So far as my own inquiries go, only a small proportion of men would
appear to experience definite sexual feelings on listening to music. And
the fact that in woman the voice is so slightly differentiated from that
of the child, as well as the very significant fact that among man's
immediate or even remote ancestors the female's voice can seldom have
served to attract the male, sufficiently account for the small part played
by the voice and by music as a sexual allurement working on men.[122]
It is otherwise with women. It may, indeed, be said at the outset that the
reasons which make it antecedently improbable that men should be sexually
attracted through hearing render it probable that women should be so
attracted. The change in the voice at puberty makes the deeper masculine
voice a characteristic secondary sexual attribute of man, while the fact
that among mammals generally it is the male that is most vocal--and that
chiefly, or even sometimes exclusively, at the rutting season--renders it
antecedently likely that among mammals generally, including the human
species, there is in the female an actual or latent susceptibility to the
sexual significance of the male voice,[123] a susceptibility which, under
the conditions of human civilization, may be transferred to music
generally.
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