Chapter XIV: Part 14

With the organ of _taste_ you are all sufficiently acquainted. In considering the phenomena, which it presents, in the peculiar sensations that directly flow from it, it is necessary to make some little abstraction from the sensation of _touch_, which accompanies them, in consequence of the immediate application of the tangible sapid body to the organ; but the sensations, thus co-existing, are so very different in themselves, as to be easily distinguishable. When the organ of taste is in a sound state, the application of certain substances produces, immediately, that change or affection of the sensorial organs, which is attended with a corresponding change or affection of the sentient mind. In our present state of knowledge, we immediately refer this simple sensation, to something, which is bitter, or sweet, or acrid, or of some other denomination of sapid quality; and we have no hesitation, in classing the sensations _as sensations_,--effects of laws of action that belong jointly to matter and mind,--not as feelings that arise in the mind, from its own independent constitution. But, if we attend sufficiently to the feeling that arises in the case of taste, we shall find, however immediate the reference to a sapid body may seem to be, that it is truly successive to the simple sensation, and is the mere suggestion of former experience, when a body previously recognized by us as an external substance, was applied to our organ of taste;--in the same manner, as, when we see ashes and dying embers, we immediately infer some previous combustion, which we could not have inferred, if combustion itself had been a phenomenon altogether unknown to us. In the simple sensation which precedes the reference,--the mere pleasure of sweetness or the mere pain of bitterness--there is nothing which seems to mark more distinctly the presence of honey or wormwood, or any similar external substance, than in any of our joys or sorrows, to which we have not given a name; and there can be no doubt, that, if the particular feeling which we now term _joy_, and the particular feeling which we now term _sorrow_, had been excited, whenever we knew, from other sources, that certain bodies were applied to the tongue, we should have considered these internal feelings as sensations, in the strict sense of the word, precisely in the same manner, as we now regard, as sensations, the feeling which we term sweetness, and the feeling which we term bitterness, because, like these sensations, they could not have failed to suggest to us, by the common influence of association, the presence and direct coincidence of the object without. In the case of _taste_, therefore, as in the case of smell, we could not, from the simple sensations,--if these alone had been given to us,--have derived any knowledge of an external world, of substances extended and resisting; but we consider them as sensations, in the strict philosophic meaning of the term, because we have previously acquired our belief of an external world.

It may be remarked of these two classes of sensations, now considered, that they have a greater mutual resemblance, than our sensations of any other kind. It is only a _blind_ man who thinks, that what is called _scarlet_ is like the sound of a trumpet; but there are _tastes_ which we consider as like _smells_, in the same manner as we consider them to be like other tastes; and, if we had not acquired a distinct knowledge of the seats of our different organs, and had yet known that smells and tastes arose from external causes acting upon some one or other of these, we should probably have been greatly puzzled, in many cases, in our attempt to refer the particular sensation to its particular organ.

In considering the advantages which we derive from our organs of _smell_ and _taste_, the mere pleasures which they directly afford, as a part of the general happiness of life, are to be regarded, from their frequent occurrence, as of no considerable amount. The fragrance of the fields enters largely into that obscure but delightful group of images, which rise in our minds on the mere names of _spring_, _summer_, the _country_, and seems to represent the very form of ethereal purity, as if it were the breath of heaven itself.

If we imagine all the innumerable flowers which nature pours out, like a tribute of incense to the God who is adorning her, again to be stripped, in a single moment, of their odour, though they were to retain all their bright diversities of colouring, it would seem as if they were deprived of a spirit which animates them,--how cold and dead would they instantly become,--and how much should we lose of that vernal joy, which renders the season of blossoms almost a new life to ourselves.

“In vain the golden Morn aloft
Waves her dew-bespangled wing;
With vermeil cheek and whisper soft
She woos the tardy Spring;
Till April starts, and calls around
The sleeping fragrance from the ground,”[75]

It is by this delightful quality that the tribes of vegetable life seem to hold a sort of social and spiritual communion with us. It is, as it were, the voice with which they address us, and a voice which speaks only of happiness. To him who walks among the flowers which he has tended,

“Each odoriferous leaf,
Each opening blossom, freely breathes abroad
Its gratitude, and thanks him with its sweets.”

The pleasures of the sense of _taste_, in the moderate enjoyment of which there is nothing reprehensible, are, in a peculiar manner, associated with family happiness. To have met frequently at the same board, is no small part of many of the delightful remembrances of friendship; and to meet _again_ at the same board, after years of absence, is a pleasure that almost makes atonement for the long and dreary interval between. In some half-civilized countries, in which the influence of simple feelings of this kind is at once more forcible in itself, and less obscured in the confusion of ever varying frivolities and passions, this hospitable bond forms, as you well know, one of the strongest ties of mutual obligation, sufficient often to check the impetuosity of vindictive passions which no other remembrance could, in the moment of fury, restrain. Had there been no _pleasure_ attached to a repast, independent of the mere relief from the pain of hunger, the coarse and equal food would probably have been taken by each individual _apart_, and might even, like our other animal necessities, have been associated with feelings which would have rendered solitude a duty of external decorum. It would not be easy, even for those who have been accustomed to trace a simple cause through all its remotest operations, to say, how much of happiness, and how much even of the warm tenderness of virtue, would be destroyed, by the change of manners, which should simply put an end to the _social meal_; that meal which now calls all the members of a family to suspend their cares for a while, and to enjoy that cheerfulness, which is best reflected from others, and which can be permanent only when it is so reflected, from _soul_ to _soul_, and from _eye_ to _eye_.

