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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN SOUND

Sound and
Reason
Synesthesia as Metacognition

Sven Hroar Klempe

Palgrave Studies in Sound

Series Editor
Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard
Musik
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark
Palgrave Studies in Sound is an interdisciplinary series devoted to the
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 Sven Hroar Klempe

Sound and Reason

Synesthesia as Metacognition
Sven Hroar Klempe
Norwegian University of Science and Tech
Trondheim, Norway

ISSN 2633-5875     ISSN 2633-5883 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Sound
ISBN 978-981-19-2339-5    ISBN 978-981-19-2340-1 (eBook)
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To my grandchildren and their parents.
 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a number of people in connection with the devel-

opment of this book. The foundation of the book was laid over several
decades. First and foremost five people contributed to this: James
W. Brown, Even Ruud, Peder Christian Kjerschow, Ove Kr. Sundberg
and Søren Kjørup. In addition, close colleagues at Norwegian University
of Science and Technology (NTNU) have more or less directly lent
important support: Bjørg Helgemo, Vibeke Aalmo, Ingunn Hagen,
Birthe L. Knizek, Torbjørn Rundmo, Olga Lehmann, Dawn Behne,
Nunne Englund, Anne Iversen, Berit Johannesen, Lars Morten Rimol
and Dankert Vedeler. The Department of Psychology, NTNU has con-
tributed financially to the translation of this book from Norwegian to
English. Thank you to translator Mona Engvig and her collaborator
Karen Kozlow, who made this process very flexible and contributed to an
exemplary collaborative project. A big thank you goes to Mark Nicholas
Grimshaw-Aagaard, who invited me to publish this book as part of his
Palgrave series, but also to Roger Gilkeson, Ståle Kleiberg, Rolf Inge
Godøy, Petter Dyndahl, Martin Knakkergaard, Jacob Belzen and Mads-
Ole Østergaard Nielsen. Thank you also to Jaan Valsiner and his entire
worldwide cultural psychology network, which has been an incredible
intellectual inspiration over the past decade, and among whom I will give
a special thank you to Mogens Jensen, Pina Marsico, Luca Tateo, Lívia

vii
viii Acknowledgements

Simão, Danilo Silva Guimarães and Irina Mironenko. I would also like to
thank Petra Filkuková for our thought-provoking collaboration, which
has been absolutely crucial for creating the necessary overall logic in the
book’s reasoning. Finally, I would like to thank my five grandchildren, to
whom this book is dedicated. They were between less-than-one year and
six years of age when I wrote this book. My grandchildren were con-
stantly around me, and at times on top of me, throughout the writing
process. They brought me very close to the content of this book.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
References  15

2 The Understanding of Music in Early Psychology and

Musicology 17
The Importance of the Subjective Experience   18
Aesthetics as Experimental Science   19
The Peculiar Aspects of the Experience of Music   21
Music Becomes Central to Experimental Psychology   22
Music Understood in Light of Numerical Ratios   23
Focus on the Melody   24
The Linguistification of Music   26
The Subjective Experience of Music   27
The Struggle to Understand Music   29
Pure Science and the Autonomy of Music   30
Music Becomes a Central Reference in Herbart’s Philosophy
and Psychology  32
Reasoning’s Associative Relationships in Light of Musical
Harmonies  35
Synesthesia  36
The Theory of Form   37

ix
x Contents

The Systematic Use of the Theory of Form   39

Musical Themes as Contrasting Ideas   40
Delimitation Constitutes a Logical Principle   41
Romantic Music Breaks with the Classic Ideals   43
Ethnic Music Defies Classical Form   44
It Is Difficult to Fit a Fugue into a Specific Form   45
Polyphony as a Basic Feature of Music   46
Music Is Basically Ambiguous   47
Some Preliminary Conclusions   48
References  49

3 The Experimental Psychology’s Use of Music to Uncover

Mental Capabilities 53
Experimental Psychology Focuses on Music   54
The Unifying Focus of the Sub-areas of Psychology   56
Music is Structured Sound   58
Consciousness Uses Structures as a Memorization Tool   60
The Structures in Music are Linked to Mathematics and
Language  62
Music’s Contradictory Layers Makes It Unambiguous   66
The Creative Synthesis   70
Music Opens a Separate Category of Feelings   72
Musical Transposition: A Core Argument for Gestalt   74
Music Demonstrates the Relativity of Perception   76
The Relative Pitch Is Most Functional   81
Polyphony Is Fusion of Diversity   85
Which Mental Abilities Have So Far Been Revealed
Through Music?  86
References  88

4 Polyphony as a Higher Mental Function 91

The Generative Theory of Tonal Music (GTTM)   94
How Significant Are Overlapping Structures in Music?   96
Ambiguous Boundaries Between the Rational and the
Irrational  99
 Contents xi

The Unconscious Perception of Music  101

The Collective Intentionality and the Surprise  103
Network Thinking  105
Network Thinking Includes the Body  107
Musicophilia Among Ordinary Individuals  109
Three Fundamental Principles of Music  112
The Rationale of Sound Runs Counter to Logic  117
Concluding Remarks  120
References 123

5 A Psychological Approach to Complexity: Synesthesia127

A Central Cognitive Function  128
Explanations within Psychology  129
Synesthesia as an Explanation of Unity in Diversity  131
Synesthesia Often Has a Biological Explanation  133
Personal Experiences as a Synesthete  134
How to Conduct Research on Synesthesia?  135
A Qualitative Approach to Synesthesia  138
Older Synesthesia Research Highlights Multimodality  141
Synesthesia in Metaphors and Similes  144
Synesthesia as a Productive Factor  145
Synesthesia—On the Verge of Hallucinations  148
Synesthesia Is an Integral Part of Metaphors  149
Synesthesia Is an Integral Part of Vision  152
A Preliminary Brief Summary  153
The Basis for an Adjustment to the Understanding of
Synesthesia 155
Synesthesia as a System of Symbols  157
Synesthesia as an Individual Self-constituting System  159
Summary Conclusions  163
References 164

6 Sound and Communication167

The Place of Rhyme in a Rational Language  169
An Examination of the Effect of End Rhyme  171
xii Contents

The Effect of Alliterations  176

Rhyme as a Literary Effect  178
The Sonorous Anchoring of a Product  180
Attribution Displacement and Synesthesia  183
Sneak Preview  184
Consolidation of Sensory Impressions in Reasoning and
Communication 188
Previous Studies Emphasize the Individual Aspects  189
Systems Are Based on Self-organizing Principles  191
Irrational Connections Are as Natural as Rational
Connections 195
Some Conclusions  197
References 198

7 Systems and Complexity201

Musical Modernism  202
Different Musical Systems  204
Social Anchoring of Rational Consciousness  205
The Unconscious  207
The System  208
The Legacy of Kant  210
Textbooks and Various Systems  213
Music Can Supersede Language  214
Polyphony Can Override Images  216
Portmanteau Words and Sonorous Polyphony  219
Metaphors and Synthetic Statements  223
Use of Metaphors in Cognitive Science  224
Conceptual Blending Theory  226
Conceptual Blending Theory Does Not Explain Everything  228
References 230

8 Musical Systems233
The Regulated Gregorian Chant  235
The Institutional Regulation of Hymns  237
The System of Rules in Gregorian Chant  239
 Contents xiii

Rules as Natural Conditions  241

Polyphony Represents a Major Change  242
Musicalization and System Change During the Middle Ages  246
The Major-Minor System Frees Music from Nature  248
The Order of the Tonal System Constitutes Itself  251
Modulations Presuppose Ambiguity  254
Variation in Tuning of Instruments  256
The Musical System of the Romantic Period  260
Schönberg and Unlimited Harmonic Systems  264
References 266

9 Music in Literature269
Music in Literature Reflects the Hidden Aspects of Life—
Kristeva 270
Music Demonstrates the Ignorance of Life—Jankélévitch  272
Stream of Consciousness  274
Musicalization in Literary Fiction  276
Literary Scholar Werner Wolf and Musicalization  279
James Joyce’s Ulysses 283
Polyphony in Ulysses 284
The Inner Monologue and Simultaneity  289
Synesthesia in Ulysses 291
Samuel Beckett and Simultaneity  292
Music and Humor  295
Hugo von Hofmannsthal  296
The Mythical  300
Syncretism Ends Up in a Synesthetic Union of Ego Processes  301
Synesthesia in Literature  304
References 306

10 From Synesthesia to Metacognition309

The Visual Arts  313
Synesthesia Is a Pre-Verbal Rationality  314
Delimitation of a System Is Socially Rooted  316
In Search of Cognition’s Underlying Factors  318
xiv Contents

Synesthesia Equals Mental Productivity  322

Metacognition Has to Be More Than Cognition  326
Emotions and Cognition  329
Rules Are Developed via Social Interaction  332
Everything Is Held Together By Emotions  334
Emotions Create Resistance  335
Emotions and Rationality Unite in a Free Play of Signs  337
Synesthesia and Dreams  340
A Hyperassocative Metacognition United By Sound  342
Conclusion 345
References 348

Index353
 List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Persuasiveness. Score based on a seven-point Likert scale 173

Fig. 6.2 Formal quality. Score based on a seven-point Likert scale 174
Fig. 6.3 Content quality. Score based on a seven-point Likert scale 174
Fig. 6.4 Truthfulness. Score based on a seven-point Likert scale. 175
Fig. 6.5 Willingness to follow. Score based on a seven-point Likert scale 176

xv
 List of Example

Example 2.1 A Sami joik with caesura-marks (’). (Launis, 1908, p. 51) 45
Example 3.1 Woody Woodpecker’s laughter, Darrel Calker 1941 59
Example 3.2 The subjective weight distribution of a steady stream of
tones, after Wundt, 1912, p. 4 61
Example 3.3 Minuet from Partita Number 5, bars 41–44, Public
Domain, J. S. Bach, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/
index.php?curid=4321408268
Example 3.4 The rhythmic structure of a Venda children’s song from
South Africa. From Blacking, 1973, p. 29 (c). Reprinted
with permission from University of Washington Press 68
Example 4.1 Overlapping 97
Example 4.2 Elision 97
Example 4.3 Vísur Vatnsenda—Rósu—The music box version 98
Example 4.4 Vísur Vatnsenda—Rósu—Ragnhei∂ur Gröndal’s version 98
Example 4.5 Vísur Vatnsenda—Rósu—Björk’s version 98
Example 4.6 Heinrich Schenker’s Ursatz 114
Example 4.7 Language reflecting unconscious condensation 118
Example 7.1 Musical overlap, ungrammatical sentence 215
Example 7.2 Well-formed deep structure 216
Example 7.3 Well-formed surface structure 216
Example 7.4 Excerpt from I’d Like to Teach, The New Seekers 217
Example 7.5 Two words articulated simultaneously 218
Example 7.6 Three words articulated almost simultaneously 218
Example 9.1 Blended word into a score 287
xvii
 1
Introduction

