Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/241

Rh case of language, we must say that any new form in the organism which conduced to the evolution of this faculty would be of such moment that, unless it entailed seriously deleterious effects, its permanence would be ensured.

To sum up, the loss of the ear's mobility has resulted in the fuller appreciation of the succession of sounds, and thus has been in an important sense a condition of the social, intellectual and esthetic development which has come with the use of language and music; and it is in. a high degree probable, though the data are insufficient for conclusive demonstration, that it is to the advantage given in the struggle for existence by the first stages of this development that we are to attribute the permanent alteration in the structure of the ear.

We thus see that the sense organ having originally the form best adapted to the conditions in which the organism lived changed its form to meet the conditions of a higher stage of evolution. It may be that in this form it is most in accord with the special stimulations which appeal to it; it is certainly in this form that it can minister to the highest spiritual activities.