One very important advantage, more directly obvious than this, and of a kind which every one may be disposed more readily to admit, is afforded by our senses of smell and taste, in guiding our _selection_ of the substances which we take as alimentary. To the other animals, whose senses of this order are so much quicker, and whose instincts, in accommodation to their want of general language, and consequent difficulty of acquiring knowledge by mutual communication, are providentially allotted to them, in a degree, and of a kind, far surpassing the instincts of the slow but noble reflector _man_, these senses seem to furnish _immediate_ instruction as, to the substances proper for nourishment, to the exclusion of those which would be noxious. To _man_, however, who is under the guardianship of affections more beneficial to him than any instinct of his own could be, there is no reason to believe, that they do this _primarily_, and of themselves, though, in the state in which he is brought up, instructed with respect to every thing noxious or salutary, by those who watch constantly over him in the early period of his life, and having, therefore, no necessity to appeal to the mere discrimination of his own independent organs, and, still more, as in the artificial state of things, in which he lives, his senses are at once perplexed and palled, by the variety and confusion of luxurious preparation, it is not easy to say, how far his primary instincts,--if it had not been the high and inevitable dignity of his nature to rise above these,--might, of themselves, have operated as directors. But, whatever their _primary_ influence may be, the _secondary_ influence of his organs of taste and smell is not the less important. When we have once completely learned what substances are noxious, and what are salutary, we then, however similar they may be in their other sensible qualities, discriminate these as often as they are again presented to us, by that _taste_ or _smell_, which they affect with different sensations; and our acquired knowledge has thus ultimately, in guiding our choice, the force and the vivacity of an original instinct.

HEARING.

In considering the phenomena of the sense of hearing, to which I now proceed, I may apply to them the same remark, which has been already applied to the phenomena of the senses before considered. They are classed by us, as sensations, merely in consequence of our previous belief in the existence of those external bodies, the motion of which we have known to be followed by similar feelings. Our mind begins suddenly to exist in a certain state; and we call this state joy or sorrow, without supposing that it depends on the immediate presence of any external object. It begins again to exist, in a different state, and we say, that we _hear a flute_, referring the feeling immediately to an external cause. But there can be no doubt, that, in making this reference, in the one case, and not in the other, we are influenced by experience, and by experience alone. If we suppose ourselves endowed with the single sense of hearing, and incapable therefore of having previously seen or felt the flute, which is breathed before us, or any other extended and resisting object whatever, we may imagine the mere sound to recur, innumerable times, without discovering any mode by which it can give us _more_ knowledge, than we should receive from a similar recurrence of any internal joy or sorrow. That we should be able to refer it to a body, such as we now mean, when we speak of a flute, is manifestly impossible; since this implies knowledge of _solidity_, and _form_, and _colour_, which could not be acquired without touch and sight. But there seems even no reason to think, that we should refer it to any external cause whatever, unless, indeed, such a reference necessarily accompanied every feeling, which we know is far from being the case, since we have many internal pleasures, not more like to each other, than they are to the sound of a flute, which we do not refer to any thing, separate or separable, from the constitution of our own mind. In _hearing_, therefore, as in taste and smell, we do not derive from its sensations our knowledge of things external, but, in consequence of our knowledge of things external, we regard these feelings, as sensations, in the common philosophic meaning of that term.

Simple as our sense of hearing may seem, it affords a striking specimen of that almost infinite variety, which is not inconsistent with the closest resemblance; and the notion which we may form of the innumerable varieties of sound, is perhaps not more vast, when we attempt to wander over its boundless discrepancies, than when we limit ourselves to its greatest similarities, in a single word of a language, or, in that which we might be inclined at first to regard as simplicity itself, a single _musical tone_.

“A flute, a violin, a hautboy, and a French horn,” it has been truly remarked, “may all sound the same tone, and be easily distinguishable. Nay, if twenty _human voices_ sound the same note, and with equal strength, there will still be some difference. The _same_ voice, while it retains its proper distinctions, may be varied many ways, by sickness or health, youth or age, leanness or fatness, good or bad humour. The _same words_, spoken by foreigners and natives, nay, by different provinces of the same nation, may be very easily distinguished.”[76]

