Mr. Spencer s remarks. It is curious how early in life the modulation
of the voice becomes expressive. With one of my children, under the age
of two years, I clearly perceived that his humph of assent was rendered
by a slight modulation strongly emphatic; and that by a peculiar whine
his negative expressed obstinate determination. Mr. Spencer further
shows that emotional speech, in all the above respects is intimately
related to vocal music, and consequently to instrumental music; and he
attempts to explain the characteristic qualities of both on
physiological grounds namely, on the general law that a feeling is a
stimulus to muscular action. It may be admitted that the voice is
affected through this law; but the explanation appears to me too
general and vague to throw much light on the various differences, with
the exception of that of loudness, between ordinary speech and
emotional speech, or singing.
This remark holds good, whether we believe that the various qualities
of the voice originated in speaking under the excitement of strong
feelings, and that these qualities have subsequently been transferred
to vocal music; or whether we believe, as I maintain, that the habit of
uttering musical sounds was first developed, as a means of courtship,
in the early progenitors of man, and thus became associated with the
strongest emotions of which they were capable, namely, ardent love,
rivalry and triumph. That animals utter musical notes is familiar to
every one, as we may daily hear in the singing of birds. It is a more
remarkable fact that an ape, one of the Gibbons, produces an exact
octave of musical sounds, ascending and descending the scale by
halftones; so that this monkey alone of brute mammals may be said to
sing. [403] From this fact, and from the analogy of other animals, I
have been led to infer that the progenitors of man probably uttered
musical tones, before they had acquired the power of articulate speech;
and that consequently, when the voice is used under any strong emotion,
it tends to assume, through the principle of association, a musical
character. We can plainly perceive, with some of the lower animals,
that the males employ their voices to please the females, and that they
themselves take pleasure in their own vocal utterances; but why
particular sounds are uttered, and why these give pleasure cannot at
present be explained.
That the pitch of the voice bears some relation to certain states of
feeling is tolerably clear. A person gently complaining of
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