in this respect. The curve culminates at the age of 15 and falls rapidly after 16. Many of these cases were really quite unmusical.[128] FOOTNOTES: [86] This view has been more especially developed by J.B. Miner, _Motor, Visual, and Applied Rhythms_, Psychological Review Monograph Supplements, vol. v, No. 4, 1903.
[87] Sir S. Wilks, _Medical Magazine_, January, 1894; cf. Clifford Allbutt, "Music, Rhythm, and Muscle," _Nature_, February 8, 1894.
[89] Féré deals fully with the question in his book, _Travail et Plaisir_, 1904, Chapter III, "Influence du Rhythme sur le Travail."
[90] Fillmore, "Primitive Scales and Rhythms," _Proceedings of the International Congress of Anthropology_, Chicago, 1893.
[91] "Love Songs among the Omaha Indians," in _Proceedings_ of same congress.
[93] "Analysis of the Sexual Impulse," _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. iii.
[94] Féré, _Sensation et Mouvement_, Chapter V; id., _Travail et Plaisir_, Chapter XII.
[96] Tarchanoff, "Influence de la Musique sur l'Homme et sur les Animaux," _Atti dell' XI Congresso Medico Internationale_, Rome, 1894, vol. ii, p. 153; also in _Archives Italiennes de Biologie_, 1894.
[97] "Love and Pain," _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, vol. iii.
[98] Féré, _Travail et Plaisir_, Chapter XII, "Action Physiologique des Sens Musicaux." "A practical treatise on harmony," Goblot remarks (_Revue Philosophique_, July, 1901, p. 61), "ought to tell us in what way such an interval, or such a succession of intervals, affects us. A theoretical treatise on harmony ought to tell us the explanation of these impressions. In a word, musical harmony is a psychological science." He adds that this science is very far from being constituted yet; we have hardly even obtained a glimpse of it.
[100] _American Journal of Psychology_, November, 1887. The influence of rhythm on the involuntary muscular system is indicated by the occasional effect of music in producing a tendency to contraction of the bladder.
[102] M.L. Patrizi, "Primi esperimenti intorno all' influenza della musica sulla circolozione del sangue nel cervello umano," _International Congress für Psychologie_, Munich, 1897, p. 176.
[104] Binet and Courtier, "La Vie Emotionelle," _Année Psychologique_, Third Year, 1897, pp. 104-125.
[105] Guibaud, _Contribution à l'étude expérimentale de l'influence de la musique sur la circulation et la respiration_. Thèse de Bordeaux, 1898, summarized in _Année Psychologique_, Fifth Year, 1899, pp. 645-649.
[107] The influence of association plays no necessary part in these pleasurable influences, for Féré's experiments show that an unmusical subject responds physiologically, with much precision, to musical intervals he is unable to recognize. R. MacDougall also finds that the effective quality of rhythmical sequences does not appear to be dependent on secondary associations (_Psychological Review_, January, 1903).
[109] Cornish, "Orpheus at the Zoo," in _Life at the Zoo_, pp. 115-138.
[110] _Descent of Man_, Chapters XIII and XIX.
[111] "The Origin of Music" (1857), _Essays_, vol. ii.
[112] Anyone who is in doubt on this point, as regards bird song, may consult the little book in which the evidence has been well summarized by Häcker, _Der Gesang der Vögel_, or the discussion in Groos's _Spiele der Thiere_, pp. 274 et seq.
[113] Thus, mosquitoes are irresistibly attracted by music, and especially by those musical tones which resemble the buzzing of the female; the males alone are thus attracted. (Nuttall and Shipley, and Sir Hiram Maxim, quoted in _Nature_, October 31, 1901, p. 655, and in _Lancet_, February 22, 1902.)
[114] _Descent of Man_, second edition, p. 567. Groos, in his discussion of music, also expresses doubt whether hearing plays a considerable part in the courtship of mammals, _Spiele der Menschen_, p. 22.
[116] See Biérent, _La Puberté_ Chapter IV; also Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, pp. 270-272. Endriss (_Die Bisherigen Beobachtungen von Physiologischen und Pathologischen Beziehungen der oberen Luftwege zu den Sexualorganen_, Teil III) brings together various observations on the normal and abnormal relations of the larynx to the sexual sphere.
[118] J.L. Roger, _Traité des Effets de la Musique_, 1803, pp. 234 and 342.
[119] A typical example occurs in the early life of History I in Appendix B to vol. iii of these _Studies_.
[120] Vaschide and Vurpas state (_Archives de Neurologie_, May, 1904) that in their experience music may facilitate sexual approaches in some cases of satiety, and that in certain pathological cases the sexual act can only be accomplished under the influence of music.
[121] Féré, _L'Instinct Sexuel_, p. 137. Bloch (_Beiträge_, etc., vol. ii, p. 355) quotes some remarks of Kistemaecker's concerning the sound of women's garments and the way in which savages and sometimes civilized women cultivate this rustling and clinking. Gutzkow, in his _Autobiography_, said that the _frou-frou_ of a woman's dress was the music of the spheres to him.
[122] The voice is doubtless a factor of the first importance in sexual attraction among the blind. On this point I have no data. The expressiveness of the voice to the blind, and the extent to which their likes and dislikes are founded on vocal qualities, is well shown by an interesting paper written by an American physician, blind from early infancy, James Cocke, "The Voice as an Index to the Soul," _Arena_, January, 1894.