When we speak of the value of this sense as a part of our mental constitution, it is enough to say, that it is to it we are indirectly indebted for the use of verbal language,--that power so peculiarly _distinctive of man_, that, in the poetical phraseology of one celebrated country, it gave him his name as a _divider of the voice_, or, in other words, an utterer of articulate sounds. If we consider speech simply as a medium of the reciprocal expression of present feelings to the little society of citizens and friends of which we are a part, even in this limited view, of what inestimable value does it appear! To communicate to every one around us, in a single moment, the happiness which we feel ourselves,--to express the want, which we have full confidence, will be relieved as soon as it is known,--or to have the still greater privilege of being ourselves the ministers of comfort to wants, which otherwise could not have been relieved by us, because they could not have been discovered,--when the heart which we love is weighed down with imaginary grief, to have it in our power, by a few simple sounds, to convert anguish itself into rapture,--these are surely no slight advantages; and yet compared with the benefit which it affords to man as an _intellectual_ being, even these are in considerable. To be without language, spoken or written, is almost to be without thought; and if, not an individual only, living among his fellows whose light may be reflected upon him, but our whole race had been so constituted, it is scarcely possible to conceive that beings, whose instincts are so much less various and powerful than those of the other animals, could have held over them that dominion, which they now so easily exercise. Wherever two human beings, therefore, are to be found, there language is. We must not think, in a speculative comparison of this sort, of mere savage life; for the rudest savages would be as much superior to a race of beings without speech, as the most civilized nations at this moment are, compared with the half-brutal wanderers of forests and deserts, whose ferocious ignorance seems to know little more than how to destroy and be destroyed. Even these are still associated in tribes, that concert together verbally their schemes of havoc and defence; and employ, in deliberating on the massacre of beings as little human as themselves, or the plunder of a few huts, that seem to contain nothing but misery and the miserable, the same glorious instrument with which Socrates brought wisdom down from heaven to earth, and Newton made the heavens themselves, and all the wonders which they contain, descend, as it were to be grasped and measured by the feeble arm of man.

Such are the benefits of language, even in its fugitive state; but the noblest of all the benefits which it confers, is in that permanent transmission of thought, which gives to each individual the powers and the wisdom of his species; or, rather,--for the united powers and wisdom of his species, as they exist in myriads, at the same moment with himself, upon the globe, would be comparatively a trifling endowment,--it gives him the rich inheritance of the accumulated acquisitions of all the multitudes, who, like himself, in every preceding age, have inquired, and meditated, and patiently discovered, or by the happy inspiration of genius, have found truths which they scarcely sought, and penetrated, with the rapidity of a single glance, those depths of nature, which the weak steps and dim torch-light of generations after generations had vainly laboured to explore. By that happy invention, which we owe indirectly to the ear, the boundaries of time seem to be at once removed. Nothing is _past_; for every thing lives, as it were, before us. The thoughts of beings who had trod the most distant soil, in the most distant period, arise again in our mind, with the same warmth and freshness as when they first awoke to life in the bosom of their author. That system of perpetual transmigration, which was but a fable, as believed by Pythagoras,--becomes reality when it is applied, not to the _soul_ itself, but to its feelings. There is then a _true metempsychosis_, by which the poet and the sage, in spreading their conceptions and emotions from breast to breast, may be said to extend their existence through an ever-changing immortality. Who does not feel the justness of what Lucan says, when he speaks of the events of Pharsalia, and predicts the lively feelings with which they are afterwards to be regarded, not as past, and therefore indifferent, but as present, and almost future:

“Hæc et apud seras gentes, populosque nepotum,
Sive sua tantum venient in secula fama,--
Sive aliquid magnis nostri quoque cura laboris
Nominibus prodesse potest,--cum bella legentur,
Spesque metusque simul, perituraque vota movebunt;
Attonitique omnes, veluti _venientia_ fata
Non _transmissa_ legent, et _adhuc_ tibi magni favebunt.”[77]

“There is without all doubt,” as has been justly observed, “a chain of the thoughts of human kind, from the origin of the world down to the moment at which we exist,--a chain not less universal than that of the generation of every being that lives. Ages have exerted their influence on ages; nations on nations; truths on errors; errors on truths.” In conformity with this idea of the generation of thought, I may remark, that we are in possession of opinions,--which, perhaps, regulate our life in its most important moral concerns, or in all its intellectual pursuits,--with respect to which, we are as ignorant of the original authors, by whom they have been silently and imperceptibly transmitted to us from mind to mind, as we are ignorant of those ancestors, on whose existence in the thousands of years which preceded our entrance into the world, our life itself has depended, and without whom, therefore, _we_ should not have been.

The unlimited transmission of thought, which the invention of language allows, brings the universe of _mind_ into that point of view, in which an eloquent living French author has considered the _physical_ universe,--as exhibiting, at once, all its splendid varieties of events, and uniting, as it were, in a single moment the wonders of eternity. “Combine,” says he, “by your imagination, all the fairest appearances of things. Suppose that you see, at once, all the hours of the day, and all the seasons of the year,--a morning of spring and of autumn,--a night brilliant with stars, and a night obscure with clouds,--meadows, enamelled with flowers,--fields, waving with harvest,--woods, heavy with the frosts of winter,--you will then have a just notion of the spectacle of the universe. Is it not wondrous, that while _you_ are admiring the sun, who is plunging beneath the vault of the west, _another_ observer is beholding him as he quits the regions of the east,--in the same instant reposing, weary, from the dust of the evening, and awaking, fresh and youthful, in the dews of morn! there is not a moment of the day, in which the same sun is not rising, shining in his zenith, and setting on the world! or, rather, our senses abuse us, and there is no rising, nor setting, nor zenith, nor east, nor west; but all is one fixed point, at which every species of light is beaming at once from the unalterable orb of day.”