A few decades ago, a friend of mine presented a series of radio programs

entitled: “Why sing when you can talk?” The topic of this series was
opera, but the question pertains to much more than just opera as an art
form. It is a question many have asked themselves over centuries, without
necessarily finding a definitive answer. Seen from a utility perspective,
there are probably few arguments that can justify music’s place in culture.
Hence, some have viewed music as one of the fairly useless byproducts of
evolution (Pinker, 1997).
Seen in light of strict Darwinism, all genetic innovations are random
byproducts of mutations. It is not always easy to determine which benefi-
cial effects these byproducts may have in the long run. Also, there is usu-
ally not just one beneficial effect. In addition, the favorability can have
different levels, and also have a more subordinate and perhaps more invis-
ible character. It is probably in this perspective that music must be under-
stood, and where it may reveal its true nature: Music in terms of sound is
another underlying factor that emerges in very diverse situations, and
which clearly represents something existing in all, or almost all, cultures.
Without going too much into the evolutionist perspectives, there is
still reason to pursue some basic questions further: Is it not enough to
talk? Do we necessarily have to sing as well? There is a version of this
question that lies behind the writing of this book that interferes deeply

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 1
S. H. Klempe, Sound and Reason, Palgrave Studies in Sound,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2340-1_1
2 S. H. Klempe

with psychological research: To what extent does language alone form the
basis of our cognitive operations? Is it possible to understand cognition
on the basis of other forms of communication and not only presuppose
that the human mind just reflects our use of language? This is the reason
for including an analysis of music in this book.
There is no doubt that music forms an opposition to language, as it has
no concepts. When language is used correctly, there are no other forms of
communication more precise and effective in facilitating meaningful
communication. Neither music, dance, drawing or haute cuisine can
match language when it comes to conveying rational thoughts in an
effective way. One can certainly convey a lot through a beautiful piece of
music, elegant movements of a dance, expressive paintings, or an exqui-
site meal. Yet, it is very difficult to express in rational terms what is con-
veyed through these experiences, simply because we associate rationality
first and foremost with language and precise uses of concepts.
We nevertheless communicate through all these aesthetic forms of
expression—and we will probably never stop doing so. Many will argue
that a rational society without art represents the ultimate form of spiri-
tual poverty, exemplifying a dystopian society, as presented by Aldous
Huxley or George Orwell in their novels Brave New World and 1984,
respectively. But the society neither Huxley nor Orwell depicted is par-
ticularly rational. Irrational attributes tend to invade rationality, no mat-
ter how much we want to cultivate rationality. This goes for language as
well as other forms of expression.
Although language appears to be the foremost bearer of rationality, it
does not always seem to have been implemented rationally, like in the
novels of Huxley and Orwell. This shortcoming pertaining to language
means that it is of particular interest to analyze areas that are far removed
from language, but which, nevertheless, seem to follow several rational
rules. It is against this background that it is interesting to study music
and rationality, and it is in this perspective that this book must be under-
stood. It focuses on learning more about why there is so much interest in
a form of expression that definitely breaks with linguistic and logical
rationality. It is difficult to explain why one can have a great experience of
music. In fact, it is the actual experience of the music that is so grand,
since it surprisingly represents something overwhelming right there and
 1 Introduction 3

then. Music just captures us, and more or less moves us “in einer bessre
Welt” (into a better world).
This is a quote from a song that, better than any other, has caused this
effect through music and lyrics, namely Franz Schubert’s lied “An die
Musik” (To Music) (opus 88, no. 4). It is no coincidence that we associate
the composer Franz Schubert with this particular quote. Few remember
the lyricist, Franz von Schober (1796–1882). In fact, when his name
appears in connection with this song, it is often seen as a misspelling of
the composer’s name. Even if someone else wrote the lyrics, it is still the
composer Franz Schubert who made this quote immortal. It is easy to
identify with the statement that music moves one into a better world,
especially when the accompanying melody enhances the lyrics to such an
extent. Schubert achieved this by allowing these particular words to form
the melodic climax of the song, and then repeating them in a rolling,
descending melodic movement. This rounds off the verse and softens the
melody. Anyone who has heard or performed this song finds it difficult to
forget this very simple phrase: “in einer bessre Welt entrückt, in einer
bessre Welt entrückt” (entranced in a better world, entranced in a bet-
ter world).
This description of Schubert’s “An die Musik” shows a very romantic
understanding of music. The philosopher G. W. F. Hegel argues in his
aesthetics (1970) that music must generally be understood as a romantic
art form. Exactly what Hegel means by this is not entirely clear, but he
stresses that music emphasizes subjectivity, plays on emotions, and is, to
a small extent, able to create clear and vivid ideas. Music also creates what
Hegel refers to as “the feelings of sigh and complain!” (p. 150). Hegel
admits that he has little understanding of the technical aspects of music;
hence, he only relates to how it is experienced. To him, music appears as
a kind of language of emotions, but with such a strong fervor that it pen-
etrates and brings to life what we call “soul”. For Hegel, the romantic
aspect of music is precisely this subjective fervor, which also has a more
general nature but is impossible to elucidate or formulate in words.
Although Hegel’s attempts to build a complete philosophical system
may not be the most interesting in this context, Hegel was nevertheless
able to put into words much that may still be of interest. I will, for exam-
ple, take as a starting point a short, but consistent, argument he used in
4 S. H. Klempe

his critique of Kant’s reasoning. This critique presented by Hegel is cru-

cial, since it allows us to recognize that reasoning and thought processes
can be understood in many different ways. Thus, we are back to the start-
ing point for the focus of this book, which is to understand to what
extent music and musical performance are able to uncover psychological
abilities that have an impact on our reasoning and communication. To
accomplish this requires a review of how the phenomenon of music can
actually be understood.
This is the theme of Chap. 2. It focuses first and foremost on how early
modern musicology in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century
understood music. At this time, musicology began to partly derive its
concept repertoire from linguistics, a field which also developed rapidly
at that time. This represents a turning point for how music is understood.
Ever since Pythagoras and Plato, music had been perceived as a mathe-
matical science. That understanding remained throughout the Middle
Ages but dissolved and changed radically with the advent of modernity in
the seventeenth century and until the present day. It was in this relatively
modern period that music was gradually understood to be a language. As
Hegel pointed out, however, performed music has no concepts, and
many concluded at the same time that the language music represented
must be the language of emotions.
This was a major issue of contention during the eighteenth century,
even if very few believed that music was the same as language. In the
absence of better terms, the linguistic terms used in the theory of form
nevertheless created an understanding that music had a linguistic charac-
ter. It is in this perspective that nineteenth century experimental psychol-
ogy introduces a slightly different understanding of the phenomenon of
music. The experimental psychology emerging at this time was primarily
concerned with the relationship between sensations and ideas by asking
one specific question: What are the relationships between our sensory
impressions and the ideas that are created in our mind?
At the same time, there was a strong focus on the physiological pro-
cesses. There was an emerging insight into how the nervous system works.
Even though this knowledge was limited, it was understood that a sen-
sory impression went through a radical change before ending up as an
idea in our consciousness. This transformation of sensory impression
 1 Introduction 5

through the nervous system is, however, only one complex factor in
understanding what this transformation actually entails. The second fac-
tor is the mind itself. Rationalism presupposed that we possess a number
of mental faculties prior to our experience. In psychology, this was the
focus of so-called faculty psychology. In philosophy, this was expressed
via the ideas that were assumed to be given a priori—that is, prior to our
experience. Hence, the main focus of experimental psychology was to
assess which ideas arise only on the basis of experience, and which form
they then take.
In rationalism, the higher cognitive functions, i.e., language and think-
ing, form a source of error in the achievement of being able to under-
stand how knowledge can be acquired from experiences. Hence,
experimental psychologists were looking for stimuli that activated neither
language nor thinking. This is the reason for their focus on music as “the
direct factor”, a term coined by Gustav Theodor Fechner. He can also be
considered the founder of experimental psychology since as early as 1860
he carried out experiments where the results were analyzed statistically
(Klempe, 2008). Fechner was initially far more interested in painting and
poetry than music. The first experiments he conducted were related to
the meaning of the golden ratio in painting. He even published his own
collection of poems under the pseudonym Dr. Mises.
It was not because of an interest in the arts that music became so cen-
tral to experimental psychology in the nineteenth century. Instead, it was
because music had special qualities that set it apart from all other art
forms at play in the 1860s, since abstract painting and poetry had not yet
emerged. Music can be perceived, but does not activate higher cognitive
functions in the same way that language and reasoning do. Hence, music
was at that time the most important form of stimulus that could contrib-
ute to an understanding of the relationship between sensing and ideas.
Against this background, early experimental psychology also became an
important source for gaining insight into how the phenomenon of music
in the nineteenth century was understood, namely as something distinc-
tively different from all other forms of communication.
Chapter 3 focuses on what experimental psychology reveals in terms of
abilities by focusing on the stimuli of musical elements. It discusses a
number of different aspects of our consciousness, such as how we
6 S. H. Klempe

experience time, space, groupings, numbers, etc. Wilhelm Wundt

believed that pulse and rhythm were so fundamental to the whole organ-
ism that he wrote a brief introduction to psychology based on the metro-
nome (Wundt, 1912). One of the most important findings was how we
are able to create structures and groupings completely independent of
what the stimulus contains. Hence, the mechanical metronome was a
good starting point, since it has a completely even weighting of the clicks
it generates.
Nevertheless, listeners will group the clicks into two, three or four.
This is the creative synthesis, which means that we arrange the impres-
sions from the world around us in such a way that something is more
important or more dominant than something else. This means that some-
thing falls within a group, and that something else falls outside this group.
In this way, we actively sort our impressions of the world. Musical pro-
cesses show how we sort purely intuitively and without further ado. The
elements are seen in relation to each other. The fact that elements are
related to each other and must be understood relative to this relationship
became the most important result of experimental psychology’s use of
musical elements as stimuli.
Carl Stumpf (1883, 1890) continued this reasoning in his two vol-
umes on Tonpsychologie from the 1880s. Here he concluded that both
consonance and dissonance are relative aspects, and the emphasis on rela-
tional aspects became the main argument for being able to discuss gestalts.
Christian von Ehrenfels (1890/1988) presented gestalt psychology’s deci-
sive argument that the whole must be understood as more than the sum
of the underlying elements. He did so by referring to the transposition of
a melody. By transposing a melody from one key to another, all the ele-
ments are replaced. Nevertheless, the melody is perceived as being the
same. Ergo, it is not the elements, but the relationships between them,
namely the intervals, that create the total experience.
There are, however, several aspects of our perception and our process-
ing of sensory impressions that can be revealed through how we listen to
music. One of the most important findings in regard to this is that we
manage to relate to several pieces of information at the same time. This is
evident through the music’s harmonies and polyphonic aspects. Rhythm
also reveals different layers, in the sense that it forms a counter-voice to
 1 Introduction 7

