Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/584

C. STUMPF, MUSIKPSYCHOLOGIE IN ENGLAND. 583 disagreeable ; but if so, what is to hinder this agreeable effect from reaching the intensity of what we recognise as musical delight ? There are, it is true, grounds for thinking that this delight is not wholly the immediate accompaniment of melodic combination, but if so, it would be better to seek the mediate link in the mental life of the individual than in the problematic experience of remote sub-human ancestors. Even on its own ground the Darwinistic theory encounters serious objections. If the history of the individual epitomises that of the race we should, according to Darwin's account of musical delight, expect this to be much greater in the child than in the adult. If, further, we inspect the quality of musical feeling we find that it contains little if any trace of those voluptuous sensations which according to Darwin make its chief ingredient. The emotional effects of music are too various and uncertain to be explained in this easy manner. As a final objection, our critic urges that the so-called animal music cannot strictly be regarded as music in our sense. He thinks that the attempts to render the song of birds, <fec,, in our musical notation are forced. So far as we can judge, animals find their joy in tones as such and not in intervals. Here Prof. Stumpf seems to me to be less impartial than usual. If, as seems certain, there is a predominance of good musical inter- vals in the song of our favourite warblers, this ought surely to . count as evidence of a genuine musical taste. The last part of the essay is taken up with an examination of Mr. Gurney's important work, of which it seems he had know- ledge before the present writer in this Journal ventured to call his attention to the treatise. As might be expected from his attitude towards the pure evolutionists, our author is to a large extent in sympathy with Mr. Gurney's views. He recognises in him a Fachmann who is competent to deal with the subject. More particularly he evidently approves and enjoys the English- man's fine and penetrating criticism of received theories. Yet with the main outcome of Mr. Gurney's reasonings he is wholly at variance. To pronounce musical impressions to be un- analysable and to fall back on the hypothesis of a unique musical faculty appears to our author to be to abandon the musical problem altogether. Mr. Gurney's " crass nativism " is subjected to a severe criticism in which the writer displays his gifts of skilful analysis and nice logical appreciation at their best. And he is no less forcible in trying to show that Mr. Gurney, who recognises in the delight of music something more than a merely sensuous pleasure, viz., the appreciation of melodic form or ideal movement, has no excuse for following Mr. Darwin in his recourse to the emotional experiences of primitive man. Of the difficulties of combining these two points of view Prof. Stumpf makes the utmost. It is in Mr. Gurney's version of the Darwinian theory that the contradiction of a growing instead of a declining musical delight as the art advances becomes most patent and