In like manner,--If I may venture to consider the phenomena of the mind in the same fanciful point of view,--every moment may be said to be exhibiting the birth, and progress, and decay of thought. Infancy, maturity, old age, death, are mingled, as it were, in one universal scene. The opinions which are perishing in one mind, are rising in another; and often, perhaps, at the last fading ray of the flame of genius, that may have almost dazzled the world with excess of brilliancy, some star may be kindling, which is to shine upon the intellectual universe with equal light and glory:--[78]

“Flowers of the sky! ye, too, to age must yield,
Frail, as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush;
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush;
Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall,
And Death, and Night, and Chaos, mingle all!
----Till, o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form;
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars, and shines,--another, and the same.”

Such are the benefits resulting from that happiest of all inventions, which we may be said to owe to our sense of Hearing,--if, indeed, it be an _invention_ of man, and not rather, as many have thought, a _coeval power_, bestowed on him by his provident Creator at the very moment which gave him life. But still, whether original or invented, the ear must equally have been its primary recipient. We have seen, in the view which we have taken of it, that of our more social intercourse it constitutes the chief delight,--giving happiness to hours, the wearying heaviness of which must otherwise have rendered existence an insupportable burthen; and that, in its more important character, as fixed, in the imperishable records which are transmitted, in uninterrupted progression, from the generation which passes away to the generation that succeeds, it gives to the individual _man_, the product of all the creative energies of _mankind_; extending, even to the humblest intellect, which can still mix itself with the illustrious dead, that privilege, which has been poetically allotted to the immortality of genius, of being “the citizen of every country, and the contemporary of every age.”

FOOTNOTES:

[74] Gray de Principiis Cogitandi, Lib. I. v. 130-134.

[75] Gray on the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude, Stanza I.--In v. i. the original has, instead of “in vain,” “now.”

[76] Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, c. iv. sect. 1.

[77] Pharsalia, lib. vii. v. 207--213.

[78] Darwin's Botanic Garden, Canto IV. v. 371--380.

LECTURE XXI.

ON HEARING--CONTINUED.

Gentlemen, after considering, in a former Lecture, some states of mind, which arise immediately from affections of our nerves, and which, therefore, I can see no reason for classing apart from our other sensations, I proceeded, in my last Lecture, to consider the feelings, which are more commonly termed sensations, beginning with the most simple of these, in the order of _smell_, _taste_, and _hearing_.

In the elucidation of these, my great object was to show, that there is nothing, in the mere states of mind, that constitutes the sensations of fragrance, sweetness, sound, which could have led us to ascribe them to corporeal objects as their causes,--more than in any of our internal joys or sorrows,--if we had had no other means of acquiring knowledge of those causes, than are afforded by the sensations themselves,--that, in short, we consider them as sensations, or external affections of the mind, because we have previously believed in an external world,--not that we believe in an external world, merely because we have had those particular sensations.

The various advantages, which these three senses afford, I endeavoured to point out to you; and, in particular occupied a great part of my Lecture, in illustrating the advantages for which we are indebted to our organ of _hearing_, as the medium of _language_, and by it, more or less directly, not of the high acquisitions of science and civilization only, but of the rudest forms of social communication, and almost of social existence.

After the remarks on this advantage received from _language_, which is unquestionably, and beyond all comparison, the most inestimable benefit which the sense of hearing affords,--it would be improper to omit wholly the mention of the pleasure, which we receive from it, as a source of _musical_ delight,--of that expression of feeling, which itself, almost like verbal discourse, may be said to be a language, since it is the utterance of thought and emotion from heart to heart,--but which has a voice, as independent of the mere arbitrary _forms of speech_, as the tears of gratitude, or the smiles of love, that may indeed, give eloquence to _words_, but require no _words_ to render _them_ eloquent. Though, when very strictly considered, even the pure, and almost spiritual delight of music, may perhaps be counted only a pleasure of sense, it yet approaches, by so many striking analogies, to the nature of our intellectual enjoyments, that it may almost be said to belong to that class; and though,--relatively to minds that are capable of enjoyments more truly intellectual,--it is to be considered as a mere pastime or relaxation, it assumes a far higher character, in its relation to the general pleasures of common minds, and may be said, at least, to be the _intellectual luxury_ of those, who are incapable of any other luxury, that deserves so honourable a name. And it is well, that there should be some intermediate pleasure of this sort, to withdraw for a while the dull and the sensual, from the grosser existence in which they may be sunk, and to give them some glimpses, at least, of a state of purer enjoyment, than that which is to be derived from the sordid gains, and sordid luxuries, of common life.