the steady beat that we constantly relate to, no matter how complex that
rhythm may be. When it comes to this, music is fundamentally different
from language, which ideally conveys one piece of information at a time.
As long as psychology is based on language and allows it to form a model
for our understanding of thinking, this may lead to a mismatch between
our understanding and how thinking may work.
This is the focus of the entire book, but it is analyzed from a musico-
logical perspective in Chap. 4. Noam Chomsky has been a leading intel-
lectual in regard to linguistics and psychology. He has, however, also
gained great importance for musicology, perhaps primarily through the
work of composer Fred Lerdahl and the psycholinguist Ray S. Jackendoff
(1983). Together, they developed the generative theory of tonal music
(GTTM). The rule system for this theory does not allow much room for
pluralism. This framework largely corresponds to the theory of form, but
both are the subject of criticism in this context, precisely because they do
not consider the basic complexity that lies in polyphony.
Several other contributors to musicology argued that pluralism is so
fundamental that it cannot be reduced to unanimity. Heinrich Schenker
did this in the most unambiguous way. He let a short two-part poly-
phonic sequence shape what he referred to as a fundamental structure.
Since he proposed that all music could be reduced to just this tonal struc-
ture, he has received justified criticism for his approach. In the context of
this book, the focus is on the principle that polyphonic aspects cannot be
reduced to unanimity. When this fundamental musical structure in prin-
ciple is interpreted to mean that all music is basically polyphonic, it forms
an important starting point. Polyphony can be heard in very different
ways around the world, but almost all music includes polyphonic aspects.
Musical cultures that cultivate unanimity are rare. The fact that we can
enjoy the complexity in polyphonic music demonstrates the most impor-
tant conclusion in Chap. 4, namely that music reveals our ability to make
an almost unmanageable complexity meaningful by combining our
impressions into a perceived higher-level amalgamation.
We must, however, look beyond music in order to understand our
ability to handle complexity by combining factors into a larger whole.
This is why a discussion on synesthesia is the main theme of Chap. 5.
Research on synesthesia primarily took place during three different time
8 S. H. Klempe

periods. The first period is prior to 1850, when individuals began to

describe the phenomenon. They did not, however, completely agree on
what it should be called. The second period is after 1850, when the term
synesthesia is used, and this phenomenon gradually gains a greater focus
within the framework of gestalt psychology. This period more or less ends
with the outbreak of World War II. The third period focusing on synes-
thesia begins at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when neurosci-
ence started to show interest in this phenomenon. For a long time,
synesthesia was seen as a very strange phenomenon, almost as a deviation
from the normal. At the beginning of this last period, a clear distinction
was made between what is called genuine synesthesia and non-genuine
connections of different sensory areas.
Genuine synesthesia means that a specific external sensory stimulus
always activates the same internal sensory perception, for example that
the letter A invokes a feeling of red. In order to be genuine synesthesia,
this connection must last over time. It is uncertain how large a percentage
of the adult population has this form of genuine synesthesia, but it is
likely not more than about 1%. Among children, this phenomenon is far
more widespread, but it is often seen as an aberrant occurrence. This per-
spective has begun to change in recent research. Several theorists argue
that synesthesia is somewhat more basic and general and may thus have a
function for all of us. For example, it can be seen as a more fundamental
way of sorting external impressions, especially in the preverbal phase of
children’s development. As is well known, the human species evolves rela-
tively slowly. Hence, it is possible to trace these synesthetic tendencies
further through a person’s development.
In the gestalt-influenced period of synesthesia research, most empha-
sized the normality of synesthesia and that it exists as a basic, hidden
quantity throughout our lives. Chapter 5 is based on this perspective on
synesthesia, and argues that synesthesia is the result of an internally pro-
duced sensory experience. It is diffuse and underlies other aspects of our
psyche, but is still clear for those who are aware of it. Furthermore, it is
argued that it is a crucial sorting mechanism, which has an impact on,
and must be seen as part of, our higher cognitive functions. It is well
known that synesthesia is also of a completely subjective nature. Some
may think that the letter A is blue, while others may claim that it has a
 1 Introduction 9

completely different color. This also provides a basis for claiming that
each individual’s synesthetic system is of an arbitrary, self-constitutive
nature, but still exists within certain conditions pertaining to our neuro-
logical framework.
Furthermore, it may seem that different sensory areas have slightly dif-
ferent functions. For example, visual impressions can have a categorizing
and separating function, while sound can have merging qualities. The
most important conclusion from Chap. 5’s discussion of synesthesia is
that it provides an understanding of what subjectivity can entail. Further,
the rule systems pertaining to language, logic, music and other areas are
not rooted in each individual, but must be seen as a result of a negotia-
tion between each individual’s private categorization system and the cul-
tural community one interacts with from birth. Seen from this perspective,
synesthesia should be included as a factor in a Vygotskyan understanding
of inner speech, but also in the understanding of the transitional process
from egocentric to socialized rational speech (Vygotsky, 1987).
Since the purpose of this book is to examine the rationale behind our
use of sound, Chap. 6 pursues the hypothesis from Chap. 5 that sound
has some kind of underlying unifying function. Here, the main question
is whether we can learn more about the significance of sound in commu-
nication. The main differences between sound and music are obvious.
Sound is anything we can hear, but for sound to become music, we expect
it to be organized in such a way that the sound has an intrinsic value. It
should either be particularly beautiful, interesting or at least follow some
kind of structure (Stumpf, 2012).
During the twentieth century, this distinction between sound and
music became somewhat blurred. The term “soundscape” created a notion
that the soundscape that surrounds us can also have certain musical qual-
ities. In that case, it should be possible to regulate this soundscape so that
our everyday auditory environment becomes more comfortable. This
involves a change in attitude towards sound. For example, a soundscape
that has largely been ignored is transformed into something we should be
able to relate to consciously, and hopefully even enjoy.
It becomes an empirical question to what extent we actually allow our-
selves to be influenced by sound alone. This formed the basis for a study
conducted by a colleague and me from 2011 to 2013 (Filkukovà &
10 S. H. Klempe

Klempe, 2013). The assumption was that rhyme itself did not convey any
significant information. In order for content to have perceptive signifi-
cance, it must be a tonal coincidence (the actual sound) that has an
impact. We let the participants in the study consider different slogans,
with and without rhyme. We were able to confirm that rhyme had an
aesthetic significance in the sense that the slogan flowed better, was easier
to remember and gave a better impression. What was surprising, how-
ever, was that the slogans that rhymed were perceived to be more truth-
ful, and that subjects reported to be more likely to act on the slogan’s
message when it rhymed.
Based on this, this chapter further refers to how The Coca-Cola
Company, one of the industrial giants of the twentieth century, has mar-
keted itself through a deliberate use of sound and music. Coca-Cola’s
marketing throughout the twentieth century has played on the sublimi-
nal effect that sound has on us. It makes us associate such incomparable
entities as an unhealthy, and perhaps not even a particularly good drink,
with joy, partying and fun. This goes against all rationality. Chapter 6
further examines which mental processes apply in this context. Immanuel
Kant’s distinction between understanding and reason forms a good start-
ing point. Rationality lies in the mind, while reason is difficult to define
and lies behind our rationality. Reason is of the greatest interest in this
context.
The discussion of synesthesia in Chap. 5 forms the basis for the hypoth-
esis pursued further in the following chapters. Synesthesia is a more or
less unconscious connection of incomparable aesthetic entities, where (at
least) one of these is triggered by an external sensory impression and the
other is (or the others are) internally produced imaginations. This mental
operation is seen as a very basic prerequisite for our first rudimentary
categorizations. Furthermore, it is assumed that sound has a special attri-
bute in creating these connections. This happens in such a discreet way
that we are not aware of the special function of sound. Empirical tests of
this phenomenon are also presented in Chap. 6.
These synesthetic operations reveal a mental complexity that we find
few traces of in the models we use to understand the mind. The purpose
of Chap. 7 is to show how mental complexity can be expressed through
polyphonic music. Polyphony contradicts Noam Chomsky’s idea of
 1 Introduction 11

unambiguity in language. This idea has had a major impact on attempts

to create comprehensive models for cognition over the last 60 years. He
analyzed language in light of rule-based systems. The premise of
Chomsky’s transformation grammar is that language can be defined as a
finite number of elements that, by means of certain rules, can generate an
infinite number of sentences (Chomsky, 1957/1975, 1965/1976).
This focus on systems resulted in attempts to identify systems within
all forms of communication. Christian Metz tried to understand the film
as a system, but concluded that this was not possible. The tradition of
understanding communication as governed by rules goes back to, among
others, Kant, who emphasized that the mind is governed by rules.
Although Kant saw reason as something different, Hegel’s critique of
Kant’s relating reason (Vernuft) to understanding (Verstand) is central in
this context. Chapter 7 is based on the hypothesis that our regulatory
systems are refined products of more fundamental, irrational activities,
which can be understood in light of synesthesia. Hence, Chap. 7 is pri-
marily searching for traces of irrational activities in our seemingly ratio-
nal activities.
There are several clues related to this. One is the use of portmanteau
words, that is, two or more words merged into one word. Another is the
use of metaphors, which combine incomparable entities. This can again
be seen as related to synesthesia. This is the case, for example, when we
feel that a tone is light or dark, interpreting something auditory in light
of something visual. Cognitive research, which in many ways is based on
Chomsky’s reasoning, has also focused on the importance of metaphors
in our everyday rational reasoning. This is the basis for the so-called
“Conceptual Metaphor Theory”, which emerged in the 1990s.
Since portmanteau words (also called blending words) can be com-
pared to overlapping structures in music, such words become of particu-
lar interest in this context. Overlap in melodic structures can be seen as a
kind of indirect musical polyphony. Examples of linguistic blending are
also used to exemplify that incomparable systems can be connected in a
way that is acceptable to us. Against this background, Chap. 7 ends with
a presentation of Conceptual Blending Theory, which specifically aims to
reveal how many incomparable quantities are linked even in the most
12 S. H. Klempe

