“The capacity and love for singing, or music, though not a sexual character in man,” in the sense of being confined to one sex, yet is supposed to have arisen through sexual selection in the following way: “Human song is generally admitted to be the basis or origin of instrumental music. As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.” Man is supposed to have possessed this faculty of song from a very remote time, and even the most savage races make musical sounds, although we do not enjoy their music, or they ours. “We see that the musical faculties, which are not wholly deficient in any race, are capable of prompt and high development, for Hottentots and Negroes have become excellent musicians, although in their native countries they rarely practise anything that we should consider music. Hence the capacity for high musical development, which the savage races of man possess, may be due either to the practice by our semi-human progenitors of some rude form of music, or simply to their having acquired the proper vocal organs for a different purpose. But in this latter case we must assume, as in the above instance of parrots, and as seems to occur with many animals, that they already possessed some sense of melody.” Darwin sums up the evidence in the two following statements, the insufficiency of which to explain the phenomena is I think only too obvious: “All these facts in respect to music and impassioned speech become intelligible to a certain extent, if we assume that musical tones and rhythm were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by the strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumph. From the deeply laid principle of inherited associations, musical tones in this case would be likely to call up vaguely and indefinitely the strong emotions of a long past age.” Thus the difficulty is shifted to the shoulders of our long-lost savage ancestors; or even, in fact, to our simian forefathers, as the following paragraph indicates:—