Of the influence,--whether salutary or injurious,--which music has upon the general character,--when cultivated, to great refinement, and so universally as almost to become a part of the habit of daily social life,--it is not, at present, the place to speak. But of its _temporary_ influence, as a source of tranquillizing delight, there can be no doubt,--nor, perhaps too, of its occasional efficacy, in exciting emotions of a stronger kind, when peculiar circumstances may have predisposed to them in a very high degree. But there can be as little doubt, that by far the greater number of anecdotes of this kind, which have been handed down in ancient history, are as fabulous, as the existence of that _god of music_, to whose miraculous influence alone, they could, with any decent appearance of epic or dramatic truth, have been ascribed.

“Hear, how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise;
While at each change, the son of Lybian Jove
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love,--
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now, sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow;
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdued--by sound!”[79]

On these lines, which allude to the celebrated ode of Dryden,--who adapted, with most happy application, to the burning of the Persian palace, an anecdote recorded of the power of Timotheus over the same great warrior, on another occasion,--I may remark, by the way, what influence the accidental composition of this ode has had, in giving almost a sort of dignity to the very madness of the act which it records. It is impossible for us,--even though we knew well how fictitious is the circumstance attached to it,--not to look upon the action, in a different light, from that in which we should have viewed it, if we had read only the historical account of it, as originating in a drunken debauch, at the instigation of a drunken prostitute.

Such is the influence of genius. Its power extends not over the present and the future merely, but, in some measure, also over the past, which might have seemed fixed forever. In spite of our conviction, we look upon an action of Alexander differently, because an individual existed, many centuries after him, and in a country which would then have been justly counted barbarous, by the very barbarians whom he overcame.

“Ebrio scorto de tanta re ferente sententiam, unus et alter, et ipsi mero onerati, assentiunt: Rex quoque fuit avidior quam patientior. ‘Quin igitur ulcisimur Græciam, et urbi faces subdimus?’ Omnes incaluerant mero; itaque surgunt temulenti ad incendendam urbem, cui armati, pepercerant.”[80]

Of the wonders, which were said, in ancient times, to have been performed, on the mind and body, by a judicious adaptation of musical sounds, to the nature of the particular case, intellectual, moral, or corporeal, I might read many histories to you, from the original authors, which would perhaps not be less truly ludicrous in the serious gravity of their narration, than in the affected solemnity of the fictitious personage whose speech I am about to quote. The experiment with which the quotation closes is, it must be allowed, a very powerful one, and certainly could not have been more successful, in the hands of Timotheus himself.

“The bare mention of _music_ threw Cornelius into a passion. ‘How can you dignify,’ quoth he, ‘this modern fiddling with the name of music? Will any of your best hautboys encounter a wolf now-a-days with no other arms but their instruments, as did that ancient piper Pythocaris? Have ever wild boars, elephants, deer, dolphins, whales, or turbots, shewed the least emotion at the most elaborate strains of your modern scrapers, all which have been, as it were tamed and humanized by ancient musicians? Whence proceeds the degenerancy of our morals? Is it not from the loss of ancient music, by which (says Aristotle) they taught all the virtues? Else might we turn Newgate into a college of Dorian musicians, who should teach moral virtues to those people. Whence comes it that our present diseases are so stubborn? whence is it that I daily deplore my sciatical pains? Alas! because we have lost their true cure, by the melody of the pipe. All this was well known to the ancients, as Theophrastus assures us, (whence Cælius calls it _loca dolentia decantare_) only indeed some small remains of this skill are preserved in the cure of the Tarantula. Did not Pythagoras stop a company of drunken bullies from storming a civil house, by changing the strain of the pipe to the sober spondaeus? and yet your modern musicians want art to defend their windows from common nickers. It is well known that when the Lacedaemonian mob were up, they commonly sent for a Lesbian musician to appease them, and they immediately grew calm as soon as they heard Terpander sing: Yet I don't believe that the Pope's whole band of music, though the best of this age, could keep his holiness's image from being burnt on a fifth of November.’ ‘Nor would Terpander himself,’ replied Albertus, ‘at Billingsgate, nor Timotheus at Hockley in the Hole, have any manner of effect, nor both of them together bring Horneck to common civility.’ ‘That's a gross mistake,’ said Cornelius, very warmly, ‘and to prove it so, I have here a small lyra of my own, framed, strung, and tuned after the ancient manner. I can play some fragments of Lesbian tunes, and I wish I were to try them upon the most passionate creatures alive.’--‘You never had a better opportunity,’ says Albertus, ‘for yonder are two apple-women scolding, and just ready to uncoif one another.’ With that Cornelius, undressed as he was, jumps out into his balcony, his lyra in hand, in his slippers,--with a stocking upon his head, and waist-coat of murrey-coloured satin upon his body: He touched his lyra with a very unusual sort of an harpegiatura, nor were his hopes frustrated. The odd equipage, the uncouth instrument, the strangeness of the man and of the music, drew the ears and eyes of the whole mob that were got about the two female champions, and at last of the combatants themselves. They all approached the balcony, in as close attention as Orpheus's first audience of cattle, or that of an Italian opera, when some favourite air is just awakened. This sudden effect of his music encouraged him mightily, and it was observed he never touched his lyre in such a truly chromatic and enharmonic manner as upon that occasion. The mob laughed, sung, jumped, danced, and used many odd gestures, all which he judged to be caused by the various strains and modulations. ‘Mark,’ quoth he, ‘in this, the power of the Ionian, in that, you see the effect of the Æolian.’ But in a little time they began to grow riotous, and threw stones; Cornelius then withdrew. ‘Brother,’ said he, ‘do you observe I have mixed unawares too much of the Phrygian? I might change it to the Lydian, and soften their riotous tempers: But it is enough: learn from this sample to speak with veneration of ancient music. If this lyre in my unskilful hands can perform such wonders, what must it not have done in those of a Timotheus or a Terpander?’ Having said this he retired with the utmost exultation in himself, and contempt of his brother; and, it is said, behaved that night with such unusual haughtiness to his family, that they all had reason to wish for some ancient Tibicen to calm his temper.”[81]