self-evident reasoning. The problem is that this theory analyzes irrational

connections as if they were rational.
Hence, we are facing two incomparable mental realities. On the one
hand, we have the rule-based and rational mental operations. On the
other hand, we have completely private and self-constituted synesthesia.
It is difficult to claim that synesthesia forms a separate system, since each
individual forms his or her own private system. Furthermore, the phe-
nomenon is not well-suited as a starting point for social conversations,
other than as a curiosity. But what if this assumption that synesthesia is
just the tip of the iceberg that represents how we organize our completely
private mental world? If this is the case, then it is not the rationality we
know from unambiguous thoughts and sensible reasoning that constitute
the most basic aspect of the human mind. Rationality is, on the contrary,
a result of social negotiations, and thus purely conventionally rooted.
Chapter 8 attempts to find evidence for this perspective by looking
more closely into the development of Western art music. This includes
Gregorian plain chant, Renaissance polyphony, the major-minor tonality
of Baroque and Classicism, as well as the dissolution of tonality. This
demonstrates how radically the rule systems have changed during the
transitions from one period to another. Each transition represents a fun-
damental shift that includes new rules for how music should be composed.
The rule system of Gregorian plain chant is to a great extent governed
by theological doctrines and political interests, rather than musical con-
siderations. Chapter 8 points out that the unanimity in Gregorian plain
chant is limited to specific countries between the Mediterranean and the
Alps. A few historical examples from other areas point to traces of polyph-
ony, which is also how music was practiced in the Mediterranean coun-
tries before Christianity was accepted by the governing bodies. This
analysis proposes that various musical systems represent individual cul-
tures’ intellectual experimentation with sound. The systems of rules are
clearly agreed upon by society, and the validity of these systems is limited
to particular historical epochs and specific cultures.
This intellectual experimentation with sound characterizes not only
music, but also language. The meaning of sound in language has been
underestimated, precisely because it is assumed that its meaning lies in
the conceptual content and not in the actual wording. This perception
 1 Introduction 13

has had major consequences for how we view reasoning as primarily

focusing on conceptual content. Chapter 9 builds on the discussion in
Chap. 6, arguing that a focus on conceptual content is an overly narrow
perspective on the understanding of language. In Chap. 9, the focus is on
the literary production of the three modernist authors James Joyce,
Samuel Beckett and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. All three authors had a
close relationship with music, but chose three very different angles when
drawing on music in their authorship. Nevertheless, these three approaches
seem to point in the same direction, namely the need to go beyond lan-
guage’s natural use in order to understand the true properties of language.
A closer look at Joyce’s Ulysses shows that he uses language to recreate
the world he describes in tonal entities with a polyphonic feel. Becket
counters the notion that the content of language first and foremost lies in
the content of concepts. He does this by focusing on the emptiness of the
stated and the depth of the unspoken. His play Waiting for Godot is the
best example of this. Hofmannsthal, however, had a quite different
approach. He cut short a brilliant career as a poet and became the libret-
tist of the composer Richard Strauss. In doing so, he focused on language
which was totally subordinate to music. Hofmannsthal did so deliber-
ately, realizing that true love of language is only possible when denying
that the rational conceptual content is the only content. Language also
encompasses sound, colors, movement, smell and taste. These three liter-
ary projects therefore aimed, among other things, to show that language
loses its power if its use excludes these additional dimensions.
This rationale also applies to our understanding of reasoning, which
makes use of all these dimensions as we internally process our external
impressions. This is what the psychologist William James tried to capture
with his concept “stream of consciousness”, which also became a crucial
concept in literary modernism. James sees this concept in the context of
a vital consciousness. James’ concept of consciousness as a stream is, in
principle, not compatible with the common definition of concepts as
being stable and delimiting. Thus, concepts create discontinuity. Streams
of consciousness, on the other hand, are characterized by continuity and
change. Chapter 9 is based on James’ assumptions, and concludes that
synesthesia forms one of the most important clues in gaining a greater
insight into the diversity of language.
14 S. H. Klempe

Based on this, it is important to distinguish between different forms of

rationality. These exist on many different levels, and there are two main
differences that distinguish among them. The differences relate to private
connections of aesthetic impressions such as synesthesia, and to the sys-
tems of rules that delimit and define various intellectual activities, includ-
ing language, logic, mathematics and music. The focus of Chap. 10 is to
identify concepts related to this main distinction between completely
private spheres of association, and socially accepted rules systems. The
phenomenon of synesthesia is seen as one of several evident expressions
of a self-organized and seemingly irrational, aesthetic mental activities
that underlie all our rational activities.
It is further argued that dreams must be seen in a similar perspective.
One of the arguments for including dreams in this context is that newer
research shows a strong neurological connection between received and
self-produced sensory impressions in dreams (Aru et al., 2020).
Synesthesia and dreams both focus on aesthetic impressions and expres-
sions, and both are basically private. Yet, there are also specific differences
between them. For example, dreams relate the aesthetic connections to
much stronger emotional charges than synesthesia does.
This means that it is important to continue the distinction that Kant
made between our rule-based understanding and our more obscure syn-
thesizing and productive reasoning. The problem with Kant’s analysis of
these two mental processes is, as Hegel pointed out, that Kant used con-
cepts related to understanding (Verstand) to analyze reason (Vernunft).
Chapter 10 argues that this fallacy has characterized cognitive psychology
since the 1950s. Mental operations are still analyzed as if they can be
understood in light of linguistic rationality defined by logic. This also
means that the focus on so-called metacognition has not led to a deeper
understanding of these aspects. Chapter 10 argues that metacognition
should instead consider the very basis of each individual’s thought pat-
terns. This includes completely private, seemingly irrational aesthetic
connections that, in reality, are decisive for an individual’s categorical and
synthesizing thought pattern.
The main message of this book is that we need a complete understand-
ing of the diversity of thought patterns within a culture, and across cul-
tures. In order to accomplish this, we need to separate the overt thought
 1 Introduction 15

patterns in various cultures and study these in light of underlying indi-

vidual, completely private aesthetics. Early experimental psychology
demonstrated that analyzing our mental processing of sound is important
in order to gain insight into how we relate to the world in a rational man-
ner. Showing the importance of sound for our mental processes by look-
ing at “music as the direct factor” confirmed some absolutely crucial
principles in psychology. These include the following: Reasoning takes
place in close interaction with our senses, reasoning is a creative process
that adds far more to our perception than first expected, all impressions
are related, and the whole in the form of gestalts is something far more
than the sum of the individual elements. The experimental psychologists
created a solid foundation by focusing only on sound. More work is
needed: A deeper understanding of synesthesia should form the natural
continuation of this research.

References
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mechanism of dreaming? Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews,
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Chomsky, N. (1965/1976). Aspects of the theory of syntax. The MIT Press.
Ehrenfels, C. V. (1890/1988). On gestalt qualities. In B. Smith (Ed.), Foundations
of gestalt theory (pp. 82–117). Philosophia Verlag.
Filkukovà, P., & Klempe, S. H. (2013). Rhyme as reason in commercial and
social advertising. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 54, 423–431. https://
doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12069
Hegel, G. W. F. (1970). Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik III. Werke in zwansig
Bänden 15. Suhrkamp Verlag.
Klempe, H. (2008). Fra opplysning til eksperiment. Om psykologiens oppkomst fra
Wolff til Wundt [From enlightenment to experiment. The emergence of psy-
chology from Wolff to Wundt]. Fagbokforlaget.
Lerdahl, F., & Jackendoff, R. S. (1983). A generative theory of tonal music. The
MIT Press.
Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. Norton.
Stumpf, C. (1883). Tonpsychologie. Erster Band. Verlag von S. Hirzel.
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Stumpf, C. (1890). Tonpsychologie. Zweiter Band. Verlag von S. Hirzel.

Stumpf, C. (2012). The origins of music. D. Trippett (Ed. and Trans.). Oxford
University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Thinking and speech. In R. W. Rieber & A. S. Carton
(Eds.), The collected works of L.S. Vygotsky, vol. 1. Problems of general psychology
(pp. 39–285). Plenum.
Wundt, W. (1912). An introduction to psychology. R. Pintner (Trans.). The
Macmillan Company.
 2
The Understanding of Music in Early
Psychology and Musicology

Every science incorporates a unique understanding of the phenomenon it

analyzes. This understanding can further vary within a science. Psychology
can, for example, focus on an individual’s mental states or mental activi-
ties, biological conditions, cultural and social conditions, or the observ-
able behavior. The focus chosen also defines the phenomenon a researcher
chooses to investigate before even commencing the study. The same is
true for musicology. This field has defined the phenomenon of music
very differently over time.
A few decades ago, people began to discuss “the new musicology”
(Rosen, 2000). This was an attempt to define music as a cultural medium
of expression, where music was seen in the context of the culture and the
social reality in which it appears. In addition, this was an effort to expand
the understanding of music from just focusing on the musical score. Such
extended perspectives on what to analyze tend to result in the integration
of several scientific fields and the application of methods and approaches
from various disciplines. If, for example, one is using a biological perspec-
tive on psychological phenomena, this requires gaining knowledge of,
and using methods from, biology. This also applies to the new musicol-
ogy, which must necessarily draw on methods and findings from a variety
of social science and humanities disciplines.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 17
S. H. Klempe, Sound and Reason, Palgrave Studies in Sound,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2340-1_2
18 S. H. Klempe

In this perspective, the connection between music and psychology is

relevant for developing an extended perspective on music. Psychology is
a basic science that many other fields draw on and analyze their phenom-
enon in light of. Not all sciences have been given such a central role.
Musicology is a good example of a science that very few, if any, scientists
from other fields refer to in an attempt to view their phenomenon from
a new angle. There are, however, a few historical examples of this in the
relationship between psychology and music. This is the focus of this and
the following chapters.
Hence, the purpose of this chapter is to show (1) how musicology has
understood its own phenomenon—music, and (2) how psychology has,
at times, drawn on the unique qualities of music in an attempt to under-
stand psychological aspects of the individual. The focus of this study is to
analyze the rationale that has guided the understanding of music in musi-
cology through the ages. This has involved several different scientific
fields, but the most important connection specifically between music and
psychology took place in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Importance of the Subjective Experience

Music and psychology were both established as modern sciences during
the latter half of the nineteenth century. In addition, these fields were
seen as closely related, not the least through the initial establishment of
experimental psychology in the mid-nineteenth century. Gustav Theodor
Fechner (1801–1887) is credited with laying the foundation for what was
eventually called Tonpsychologie in German (Fechner, 1871/1978),
becoming so central to German experimental psychology. Music psychol-
ogy as a term did not exist at that time. That term appeared in 1930 when
the musicologist Ernst Kurth (1947) published the first edition of a
“Musikpsychologie”. The difference, as Kurth defined it, is that
Tonpsychologie focuses on sensation, whereas Musikpsychologie focuses
on the complete musical experience. Fechner was primarily recognized as
a physician, and best known for linking experimental psychology and
psychophysics. This happened with the publication of his book Elements
of Psychophysics (1860).
 2 The Understanding of Music in Early Psychology and Musicology 19

In the context of this chapter, it is more important to draw attention

to Fechner’s book on aesthetics from 1871 (1871/1978). There are three
important aspects related to the release of this volume. First, it notes that
psychophysics pertains to experiences of sensation, which is why the field
relates more to psychology than to physics. This connection is the basis
for Fechner’s name being linked to Weber’s law on the connection
between physical pressure against the skin and the experience of that
pressure. Weber had previously proposed that the physical and psycho-
logical aspects were almost coincidental, only varying with the density of
nerve fibers in the skin. Fechner, on the other hand, found that a change
in physical pressure did not necessarily mean a change in the experience
of that pressure. This meant that the experience of an increase in pressure
against the skin could not be represented by a curve increasing in a linear
fashion, but instead a curve that flattens despite the increase in physical
pressure. Thus, Fechner presented a definite distinction between what
pertains to physics, and what pertains to psychology. Physics revolves
around the objectively measurable pressure, while psychology focuses on
the subjective experience of this pressure.

