FOOTNOTES: 

[85] Moll has a passage on this subject, Untersuchungen ueber die Libido Sexualis.  Bd.  I, pp. 376-381.

HEARING.

I.

The Physiological Basis of Rhythm—­Rhythm as a Physiological Stimulus—­The
Intimate Relation of Rhythm to Movement—­The Physiological Influence of
Music on Muscular Action, Circulation, Respiration, etc.—­The Place of
Music in Sexual Selection among the Lower Animals—­Its Comparatively Small
Place in Courtship among Mammals—­The Larynx and Voice in Man—­The
Significance of the Pubertal Changes—­Ancient Beliefs Concerning the
Influence of Music in Morals, Education, and Medicine—­Its Therapeutic
Uses—­Significance of the Romantic Interest in Music at Puberty—­Men
Comparatively Insusceptible to the Specifically Sexual Influence of
Music—­Rarity of Sexual Perversions on the Basis of the Sense of
Hearing—­The Part of Music in Primitive Human Courtship—­Women Notably
Susceptible to the Specifically Sexual Influence of Music and the Voice.

The sense of rhythm—­on which it may be said that the sensory exciting effects of hearing, including music, finally rest—­may probably be regarded as a fundamental quality of neuro-muscular tissue.  Not only are the chief physiological functions of the body, like the circulation and the respiration, definitely rhythmical, but our senses insist on imparting a rhythmic grouping even to an absolutely uniform succession of sensations.  It seems probable, although this view is still liable to be disputed, that this rhythm is the result of kinaesthetic sensations,—­sensations arising from movement or tension started reflexly in the muscles by the external stimuli,—­impressing themselves on the sensations that are thus grouped.[86] We may thus say, with Wilks, that music appears to have had its origin in muscular action.[87]

Whatever its exact origin may be, rhythm is certainly very deeply impressed on our organisms.  The result is that, whatever lends itself to the neuro-muscular rhythmical tendency of our organisms, whatever tends still further to heighten and develop that rhythmical tendency, exerts upon us a very decidedly stimulating and exciting influence.

All muscular action being stimulated by rhythm, in its simple form or in its more developed form as music, rhythm is a stimulant to work.  It has even been argued by Buecher and by Wundt[88] that human song had its chief or exclusive origin in rhythmical vocal accompaniments to systematized work.  This view cannot, however, be maintained; systematized work can scarcely be said to exist, even to-day, among most very primitive races; it is much more probable that rhythmical song arose at a period antecedent to the origin of systematized work, in the primitive military,