That, in enlightened countries, so many wonders should have been related and credited,--if no phenomena that could justify them were truly observed,--may perhaps on first reflection, appear so unaccountable, as almost to induce belief of the wonders themselves, as less inexplicable than the very credit which was given to them. But it must be remembered, that, in all ages, and even in countries of philosophers, there is a very large fund of credulity in man,--which yields, very readily, to every thing that is not absolutely impossible, and which is even not very nice, in estimating what is impossible,--leaning always, whenever there is the slightest doubt on this point, with a very favourable inclination to the side of the _possibility_;--and, in the second place, that the phenomena of music are precisely of a kind, which gives this credulity the widest scope. They are pleasing in themselves, and of a kind therefore, on which it is gratifying to the imagination to dwell--their influence on the mind is felt in a very high and wonderful degree, even without any fabulous addition;--they are produced by instruments, which seem, in their sensible appearance, so little adequate to the production of them, that the result is almost like the effect of supernatural agency, to which we know not how to give any limits;--and, when a little mystery is once admitted, the imagination, which has fairly got over the difficulty of this first admission, is not very scrupulous afterwards as to degrees, but is sufficiently ready of itself to admit a great deal more, without pausing to consider its exact amount.

The phenomena of music, in addition to their general interest, are truly worthy, in another respect, of our astonishment, from that striking diversity of organic power in the perception of _melody_ and still more of _harmony_ which they exhibit in different individuals, in whom all other circumstances are apparently the same,--a diversity which has often attracted the attention of philosophers, and has led even those who have no great tendency to speculation of any kind, to wonder at least, which is the first step of all philosophizing. In the present instance, however, unfortunately, this first step is the only step which philosophers have been able to take. They have been obliged to desist, after all their efforts to proceed farther, and to submit to share, and even to acknowledge that they share, the ignorance of the vulgar. If, indeed, the want of musical ear had involved either a general defect of hearing, or a general slowness of discrimination in other cases of nice diversity, the wonder would not have been great. But those, who are without ear for music, perceive as readily as others, the faintest whisper;--they distinguish like them, the faintest shades of difference in the mere articulations of sound which constitute the varieties of language, nor the articulations only, but the differences also of the mere tones of affection or displeasure, grief or gaiety, which are so strikingly analogous to the varied expression of musical feeling;--and their power of discrimination in every other case, in which the judgment can be exercised, is not less perfect. Nay,--to increase still more the difficulty,--they are often as sensible, as others, of the beauty of series of tones of a different kind; and some of our best poets and declaimers,--who of course must have had a quick discernment of metrical rhythm, and of the melody of elocution,--have yet been incapable of distinguishing the _musical_ relations of sounds, as reciprocally high or low,--the melody that results from them in certain successions, and the harmony or the discord of their union. That it depends, chiefly, or perhaps entirely, on the structure or state of the mere corporeal organ of hearing,--which is of a kind, it must be remembered, peculiarly complicated, and therefore susceptible of great original diversity in the parts, and relations of the parts that form it, is very probable; though the difference of the separate parts themselves, or of their relations to each other, may, to the mere eye, be so minute, as never to be discovered by dissection,--thus leaving, to every future race of inquirers, the same difficulty which has perplexed ourselves, and the same impossibility of overcoming it. In the sense of vision, I may remark, there is a species of defect, very analogous to the want of musical ear,--a defect, which consists in the difficulty, or rather the incapacity, of distinguishing some colours from each other--and colours which, to general observers, seem of a very opposite kind. As the want of musical ear implies no general defect of mere quickness of hearing, this visual defect, in like manner, is to be found in persons, who are yet capable of distinguishing, with perfect accuracy, the form, and the greater or less brilliancy of the coloured object;--and I may remark too, in confirmation of the opinion, that the want of musical ear depends on causes not _mental_ but _organic_; that, in this analogous case, some attempts, not absolutely unsuccessful, have been made, to explain the apparent confusion of colours, by certain peculiarities of the external organ of sight. Though the one case, however, were to throw no light upon the other, it is still gratifying to philosophers, to have a case at all analogous, to which, when they are weary of considering what has baffled all their endeavours to explain it, they may have the comfort of turning away their attention, without the mortification of seeming absolutely to fly from the subject. Such is the strange constitution of our nature, that merely to have another difficulty presented to us, though it may yet be absolutely unsurmountable in itself,--if only it have some slight resemblance to a former difficulty,--seems to us almost as if we had succeeded in explaining the first;--and each difficulty, by a very convenient transposition, which our pride knows well how to make, supplies, according as we may have been considering the one rather than the other, the place of explanation to that which is afterwards to explain it, no less clearly, in its turn.