Aesthetics as Experimental Science

A second important aspect that can be linked to Fechner is his emphasis
on aesthetics as well as his experimental approach. Historically, this is a
continuation of Alexander Baumgarten’s attempt to unite psychology
and aesthetics in the mid-eighteenth century. Baumgarten is often, and
with strong support, regarded as the founder of modern aesthetics. His
primary intention when he wrote the two volumes of Aesthetica was not,
however, to limit aesthetics to art only. These two volumes were pub-
lished in 1750 and posthumously in 1758, respectively (Baumgarten,
2007). Rather, they were a direct consequence of the significance
Psychologia empirica had received after it was published by his professor,
Christian Wolff, in 1732. With Psychologia empirica, Wolff attempted to
create a basis for scientific knowledge. He created a rationalistic founda-
tion for the empiricism that had already emerged in British philosophy,
20 S. H. Klempe

but which required a more extensive philosophical basis to become com-

patible with the German scientific way of thinking.
Empirical psychology of the eighteenth century focused on how per-
ception could contribute to scientific knowledge. For the German ratio-
nalists, this was primarily related to the higher cognitive functions.
Basically, the meanings of the two Greek terms for ‘empiricism’ and ‘aes-
thetics’ are closely related, in the sense that the first refers to ‘experience’
and the second refers to ‘sensation’. By using his new concept of ‘aesthet-
ics’, Baumgarten sought to further this philosophical change in the basis
of scientific knowledge. First, the concept of ‘aesthetics’ communicates
more directly that the focus is on perception. Secondly, from the begin-
ning of his academic career, Baumgarten was passionate about poetry.
His first dissertation from 1735 was specifically about poetry and the
poetic expression (Baumgarten, 1968).
It is also important to emphasize that the empirical change in philoso-
phy from reasoning to perception met its biggest stumbling block in
Aristotelian logic. Initially, this logic had only accepted conclusions based
on deduction as scientifically valid. However, only reasoning is capable of
following a deductive logic because only reasoning can be based on gen-
eral principles. Perception, on the other hand, deals with individual expe-
riences and is therefore based on particulars. Induction is required to
generalize from perceptions.
This clear distinction between deduction and induction had been
questioned by many long before Wolff and Baumgarten, even before
Hobbes and Locke. Since the logical way of thinking needed to be
changed, Baumgarten introduced the concept of ‘aestheticological’. It
refers to the sensation and experience of the world following a different
logic than purely deductive reasoning, and specifically that the meaning
of the experience of the world is central. Fechner focuses on this perspec-
tive in his attempt to develop his own experimental aesthetics. It is, how-
ever, important to emphasize that Fechner was not alone in continuing
Baumgarten’s idea of consistency between aesthetics and science.
This had been the main topic of discussion in the German tradition
ever since Baumgarten. The formalist Robert Zimmermann (1824–1898)
is a good example of someone who focused on this. At the same time
Fechner published his psychophysics, Zimmermann published a
 2 The Understanding of Music in Early Psychology and Musicology 21

two-­volume work on aesthetics as a basis for philosophical science

(Zimmermann, 1858, 1865). Zimmermann argued for a clear distinc-
tion between psychology and aesthetics by downplaying psychology
(Allesch, 2006), while Fechner, on the contrary, argued for reuniting
these fields.

 he Peculiar Aspects of the Experience

T
of Music
The third and, in this context, perhaps the most important aspect Fechner
introduced was that he referred to music as the direct factor (Fechner,
1871/1978). Admittedly, Fechner himself was not particularly interested
in music. On the contrary, he was interested in, and explored as a hobby,
visual arts and poetry. He aimed to find a perceptible source that could
largely be preserved as a pure sense impression in the process the sense
impression goes through before it becomes a mental notion. In other
words, the goal was to find a stimulus that activates the higher cognitive
functions, such as thinking and language, as little as possible. In his study,
he examined several types of stimuli, such as abstract visual forms in
addition to pure sounds and other musical elements. He found that both
colors and abstract geometric shapes are automatically associated with
specific concepts, for example “red” and “triangle”.
While a dramatic image can produce far more than what can be cap-
tured in words, it will invariably activate concepts that describe what it
represents, and thus what it is about. Although abstract visual art was
uncommon during Fechner’s time, this principle also applies to this type
of art. Abstract art can also be represented in concepts because we have
general knowledge of shapes and colors. This does not apply to music to
the same degree. Conceptually, music is related to a fairly specialized con-
ceptual apparatus, which is possible for musicians to master. In addition,
the specialized, technical concepts of music only reflect the immediate
musical experience to a small extent. Technical music terms primarily
describe the methods more than the experience. Only the most experi-
enced musicians can translate and relate the technical aspects of music to
22 S. H. Klempe

the experience of it. For ordinary people, music is more or less void of
concepts, and instead represents an almost pure feeling of the sensory
experience the music itself provides. In this way, music is different from
other stimuli and becomes “independent of the imagined associations”1
(Fechner, 1871/1978, p. 159). This is why Fechner sees music as “the
direct factor” since it does not activate the higher cognitive functions
such as language and reasoning to the same degree as other stimuli inevi-
tably do. Although we may have specific associations to the music we
listen to, these are our personal associations and have low general validity
other than at a very abstract level.

 usic Becomes Central

M
to Experimental Psychology
In other words, Fechner recognized a clear difference between music and
all other modes of expression when he argued that music best represented
“the direct factor” in experimental psychology. This interest in the direct
factor also meant that experimental psychology, starting with Fechner,
focused primarily on analyzing the relationship between perception and
idea, while focusing less on higher cognitive functions such as language
and reasoning. This was extended by Wilhelm Wundt, who in his writ-
ings primarily refers to psychological experiments that study the percep-
tion of different aspects of sound by means of musical elements (Wundt,
1983a, 1983b).
The focus on music and the uncovering of music as the direct factor
were not primarily caused by Fechner and Wundt’s personal interest in
music. As mentioned, Fechner was less concerned with music, while
Wundt probably had a more personal interest. Instead, it was the charac-
teristics of music that made them both emphasize music as the direct
factor. According to Fechner and Wundt, music was only to a limited
extent associated with language and logical thinking based on linguistics.
From their point of view, there was a clear distinction between language
and music. The two modes of expression represent two different
1
“…die wesentlichen Wirkungen der Musik; sie sind von Vorstellungsassociationen unabhängig”.
 2 The Understanding of Music in Early Psychology and Musicology 23

rationalities, resulting in two different types of experiences. Music is no

less rational than language, but it is rational in a different manner. The
most important difference lies in the fact that music often provides expe-
riences that cannot be captured in words. It is not because music is not
precise enough, but as Mendelssohn allegedly has said, music is rather too
precise to be expressed in words (Chanan, 1994). This means that the
experience of music is sufficient in and of itself, and therefore does not
need to be associated with other forms of expression.

Music Understood in Light of Numerical Ratios

For this reason, and especially after Fechner defined music as the direct
factor in experimental psychology, the significance of music’s elements
gained a central place in psychology almost until World War II. By
around 1940, music vanished almost completely from psychology, and
language was instead defined as the most important gateway to gain
insight into human mental functions. This change in scientific perspec-
tive applied not only to psychology, but also to musicology, where these
changes began earlier.
The main disagreement for understanding music took place around
the time when Fechner was active. The struggle between Brahmsians and
Wagnerians in the latter half of the nineteenth century can be seen as a
symptom of the strong upheavals the understanding of music had under-
gone. Since ancient times, music had been defined as a mathematical
science, in the sense that it was primarily understood in light of numeri-
cal ratios. The focus was not primarily on numerical sequences, but on
the relationship between the numbers, namely the simple and basic
numerical ratios such as 1:2, 2:3 and 3:4 which describe the simple and
basic harmonies of music. These three ratios correspond to what is
referred to as the perfect consonance, namely octave, fifth and fourth. In
other words, the basic structure of musical expression was the simultane-
ous sound of at least two tones, and not the successive range found in
a melody.
The historical evolution of music notation indicates that music has
evolved from melody to harmony. The notation of Gregorian songs is
24 S. H. Klempe

purely melodical, and harmonies and polyphony do not seem to be used

until sometime after the year 1000. But these music scores in reality only
capture church music. Islam places strict restrictions on the use of music
today, and this also applied to the Christian church throughout the
Middle Ages. God’s word, as presented in the Holy Scriptures, should be
presented in its pure form without being disturbed by music. Although
Plato was well-regarded in the medieval Christian church, his emphasis
on harmony became more of a theoretical consideration in the
Christian church.
In folk music, however, harmonies and polyphony have always pre-
vailed. For as long harmonic instruments and choirs have existed, folk
music has been characterized by an exploration of the opportunities that
harmonies offer. Hence, there seems to have been an inconsistency
between the music created based on music theory learned through the
seven liberal arts and the Gregorian songs performed in the monasteries
for hundreds of years during the European Middle Ages, since harmonies
were less common in Gregorian plain chant.