[123] Long before Darwin had set forth his theory of sexual selection Laycock had pointed out the influence which the voice of the male, among man and other animals, exerts on the female (_Nervous Diseases of Women_, p. 74). And a few years later the writer of a suggestive article on "Woman in her Psychological Relations" (_Journal of Psychological Medicine_, 1851) remarked: "The sonorous voice of the male man is exactly analogous in its effect on woman to the neigh and bellow of other animals. This voice will have its effect on an amorous or susceptible organization much in the same way as color and the other visual ovarian stimuli." The writer adds that it exercises a still more important influence when modulated to music: "in this respect man has something in common with insects as well as birds."
[124] Groos refers more than once to the important part played in German novels written by women by what one of them terms the "bearded male voice."
[125] Various instances are quoted in the third volume of these _Studies_ when discussing the general phenomena of courtship and tumescence, "An Analysis of the Sexual Impulse."
[127] An early reference to the sexual influence of music on women may perhaps be found in a playful passage in Swift's _Martinus Scriblerus_ (possibly due to his medical collaborator, Arbuthnot): "Does not Ælian tell how the Libyan mares were excited to horsing by music? (which ought to be a caution to modest women against frequenting operas)." _Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus_, Book I, Chapter 6. (The reference is to Ælian, _Hist. Animal_, lib. XI, cap. 18, and lib. XII, cap. 44.)
[128] E. 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 æsthetic 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. This sense has here suffered between the lower senses of touch and smell, on the one hand, with their vague and massive appeal, and the higher sense, vision, on the other hand, with its exceedingly specialized appeal. The position of touch as the primary and fundamental sense is assured. Smell, though in normal persons it has no decisive influence on sexual attraction, acts by virtue of its emotional sympathies and antipathies, while, by virtue of the fact that among man's ancestors it was the fundamental channel of sexual sensibility, it furnishes a latent reservoir of impressions to which nervously abnormal persons, and even normal persons under the influence of excitement or of fatigue, are always liable to become sensitive. Hearing, as a sense for receiving distant perceptions has a wider field than is in man possessed by either touch or smell. But here it comes into competition with vision, and vision is, in man, the supreme and dominant sense.[129] We are always more affected by what we see than by what we hear. Men and women seldom hear each other without speedily seeing each other, and then the chief focus of interest is at once transferred to the visual centre.[130] In human sexual selection, therefore, hearing plays a part which is nearly always subordinated to that of vision.
FOOTNOTES: [129] Nietzsche has even suggested that among primitive men delicacy of hearing and the evolution of music can only have been produced under conditions which made it difficult for vision to come into play: "The ear, the organ of fear, could only have developed, as it has, in the night and in the twilight of dark woods and caves...In the brightness the ear is less necessary. Hence the character of music as an art of night and twilight." (_Morgenröthe_, p. 230.)
[130] At a concert most people are instinctively anxious to _see_ the performers, thus distracting the purely musical impression, and the reasonable suggestion of Goethe that the performers should be invisible is still seldom carried into practice.
VISION I.
Primacy of Vision in Man--Beauty as a Sexual Allurement--The Objective Element in Beauty--Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Various Parts of the World--Savage Women sometimes Beautiful from European Point of View--Savages often Admire European Beauty--The Appeal of Beauty to some Extent Common even to Animals and Man.
Vision is the main channel by which man receives his impressions. To a large extent it has slowly superseded all the other senses. Its range is practically infinite; it brings before us remote worlds, it enables us to understand the minute details of our own structure. While apt for the most abstract or the most intimate uses, its intermediate range is of universal service. It furnishes the basis on which a number of arts make their appeal to us, and, while thus the most æsthetic of the senses, it is the sense on which we chiefly rely in exercising the animal function of nutrition. It is not surprising, therefore, that from the point of view of sexual selection vision should be the supreme sense, and that the love-thoughts of men have always been a perpetual meditation of beauty.
It would be out of place here to discuss comparatively the origins of our ideas of beauty. That is a question which belongs to æsthetics, not to sexual psychology, and it is a question on which æstheticians are not altogether in agreement. We need not even be concerned to make any definite assertion on the question whether our ideas of sexual beauty have developed under the influence of more general and fundamental laws, or whether sexual ideals themselves underlie our more general conceptions of beauty. Practically, so far as man and his immediate ancestors are concerned, the sexual and the extra-sexual factors of beauty have been interwoven from the first. The sexually beautiful object must have appealed to fundamental physiological aptitudes of reaction; the generally beautiful object must have shared in the thrill which the specifically sexual object imparted. There has been an inevitable action and reaction throughout. Just as we found that the sexual and the non-sexual influences of agreeable odors throughout nature are inextricably mingled, so it is with the motives that make an object beautiful to our eyes.[131] The sexual element in the constitution of beauty is well recognized even by those writers who concern themselves exclusively with the æsthetic conception of beauty or with its relation to culture. It is enough to quote two or three testimonies on this point. "The whole sentimental side of our æsthetic sensibility," remarks Santayana, "--without which it would be perceptive and mathematical rather than æsthetic,--is due to our sexual organization remotely stirred...If anyone were desirous to produce a being with a great susceptibility to beauty, he could not invent an instrument better designed for that object than sex. Individuals that need not unite for the birth and rearing of each generation might retain a savage independence. For them it would not be necessary that any vision should fascinate, or that any languor should soften, the prying cruelty of the eye. But sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually toward another; makes it one of the dearest enjoyments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty? The attention is fixed upon a well-defined object, and all the