In considering sound relatively to its external cause, we give the name of vibration to the successive pulses, or alternate approaches and recessions of the particles of the elastic sounding body; and the word is a very convenient one for expressing this series. But still it may be necessary to warn you, that the word, though single, is not the less expressive of a plurality of states, which have no other unity, than as they are comprehended in this single word,--a word, like many other single words, by which we express the combination of various objects, or invented by us, merely to aid our weakness, that is incapable, without such helps, of conceiving or remembering even a small part of that wide series of physical changes, which we are able to discover in the universe, if each event of the series were to be distinguished by a peculiar name. This mere aid of our weakness, however, we are apt, by a very absurd, but a very general fallacy, to consider as something, much more dignified in its nature than a mere arbitrary verbal abbreviation,--as truly an explanation of the very phenomena, or series of phenomena, which it simply designates. You must not flatter yourselves, however, that you have advanced the slightest step, in explaining the connexion of sound with the pulses of air, when you have merely invented a brief term for those successive pulses, and ascribed the sound to vibration; you have, indeed, given a name to a series of corpuscular phenomena, but you have not discovered any thing additional to the phenomena themselves, which can be considered as explanatory to the changes produced.

_What_, then, is truly meant, when it is said, that, for producing the mental affection, which constitutes hearing, some previous vibration is necessary? It certainly cannot mean, as I have already remarked, that the vibration is any thing in itself different from the series of physical events which it expresses, however few or numerous these may be, since it is only the name which we give to them, when we consider them together; nor can it mean that the direct cause of the sensation is any thing different from the one organic state immediately preceding the sensation,--a state which may, indeed, have resulted from a long sequence of prior organic states, produced during the continued vibratory motion of the air, but which is itself, in its relation to the phenomenon which succeeds it,--that affection of the sentient mind which constitutes _hearing_,--to be considered independently of these prior states, that have no other relation to the mind, than as gradually inducing that ultimate organic state, which is the state that is followed by sensation. There is a part, less or greater, of the sensorial organ, which must be affected, in a certain manner, before the sensation of hearing can take place; and, in _vibration_, there is nothing but a repeated approach and secession of the vibrating particles. If _vibration_, then, or a series of pulses, be necessary, it is evident that a corresponding series of changes in the organ is necessary; that is to say, there is no one instant, at which the vibrating particles are in such a state relatively to the sensorial organ, that if no previous change had been excited in the organ itself, they could have produced in it immediately, the precise state, which is instantly followed by the mental affection of hearing. There must, therefore, be a _series_ of changes, in the sensorial organ itself, the last of which only is followed by sensation. The particles of the air, or any other elastic medium, for example, must, in their _first_ appulse, produce a certain state of the sensorial organ; in their _second_ appulse, a different state, by acting on an organ, already affected in a certain manner; in their _third_ appulse, a still different state; and thus successively, till, _at last_, they produce that particular definite state of the sensorial organ, in consequence of which, the _mind_ becomes instantly _sentient_,--a state which could not have been produced by any single impulse of the particles on the unaffected organ, because then vibration, or a series of pulses, would not have been necessary.

To this successive modification of states of an organ, terminating in a particular result, different from each of the prior states, there are abundant analogies in the history of the mind, and many in the phenomena of sensation itself. One of the most remarkable of these is the production of the sensation of _whiteness_, by the rapid revolution of a cylinder, on which the separate prismatic colours, and the separate colours only, are painted, in certain proportions; _each colour_, in this case, acting on the organ already affected by a former colour, till a sensation altogether different from the result of each of them when separate, is their joint ultimate result, the sensation of _whiteness_, without any external object that is white.

In this way only, by a series of progressive organic affections, and not by any single affection, can the vibration of an elastic medium, as different from one simple unrepeated impulse, terminate in the production of sound. It is, in short, a name for this series of changes, and nothing more.

If, in a case so very obscure as that of _musical ear_, in which all that is truly evident, is, that in different individuals, there is a diversity of some kind or other--I could permit myself to indulge any conjecture with respect to this diversity,--I might perhaps, be inclined to look to the view now given of the real nature of _vibration_, and its progressive effects on the auditory part of our nervous system, as furnishing some slight ground, not, indeed, for any theory, which is far too presumptuous a word, but for the preference of one mere possibility, to other mere possibilities, which is all that can be hoped in any conjecture, on so very dim and impalpable a subject.