Focus on the Melody

Major changes took place in several areas during the Renaissance. For
example, language came to be used as a means of creating experiences. A
strong interest in literature emerged even before the art of mass printing
was developed. This interest in literature was perhaps one of the most
important manifestations of humanism. At the same time, it represented
a movement that revolted against the established truths, whether these
pertained to the Church, state power or art. In the field of music, the
focus was on developing the possibilities of harmonies in music notation.
This resulted in the magnificent Renaissance polyphony, which culmi-
nated with Giovanni Palestrina (1525–1594) and several other important
composers of the sixteenth century.
Nevertheless, humanism’s strong emphasis on literature also became
decisive for the history of music and the view of what music should be.
This influence resulted in the so-called monody, which is a simple melody
with text supported by instrumental accompaniment. The point of the
 2 The Understanding of Music in Early Psychology and Musicology 25

monody was first and foremost to place the text at the center, and thus
create a direct connection between music and language. The monody was
primarily cultivated by the branch of the humanist movement associated
with the Medici hegemony in Florence. Here, the musical activities were
the basis for the development of the opera, which originated in Florence.
This cultivation of the monody also created a theoretical turning point,
where more emphasis was gradually placed on music as a language. It
was, however, not until the eighteenth century that this turning point in
music theory was explicitly expressed. One of its foremost exponents was
Johann Mattheson (1681–1764), a leading music theorist in German-­
speaking regions. He argued that music was first and foremost a rhetori-
cal art, where melody was highlighted as an important starting point for
any composition. As one of the very first scholars in music history,
Mattheson published a full-length thesis on composing melodies in
1737, “The Core of Melodic Science” (Kern Melodischer Wissenschaft,
1737/1976). Here, he argues strongly that although there is a connection
between the harmonic foundation of music and a well-composed mel-
ody, it is nevertheless the flow and order of the melody that contribute to
the overall quality of the composition.
He pursues this in his most well-known thesis “Der Vollkommene
Capellmeister” from 1739. In the chapter “On the Art of Composing a
Good Melody” he even claims that “No one else, to my knowledge, has
written of melody systematically and with due attention” (after Lippman,
1986, p. 124). This may very well be true. He cites, for example, another
great, but far more conservative music theorist from the same time,
namely Jean-Philip Rameau (1683–1764). In his thesis from 1724,
Rameau regrets that it is not possible to develop comprehensive rules for
how to compose a melody (1722/1992). Rather, Rameau emphasizes
harmonic progression and shows how the bass line of tonal music in
principle moves in fifths and fourths (basse fondamentale). This illustrates
how he maintains the old Pythagorean-Platonic mindset even during this
time of major change in music history.
French reasoning also moved further in the direction of the melodic
aspects of music. For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
strongly argued that the melodic aspects are not only superior in music,
but that the melody also forms the original basis for all linguistic
26 S. H. Klempe

development, both for humanity as a whole, and for each individual

(1979). Rousseau was significantly younger than both Mattheson and
Rameau, and there is no doubt that the main trend at that time focused
strongly on what Mattheson and Rousseau argued for, namely to under-
stand music in light of the melody, and that the melodic aspects of music
were directly related to the linguistic characteristics. Rousseau also dis-
cussed how language more or less imitates the melody, so the two systems
were regarded as reflecting each other.

The Linguistification of Music

This development continued throughout the eighteenth century.
According to the most prominent music researcher around the turn of
the last century, Hugo Riemann (1849–1919), the composer Johann
Abraham Peter Schulz (1747–1800) was the first to use the term ‘phrase’
in a musicological context. He did so in an article from 1772 where he
discussed an eloquently phrased performance, using a title typical for the
period: “Vortrag” (directly translated: “Lecture”, meaning: “Performance”)
(Riemann, 1912, p. 7). This was the same year that Johann Gottfried
Herder (1744–1803) published his work on the origin of language. There
he, like Rousseau, claimed that language originated in music and that
language and music are closely related. It was a controversial point of
view at the time, which not the least met some resistance from Immanuel
Kant (1724–1804), but it was nonetheless a popular theory.
At this time, it also became more common to refer to musical themes
as ‘thoughts’. This tendency can be traced back to the composer and theo-
rist Abt Vogler (1749–1814) in a thesis he published in 1778 (Jung,
1988). The purpose of introducing this concept of ‘thoughts’ was to clar-
ify what characterized much of music at the time, namely the juxtaposi-
tion of two musical themes. Especially in Beethoven’s music, these two
themes had a contradictory relationship with each other. This character-
izes the ‘sonata form’, but that term was not used until many decades
later. The treatment of the various themes was first and foremost described
through the various modulations and changes in key in which these
themes were presented (Rosen, 1988).
 2 The Understanding of Music in Early Psychology and Musicology 27

Mattheson had also used the German term ‘Haupt-Satz’ or ‘main

phrase’ to describe the most important subject in a composition
(Blumröder, 1995). This evolved over the following decades so that an
entire phrase of eight or 16 beats was referred to as a Satz or sentence. For
example, Heinrich Christoph Koch (1747–1816) did this in his three-­
volume composition theory from the 1780s. He also noted that each part
of a piece of music was connected to, and inseparable from, the whole
piece, which thus gradually became known as a ‘Satz’ (Dahlhaus, 1989).
With this, a practice was established in the German-speaking and Nordic
countries that each part (movement) of a sonata or symphony was given,
and still has, the term ‘sentence’ (Satz). The tendency in the Enlightenment
era was therefore perfectly clear: Attempts were made to link music more
closely to language. At the same time, a linguistic repertoire was devel-
oped that furthered the creation of a musical grammar, comparable to a
linguistic grammar. With this, music was no longer part of the mathe-
matical sciences (Quadrivium), but was instead linked to the philological
sciences (trivium).

The Subjective Experience of Music

Several changes in the understanding of music emerged in the eighteenth
century. One of these, the focus on the importance of emotions and the
subjective experience of music, became greatly significant. This interest in
the effect that music has on the listener is basically as old as music itself.
Nevertheless, a strong interest in this topic developed in the sixteenth
century. This was initially communicated through what some called
‘reserved music’ (musica reservata). It was a rather imprecise term, but it
demonstrated that music had a certain influence on the listener. This
concept is often associated with the Renaissance composer Josquin de
Prez (c. 1440–1521).
The term is interesting in the sense that the effect was not necessarily
related to a subjective experience the listener was aware of, but rather to
an objective effect music nevertheless had on the individual. Only the
composer had knowledge of this intended effect. Contemporary human-
ism, on the other hand, placed greater emphasis on the subjective
28 S. H. Klempe

experience of life in general. It can be inferred that the Reformation

sprang from this subjectivity because it placed strong emphasis on the
subjective experience of sin, absolution and salvation. It was therefore no
coincidence that the first use of the term ‘psychology’ emerged at the
same time as the Reformation and Josquin de Prez’ death (Klempe,
2020). This brought with it a special interest in more closely examining
the entire register of emotions and bodily desires of human nature.
But these major changes in the view of the individual’s subjective expe-
rience in art, religion and philosophy lead to a prolonged change process
that lasted during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leading to the
incorporation of feelings and human bodies in art, religion and philoso-
phy. One of the most significant treatises on this was Baruch de Spinoza’s
(1632–1677) Ethica. Here he defines emotions as the very foundation of
true philosophical knowledge. It was, however, not until the eighteenth
century that there was a deliberate use of the term ‘psychology’, referring
to the aspects of human nature that was about the relationship between
perceptions and conceptions. This took place in 1732 with the publica-
tion of the German enlightenment philosopher Christian Wolff’s
(1679–1754) Psychologia empirica. This volume, in turn, became a very
important reference in German experimental psychology in the nine-
teenth century.
This general interest in the individual and subjective experiences,
rooted in body and emotions, became crucial for understanding eigh-
teenth century music. Although the main theme of a musical composi-
tion was primarily associated with an idea, it was also associated with a
feeling. This combination of reason and emotion was perhaps most fully
embodied in music, specifically through affect theory, an important
aspect of musicology in the eighteenth century. Musicologist Carl
Dahlhaus (1989) strongly doubts that this was as widespread as the text-
books suggest. It is primarily associated with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
(1714–1788) and his textbook in piano playing (1949, 1994) from 1753
(Part 1) and 1762 (Part 2), respectively. Part 1 is quite technically ori-
ented, but ends with a long section entitled “Vortrag” (Bach, 1994) or
“Performance” (Bach, 1949).
This was therefore an established term for the performance of a piece
of music well before Schulz’s article “Lecture” from 1772, to which
 2 The Understanding of Music in Early Psychology and Musicology 29

Riemann referred. In the second paragraph, Bach asked what character-

izes a good musical performance. He replied that the only characteristic
is that the musical thought must be presented in such a way that the true
content and affect are conveyed so that this becomes clearly audible
through the music: “The ability through singing or playing to make the
ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition” (Bach,
1949, p. 148). It is worth noting that both rational thought and its asso-
ciated affect must be generated by the performance. Bach also strongly
emphasized that a musical piece—or one of the movements—must focus
on only one affect. In other words, there must be an underlying rational
uniqueness, even though the affective content ought to be a contribut-
ing factor.

