[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.”

[126] The Tasmanians, p. 20.

[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 AElian 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 AElian, 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.