Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/311

Rh either a social, an amatory, or a maternal meaning. Thus, through the principle of inherited associations, music asserts its sway over the deepest emotions of the nature—spoken of by Herbert Spencer as arousing "dormant sentiments of which we had not conceived the possibility, and do not know the meaning," and apostrophized as follows by the more impassioned Richter: "Away! thou tellest me of that which I have not and never can have; which I forever seek, and never find!" Its mysterious influence is explained by Darwin as consisting in its power of exciting sensations and ideas which "appear from their vagueness, yet depth, like mental reversions to the emotions and thoughts of a long-past age."

Woman, unable to obtain an influence by those means so readily at the command of man, will have naturally resorted to milder measures, both for securing any desired object, and in self-defense; and music, appealing as it does to the gentler and more tender emotions, will have been often employed in arousing the better nature of him at whose mercy her inferior strength has placed her. Thus she will have held the ruder passions of man in check, and, in taming his wilder nature, will have developed an increasing gentleness both of feelings and of maimers in the entire race.

During the battles of rival males, the female will have occupied the less active but more dignified position of arbiter and judge. Net being in the heat of the conflict, she will have had opportunity to observe the strategy of each, and to weigh their comparative merits. By this exercise of the faculties of observation, comparison, judgment, and reason, her intellectual powers will have been "continually put to the test and selected during" womanhood. Unfairness in the conduct of the battle will doubtless have roused her indignation, and compelled her better feelings in favor of the more honorable combatant. Sympathy for the vanquished will sometimes have taken the place of exultation in the superior prowess of the victor, and admiration for mere muscular power will have had to contend with these finer emotions.

While man has been engaged in contests with the common enemy, during which his fiercest passions will have been aroused, woman has been subjected to the discipline of family life. To meet emergencies successfully, to provide for the sick, to maintain order and discipline in the household, which, at an early period in human history, included slaves as well as children, will have required mental powers of a high order. At the same time she will have developed a milder character through the exercise of the beneficent traits of maternal love, and solicitude for the absent husband and father. These feelings of tenderness and love will have gradually prepared the way for the development of the devotional sentiment, and will have thus furnished a basis for the deeper religious nature which has become a part of woman's birthright.

Darwin says that the foundation of the moral qualities lies in the