The Struggle to Understand Music

This struggle between reason and emotion became the subject of some
controversy in the eighteenth century as well as in the subsequent centu-
ries. Immanuel Kant and Gottfried Herder stood on opposite sides in this
battle. As already noted, Herder claimed that there is a close connection
between music and language. Kant was not very preoccupied with music,
but he was very keen on reserving the rationality associated with language
for language alone. The tradition of Kant was continued throughout the
entire nineteenth century.
Robert Zimmermann was one of the strongest proponents of Kantian
formalism. He was just one of many, but he had a close friend who would
become very visible in the battle for understanding music, namely the
most prominent music critic of the nineteenth century, Eduard Hanslick
(1825–1904). The basic question at the time was how music related to
language, reason and feelings. Hanslick stood for an extreme standpoint,
attacking what he called “the rotten aesthetic of feeling” (1854/1981). It
is first and foremost the notion that music is the “language of feeling”
that he attacks. That means that he rejected feelings as a central part of
music. By claiming that feelings are not part of the realm of music, he
tried to decouple music from the psychological factors that characterize
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Thus educational systems become the chief enemies of education,
and seats of learning the chief obstacles to the growth of knowledge,
while in an otherwise stagnant or decadent society these tendencies
sooner or later get the upper hand and utterly corrupt the social
memory. The power of the professor is revealed not so much by the
things he teaches, as by the things he fails or refuses to teach.
History is full of examples. How many religions have not perished
from ritual sclerosis, how many sciences have not been degraded
into pseudo-sciences or games! Logic has been just examinable
nonsense for over two thousand years. The present economic chaos
in the world has been indirectly brought about by the policy adopted
by the professors of economics forty or fifty years ago, to suit their
own convenience. For they then decided that they must escape from
the unwelcome attentions of the public by becoming more ‘scientific’;
i.e. they ceased to express themselves in plain language and took to
mathematical formulae and curves instead; with the result that the
world promptly relapsed into its primitive depths of economic
ignorance. So soon as the professors had retired from it, every
economic heresy and delusion, which had been exposed and
uprooted by Adam Smith, at once revived and flourished. In one
generation economics disappeared completely from the public ken
and the political world, and the makers of the Peace Treaties of 1919
were so incapable of understanding an economic argument that not
even the lucid intelligence of Mr Keynes could dissuade them from
enacting the preposterous conditions which rendered impossible the
realization of their aims.[A] Nor was it so very long ago that, in order
to save the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge, it had to be recast,
because it had degenerated into an intellectual jig-saw puzzle,
wholly unrelated to the applications of mathematics to the other
sciences. To avoid jealousies, I hasten to add that the University of
Oxford, which has organized itself as an asylum for lost causes,
skilfully cultivates, by means of its classical and historical studies, a
backward-looking bias in its alumni. The true ‘Greats’ man is meant
to go down indelibly imbued with the conviction that in matters of
morals and politics nothing of importance has been discovered or
said since Plato and Aristotle, and that nothing else matters.
Clearly then we cannot take for granted that in any society
knowledge can progress without limits, nor can we count on our
academic institutions to save us from stagnation and decay, even in
matters of knowledge. All institutions are social mechanisms, and all
mechanisms need a modicum of intelligent supervision, in the
absence of which they become dangerous engines of destruction.
 IV
It appears then that we can extract no guarantee of progress either
from the nature of Man or from the nature of human institutions.
There is no law of progress, if by law be meant a superior power
able to coerce the creatures that are said to ‘obey’ it. Neither can we
extract from history any proof of the superiority of civilized man over
his uncivilized ancestors. Such progress as has been attained has
been achieved only by the active co-operation of the progressive
organisms: every step has been fought for, and progress has ceased
whenever effort ceased, or was switched off into different directions.
Consequently, modern man has no right to ‘boast himself far better
than his fathers’—in intrinsic quality. Intrinsically, i.e. apart from the
effects of culture and social training, it is probable that he is slightly
inferior in capacity to his own ancestors, while very markedly inferior
to the great races of antiquity (like the Greeks) in their hey-day. Nor
is there any reason to suppose that his moral nature has changed
materially. Modern man may be a little tamer and better-tempered,
because he has been herded together much more closely than
primitive man, and city life, even in slums, demands, and produces,
a certain ‘urbanity.’ For many generations those who would not pack
tight and could not stand the strain of constantly exhibiting ‘company
manners’ and accommodating their action to those of their fellows,
must have fled away into the wilds, where they could be
independent, or have eliminated themselves in other ways, e.g. by
committing murder. It is probable that the social history of Iceland,
settled as it was by unbridled individualists who would not brook any
form of organized government, might throw some light on this
process of taming the individual.
Nevertheless there is little doubt that, in the main, humanity is still
Yahoo-manity. Alike in mentality and in moral, modern man is still
substantially identical with his palæolithic ancestors. He is still the
irrational, impulsive, emotional, foolish, destructive, cruel, credulous,
creature he always was. Normally the Yahoo in him is kept under
control by the constant pressure of a variety of social institutions; but
let anything upset an established social order, and the Yahoo comes
to the front at once. The history of the past fifty years abundantly
proves that man is still capable of atrocities equal to any in his
record. Not only have we lived through the greatest political and the
deadliest natural convulsion, the Great War and the Tokio
earthquake, but the Russian Revolution has outdone the French and
Landru the legendary Bluebeard, while for mingled atrocity and
baseness the murders of Rasputin and of Alexander of Serbia are
unsurpassed in history. The painful truth is that civilization has not
improved Man’s moral nature. His moral habits are still mainly
matters of custom, and the effect of moral theories is nugatory
everywhere. Thus civilization is not even skin deep; it does not go
deeper than the clothes.
 V
Clearly it is risky to expose the inelastic nature of so stubbornly
conservative a creature to new conditions at a rapid rate. He may not
be able to adapt himself quickly enough, and his old reactions, which
did little or no harm before, may become extremely dangerous. Yet
this is just what has happened. Science has exposed the palæolithic
savage masquerading in modern garb to a series of physical and
mental shocks which have endangered his equilibrium. It has also
enormously extended his power and armed him with a variety of
delicate and penetrating instruments which have often proved edge
tools in his hands and which the utmost wisdom could hardly be
trusted to use aright. Under these conditions the fighting instinct
ceases to be an antiquated foible, like the hunting instinct, and
becomes a deadly danger. No wonder the more prescient are
dismayed at the prospect of the old savage passions running amok
in the full panoply of civilization!
 VI
Nor is this the final item in our tale of woe. A third and most sinister
fact which has to be faced is that Civilization, as at present
constituted, is very definitely a deteriorating agency, conducing to the
degeneration of mankind. This effect of Civilization is nothing new,
but has been operating, it would seem, from the beginning, though
not probably as intensively as now: its discovery, however, is very
recent. It is quite indirect, unintended, and fortuitous, but cumulative,
and in the long run has probably been a chief cause in the decay of
States and civilizations, as well as an important factor in the arrest of
biological development which we have had to recognize.
A simple and easily observable sociological fact is at the bottom of
the mischief. The different classes in a society have different birth-
rates and death-rates, and the differences between these yield their
several net rates of increase or decrease. Now, whereas under the
conditions of savage life class differences can hardly exist, or, at
least cannot be accentuated, so that the whole tribe flourishes or
perishes together, and among barbarians the upper classes have a
very great advantage and the tribe recruits itself chiefly from the
children of the chiefs, because the conditions of life are so severe
that the lower classes are not able to rear many children; in civilized
societies these conditions are reversed. It is found that though both
birth-rates and death-rates grow as we descend the social scale, so
does the net rate of increase. Indeed, the highest or ruling class
nowhere appears to keep up its numbers without considerable
recruitment from below. So society, as at present organized, is
always dying off at the top, and proliferating at the bottom, of the
social pyramid.
The disastrous consequences of this sort of social organization may
easily be apprehended, with a little reflection. (1) All societies, even
those whose social structure is most rigid, have need of ability,
discover it, and reward it by social promotion. But (2) as this
promotion means passing into a class with a relatively inadequate
rate of reproduction, the biological penalty attaching to social
promotion is racial extinction. Thus (3) the ultimate reward of merit is
sterilization, and society appears to be an organization devoted to
the suicidal task of extirpating any ability it may chance to contain, by
draining it away from any stratum in which it may occur, promoting it
into the highest, and there destroying it. It is exactly as though a
dairyman should set in motion apparatus for separating the cream
from the milk, and then, as it rose, skim it off, and throw it away!
At present it is calculated that the highest classes in the chief
civilized societies only reproduce themselves to the extent of fifty per
cent. of their number in each generation, so that the hereditary ability
of half of them is lost in each generation. But even then the
remainder is largely wasted. It is churned into froth and scum by
social forces. For neither now nor at any time has social intelligence
shown itself equal to devising a training for the youth of the highest
classes that would provide them with adequate stimuli to develop
their faculties, and to lead a strenuous life of social service. The
children of the rich are tempted to live for ‘society’ in the narrower
sense, which means frittering away one’s life on a round of vacuous
amusement; and they rarely resist the temptation.
Naturally it is difficult to trace the accumulation of ability in the upper
social strata which is theoretically to be expected. On the other hand,
in some subjects at any rate, the symptoms of a world-wide dearth of
ability are becoming unmistakable. The Great War, though it made
abundantly manifest the prevalence of incompetents in high places,
did not reveal the existence either of a great general or of a great
statesman anywhere.
It is superfluous to insist either on the fatuity of a social organization
such as this, or on the certainty of racial degeneration which it
entails: but it may be well to draw attention to the rapidity with which
these degenerative processes are at present sapping the vitality and
value of our civilized races. The failure to reproduce does not, as in
former times, affect merely the aristocracy in the highest social
strata; it has spread to the whole of the professional and middle
classes, and to most classes of skilled labour. It is not too much to
say that, with the exception of the miners, none of the desirable
elements in the nation are doing their bit to keep up the population,
and that its continued growth is mainly due to the unrestrained
breeding of the casual labourers and the feeble-minded.
In the rest of the population its increase is checked by birth-control
and the postponement of marriage, neither of which affects the
undesirables. They are too stupid, reckless, and ignorant to practise
the former, and have nothing to gain by the latter. Also, to make it
quite certain that they shall form a true ‘proletariate,’ the wisdom of
our rulers ordains that a knowledge of birth-control shall be a (fatal)
privilege reserved for the intelligent and well-to-do. They instruct the
police to prevent it from penetrating to the poor and stupid—
apparently from the mistaken idea that the State needs plenty of
cheap labour and cheap cannon-fodder. So child-bearing remains
compulsory for the wretched women of the poor, whereas elsewhere
only those women produce children who desire them, and natural
selection is thus allowed gradually to eliminate the temperament of
the unwilling (and, therefore, probably less competent) mother.
The dysgenic effects of this class-discrimination are further
intensified by other tendencies: (1) The advance of medicine and
hygiene has enormously diminished selective mortality in all classes,
and improved the chances of weaklings to survive and leave
descendants. (2) The advance of philanthropy preserves them,
especially in the lower classes, where formerly the mortality was
largely selective and a high death-rate both counteracted an
excessive birth-rate and increased the value of the survivors. The
emotional appeal of ‘baby-saving’ goes so directly to the heart of
civilized man that his head never reflects whether the particular baby
is worth saving, and whether a baby from a different breed and with
a better pedigree would not be better worth having. (3) Modern
obstetrics save the lives of thousands of women, whose physique is
such that in former times they would inevitably have died in child-