We have seen that the series of pulses of the vibrating air,--if vibration, or a series of pulses be necessary to sound,--must produce a series of changes in the sensorial organ, which produce no corresponding affection of the mind, till, at last, a state of the organ is produced, which _is_ attended with sensation. This, and this only, can be meant, when we speak of vibration as the antecedent of sound,--a series of organic changes, and, after this series, an affection of the mind. In such circumstances, it is certainly more probable, that the organ thus affected with a series of progressive changes, does not pass instantly from the greatest change to the state in which it was originally, before the first pulse, but that it retains this state, for a time, however, short, or, at least, passes through some series of states, in its gradual return, so that, if a _new_ vibration be excited by the pulse of any sounding body, before the organ of hearing have returned to its original state, the effect may be supposed to be different from that which it would have been, if the same vibration had been primarily communicated to the organ, in its state of rest, or in that state, which, from our want of a better word, may be termed its state of rest.

The phenomena most analogous to these vibratory affections of the ear, as depending on successive impulses, are unquestionably the phenomena of _titillation_, or rather, to express what is so familiar and simple, by a more homely and appropriate word, the phenomena of _tickling_. In this, the great circumstance distinguishing musical feeling, is to be found, that the feeling arises not from the separate impressions, but from their successions or co-existence. When the palm of the hand is gently tickled, as the finger passes rapidly and repeatedly over the palm, the parts first affected are again affected with various degrees of pressure, as the ear, in melody, is successively affected by repeated varieties of vibration; and various parts of the organ of touch exist, at the same moment, in various states, forming one joint result of sensation, as, in harmony, various vibrations of the organ of hearing _co-exist_, and blend together in one mingled delight. To produce tickling, a certain rapidity of succession is necessary; for, if the parts, first affected, have returned to their original state, before other parts begin to be affected, or themselves to be affected again, the slow motion, it is evident, may be continued, for any length of time, without any effect, different from that of simple pressure. The quicker, then, the return of the parts may be to their original state, the less will be the titillation; and, it is very probably, a difference in this quickness of return, which constitutes the difference of ticklishness, so remarkable in different individuals, who feel, equally, the light pressure of each separate touch. That there is a difference of ticklishness, in different persons, you all know; some being easily excited even to convulsive laughter, by slight motions, that scarcely produce any effect in others, beyond that of the simple primary sensation of touch. A person who is ticklish, and a person who is not ticklish, agree in receiving this first tactual sensation; but they differ afterwards, in this respect, that when the same slight impulse is rapidly repeated, on the same surface, it produces a livelier effect than before, in the _one_, but not in the _other_. The organ of the one who is not ticklish is in the same state, or nearly in the same state, when it receives the second, third, and fourth impression, as when it received the first, and no peculiar excitement, therefore, is produced. The organ of the other, more susceptible, or more tenacious of the affection produced, has not returned to its original state, when the rapid impression is repeated, and is, therefore, at every new impression, affected in a different manner.

Proceeding on the analogy of these phenomena,--of mere _tickling_, with which I may suppose you to be all acquainted,--an analogy which, striking as it is in many circumstances, I readily own, does not justify more than conjecture in the case to which I would apply it,--I conceive it to be, at least, not absolutely impossible, since a diversity of some kind, there must be, that in those who receive no pleasure from music, as in those who are not ticklish, there is a rapid return of the nervous organ, after each separate affection, to its original state; that each separate touch or pressure in the one case, and each separate tone in the other case, produces its particular effect,--that effect which it would have produced in all, if unaccompanied by any other tone in music, or slight pressure in tickling,--but that a succession of these produces no effect different from that which each would have produced singly. A certain interval is necessary for distinct hearing in every case; and, before this interval has passed, the auditory nerves, in this case, may be imagined to be again quiescent, or nearly quiescent.

I need not add, that, in an inquiry of this sort, all which is necessary, is to account for the mere original defect of pleasure; since, if the relations of notes, as reciprocally high or low, never gave any delight, the ear, having no object of interest in these successions, would soon habitually neglect them, and at length cease altogether to distinguish them, attending only to the verbal meaning of sounds, and not to their tone; in the same manner, as we pay little attention to another relative difference of voices as more or less loud, unless when the difference is very considerable, and not in those common differences of intensity which distinguish every voice in conversation from every other voice,--or as, after living long in a province, the dialect of which is distinguished by any accentual peculiarities, we at last become unconscious of these, and hear the words, as it were, stripped of their peculiarity of tone. In what is termed the cultivation of a musical ear, however, we have not an analogy merely, but a direct proof of this influence of habit. That the ear may be improved by cultivation, or, in other words, by nice attention to the differences of musical sound, every one knows; and if this attention can enable us, even in mature life, to distinguish sounds as different in themselves, which, but for the habitual attention, we should have regarded as the same, it may well be supposed, that continued inattention, from earliest infancy, may render us insensible of musical relations still more obvious and precise, than those which we have thus only learned to distinguish; or, which is the same thing, that continued attention from infancy to slight musical differences of sound,--an attention which may be regarded as the natural effect of pleasure received,--may render us capable of distinguishing tones as very dissimilar, the differences of which, however obvious at present, we should scarcely, but for such original attentive discrimination, have been able to detect. What, in comparison, the refined musical ear of a performer,--almost every hour, and every moment, of whose life has been spent amid sounds,

“Untwisting all the chains, that tie
The hidden soul of harmony,”--