birth. The result is that child-birth is becoming more difficult. Also
babies brought up on the bottle, which has an irresistible attraction
for microbes of all sorts, are apt to be less healthy than those
nourished in the more primitive manner.
(4) Lastly, the bastardizing, which used formerly to provide for a
considerable infusion of the blood of the upper classes into the
lower, has now practically ceased. Since the merry days of King
Charles II, very few noble families of royal descent have been added
to the peerage.
 VII
Our civilization, therefore, carries within it the seeds of its own decay
and destruction, and it does not require high prophetic gifts to predict
the future of a race which goes the way marked out for it by such
perversely suicidal institutions. It cannot improve, but must
degenerate, and the only question would seem to be whether the
decadence of Man will leave him viable as a biological species. At
present it looks very much as though his blind leaders would lead
their blinder followers from catastrophe to catastrophe, through
imperialist world-wars to class-wars and to race-wars: but even if, by
some miraculous rally of human intelligence, these convulsions
should be averted, the prospect will not really be improved. The
violent destruction of the human race by war will only be more
dramatic: it will not be more fatal than its gradual decay as its arts
and sciences slowly fossilize, or peter out, in an overwhelming flood
of feeble-mindedness.
 VIII
This is the one alternative. We shall get to it, if we go on as we are
going: but it is not our doom. The alternative is to exercise the
danger by an adequate reform of human nature and of human
institutions. This again seems attainable in at least two ways.
The first, and more paradoxical, of these would make a direct frontal
attack on the palæolithic Yahoo, and try to bring about his moral
reformation. The means for this purpose are ready to hand. Christian
ethics have been in being, as a moral theory, for nearly two thousand
years. If the Yahoo could be really christianized, he would at any rate
cease to cut his own throat in cutting his neighbour’s. And it is
astonishing how much scientific support is forthcoming for the
paradoxes of Christian ethics. It is an historical fact that the meek
have a knack of inheriting the earth after their lords and masters
have killed each other off, and that passive resistance wears out the
greatest violence, and conscientious objection defeats the craftiest
opportunism, if only you can get enough of them. It is a biological
fact that the rabbit survives better than the tiger; and the same would
appear to be true of the human ‘rabbit’ and the Nietzschean ‘wild
beast.’ Intrinsically, therefore, Christian ethics might be well worth
trying.
I wish I could believe it likely that this policy will be tried. But the
palæolithic Yahoo has been dosed with Christian ethics for two
thousand years, and they have never either impressed or improved
him. Their paradoxes give him a moral shock, and he has not brains
enough to grasp their rationality. He will exclaim rather with the
gallant admiral in the House of Commons, when justly indignant at
the unheard-of notion that a ‘moral gesture’ of a Labour Government
might be the best policy, “Good God, sir, if we are to rely for our air
security on the Sermon on the Mount, all I can say is, ‘God help us!’”
Besides, the proposal to put Christian principles into practice would
be bitterly opposed by all the Churches in Christendom.[B]
It may be more prudent, therefore, to try a safer though slower way,
that of the eugenical reform and reconstruction of our social
organization. As to the possibilities in this direction, I incline to be
much more hopeful than either Mr Haldane or Mr Russell. Mr
Haldane despises eugenics, because he is looking for the more
spectacular advent of the ‘ectogenetic baby,’ to be the Saviour of
mankind. But he might not arrive, or be seriously delayed in
transmission, or fail to come up to Mr Haldane’s expectations; and,
meanwhile, we cannot afford to wait.
Mr Russell distrusts eugenics, because he fears that any eugenical
scheme put into practice will be ‘nobbled’ by our present ruling rings,
and perverted into an instrument to consolidate their power. He
thinks that dissent from dominant beliefs and institutions will be
taken as proof of imbecility, and sterilized accordingly,[C] and that the
result would merely be to spread over all the world the hopeless
uniformity and commonplaceness of the ideals and practice of the
American business man, as depicted by Mr Sinclair Lewis.
This prognostication would be very plausible, if we supposed
eugenics to be introduced into the social structure from above,
privily, and in small doses, and by way of administrative order, as
under the existing Acts to check the spread of feeble-mindedness.
But this method would be impracticable. It would not generate
anything like the social momentum necessary to carry through any
radical reform. To make it effective, it would have to be backed by a
powerful, enthusiastic, and intelligent public sentiment. This
presupposes that the public has been biologically educated to
appreciate the actual situation, and has been thoroughly wrought up
about the fatuity of our social order, and understands what is wrong
with it. If it understands that much, it can also be made to see that it
is fantastic to expect to leap to the Ideal State by a social revolution.
No one now knows what the institutions of an Ideal State would be
like, nor how they would work. We only know that they will have to
be evolved out of our present institutions, even as the Superman has
to be evolved out of the primitive Yahoo. In either case, the process
will be gradual, and its success will depend upon details, on taking
one step after another at the right rate in the right direction, making a
new adjustment here, overcoming an old difficulty there, removing
obstacles, smoothing over the shell-holes and scars dating from
Man’s lurid past, and, in general, feeling one’s way systematically
and scientifically to better things. Such a mode of progression may
seem unheroic, but it has the great advantage that it is unlikely to go
irretrievably wrong. If we know from the outset that we are tentatively
feeling our way, we shall always be on the look out for traps and
possibilities of going astray, trying out the value of our policies by
their results, and willing to retrace our steps when we have made a
false one.
The social temper, therefore, will become far more intelligent and
reasonable than it has been hitherto. It will be slow to dogmatize,
and will regard the toleration of differences of opinion as among the
cardinal principles of a sanely progressive social order. For as we
can no longer assume, with Plato and the other Utopians, that
perfection may be postulated, provision has always to be made for
the improvement of the social order. It can never be accepted as
absolutely good, but must always be regarded as capable, in
principle, of being bettered. Even the best of established institutions
are only good relatively to the alternatives to which they showed
themselves superior: under changed conditions they may become
inferior, and may fail us, or ruin us, if we do not make haste to
transform them into something better fitted to the new conditions.
Hence the social order must be plastic, and must never be allowed
to grow rigid. There must always be room in it for experiments that
have a reasonable prospect of turning out to be improvements. For
progress will depend on the timely adoption of such novelties.
But society has no means of commanding them at will. It has to wait
till they occur to some one. As biological variations have to arise
spontaneously before they can be selected, so valuable new ideas
have to occur in a human mind before they can be tried and
approved. Society cannot originate discoveries, it can only refrain
from so organizing itself as to stamp them out when they occur. It is
vitally necessary, therefore, that we should beware of suppressing
variations, whether of thought or of bodily endowment, that may
prove to be valuable.
Also, of course, we shall have to realize that our whole procedure is
essentially experimental, and all that this implies. We do not know, at
the outset, what would be the best obtainable type, either of man or
of society; true, but we mean to find out. Nor is it unreasonable to
expect to do so as we go along. We start with a pretty shrewd
suspicion that certain types, say the feeble-minded, the sickly, the
insane, are undesirable, and that no good can come of coddling and
cultivating them: we similarly are pretty sure that certain other types,
say the intelligent, healthy, and energetic, are inherently superior to
the former. We try, therefore, to improve and increase the better
types. How precisely, and how most effectively we do not quite know,
though we can make pretty good preliminary guesses. So we try.
That will entail experimentation in a variety of directions, with ‘control
experiments,’ and a modicum of mistakes. But our mistakes will not
be fatal, because if we advance tentatively and with intelligent
apprehension, we shall realize them in time, and shall not feel bound
to persist in any course that yields unsatisfactory results.
It is really one of the great advantages of eugenics that it cannot
proceed upon any cut-and-dried scheme, but will have to be guided
by the results of experiment and the fruits of experience, each of
which will be followed and discussed by an intensely interested
public. For the difficulties of eugenics are all difficulties of detail, and
intelligent attention to detail may overcome them all. Thus the
dysgenical working of civilized society, which has come about
unintentionally through the unfortunate convergence of a number of
tendencies, may be altered similarly, by changing the incidence of
social forces.
 IX
If scientific eugenics can put a stop to the contra-selection incidental
to civilization, Man will recover the plasticity and the progressiveness
he once possessed, and will be able to evolve further—in whatever
direction seems to him best. We need not take alarm at this
possibility, for with his superior knowledge he may surely be trusted
to make a better job of his evolution than the Lemur and the
Pithecanthropus, who were our progenitors and managed to evolve
into modern man.
But the process will necessarily be a slow one, even though a
comprehensive scheme of eugenics will be providing simultaneously
two sources of improvement, by the elimination of defectives at the
bottom of the social scale, and by the increase of ability at the top.
As, moreover, time presses, and sheer destruction may overtake us
before eugenics have made much difference, it would be highly
desirable if some means could be found to accelerate the change of
heart required. For this purpose, I am much less inclined to put my
trust in the advance of pharmacology than Mr Haldane and Mr
Russell.[D] Hitherto new drugs have only meant new vices,
sometimes (like cocaine) of so fascinating a character as to distract
the whole police force from their proper function of repressing crime.
So it seems legitimate to be very sceptical about moral
transformation scenes to be wrought by pills and injections.
On the other hand there does seem to be a science from the
possible progress of which something of a sensational kind might not
unreasonably be expected. It is, moreover, the science most directly
concerned with affairs of this sort. Psychology, the science of human
mentality, is, by common consent, in a deplorably backward state. It
has remained a ground for metaphysical excursions and a
playground for the arbitrary pedantries of classificatory systematists.
Its efforts to become scientific have only led it to ape assumptions
and to borrow notions found to be appropriate in sciences with
widely different problems and objects. The results, as the
psychologists themselves confess, are meagre and disappointing;
which, of course, only proves that the borrowed notions are
inappropriate and incapable of making Psychology into an effective
science. But if psychologists should take it into their heads to settle
down to business, to recognize the primary obligation of every
science to develop methods and conceptions capable of working
upon its subject-matter, and so tried to authenticate their ‘truth’ after
the ordinary fashion of the other sciences, namely by the pragmatic
test of successful working, some surprising effects might be elicited
even from the actual human mind.
For there is reason to suppose that its present organization is very
far from being the best of which it is capable. It has come about in a
very haphazard manner, and we are not at present making anything
like an adequate use of all our powers. Hence by changing the
gearing and re-arranging the traditional coupling, so to speak, of our
faculties, improvements might conceivably be wrought which would
seem to us to border on the miraculous. Thus a pragmatically
efficient Psychology might actually invert the miracle of Circe, and
really transform the Yahoo into a man.
 X
I have endeavoured in this very summary sketch to show that the
doom of Tantalus is by no means unconditional, and that he can
save himself if he chooses, and that by no superhuman effort, but
merely by recognizing facts that are right before his nose and well
within his comprehension, and by a little clear thinking upon their
import. But I would not presume to predict that he will save himself:
history affords no unambiguous guide. It seems to show that
something worse and something better than what actually happens
is always conceivable, and that neither our hopes nor our fears are
ever fully realized. If so, poor Tantalus, hoping against hope, fearing
against reason, may muddle along for a good while yet, without
repeating either his ancient error of imagining that he could sup with
the gods, or his modern folly of using his reason, as Goethe’s
Mephistopheles declared, only to become more bestial than any
beast!
 FOOTNOTES:
[A] The most absurd perhaps was the clause, appearing
in all the Peace Treaties, which made ‘reparations’ a first
charge on all the assets of the defeated countries. This,
of course, completely destroyed their credit, and
incapacitated them from raising a loan, forcing them to
have recourse to progressive inflation, and so into
bankruptcy.
[B] This does not mean, of course, that there are no
Christians in the Churches, but only that they are not in
control of these institutions.
[C] Icarus, p. 49.
[D] cf. Daedalus, p. 34; Icarus, p. 54.
 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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