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,”--
is to a common musical ear, that common musical ear may be to those
in whom this discriminating skill seems to be wholly or nearly
defective. The refined musician,--who, but for the long practice of
his art, would have shared that incapacity which now excites his
wonder,--is astonished, that persons of common ear do not distinguish
the nice differences which appear to him almost as remarkable as those
differences which they are capable of perceiving; and the person of
common musical ear only does the same thing, when he is astonished that
the less refined differences, remarked by himself, are not obviously
distinguishable by all mankind, or, at least, by all who have no
deafness to incapacitate them from hearing the separate sounds. The
discrimination in both has depended on previous attention, which has
necessarily been greater in one case than in the other; and what
attention can we suppose to have been originally given, if from the
cause which I have ventured to state as a possible one in persons
without musical ear, no pleasure had originally been felt by them in
any sequence of notes as successive, and the whole value of sound
been to them the meaning of which it was symbolically representative,
which, accordingly, they have learned to discriminate in every case, as
accurately as others.
I might follow out this speculation at much greater length; but I have
already dwelt too long on what is at best a conjecture, and what,
perhaps, even as a mere conjecture, is founded only on a slight analogy.
After the examination of the phenomena of _Smell_, _Taste_, and
_Hearing_, which are peculiarly simple, I proceed to the consideration
of Senses, which afford phenomena that are more complicated, or, at
least, which seem more complicated, as considered in the mature state
of the mind; when the sensations that arise from one set of organs,
by frequent co-existence with sensations that arise from affections
of other sets of organs, are, as it were, blended with them in one
compound perception, and so permanently modified forever after, that
it is difficult in all cases, and in many cases perhaps impossible, to
form any accurate notion of the sensations as they existed in their
original elementary state.
Since, of the two senses of _Sight_ and _Touch_, that of _Sight_,--as
far, at least, as we are able, by intellectual analysis at present to
discover its original sensations,--is more simple, and more analogous
to the senses before considered, I should be inclined, on these
accounts, to proceed to the consideration of it, previously to any
inquiry into the sense of Touch. But this order, though unquestionably
the more regular, if we had to consider only the original sensations of
each organ, would be attended with great inconvenience in considering
their subsequent modified sensations; since those of Vision depend, in
a very great degree, on the _prior_ affections of _Touch_, with the
nature of which, therefore, it is necessary for you to be acquainted in
the first place. I am aware, indeed, that, in considering even _Touch_,
I may sometimes find it necessary to refer, for illustration to the
phenomena of _Vision_, though these have not been considered by us, and
must, therefore, for the time, be taken upon trust. But when phenomena
are at all complicated, such occasional anticipations are absolutely
unavoidable. Sensation, indeed, says Aristotle, is a _straight line_,
while intellect is a _circle_,--Αἴσθησις γραμμὴ, νοῦς κύκλος,--or
to use the paraphrastic translation of Cudworth, in his treatise on
Immutable Morality, “Sense is of that which is without. Sense wholly
gazes and gads abroad; and, therefore, doth not know and comprehend
its object, because it is different from it. Sense is a line, the
mind is a circle. Sense is like a line, which is the flux of a point
running out from itself; but intellect like a circle, that keeps within
itself.”[82] That sense is not a circle is, indeed, true, since it
terminates in a point; but far from being a _straight_ line, it is
one of the most perplexing of _curves_, and is crossed and cut by so
many other curves,--into many of which it flows, and unites with them
completely,--that when we arrive at the extremity of the line, it is
almost impossible for us to determine with accuracy what _curve_ it is,
which, in the strange confusion of our diagram, we have been attempting
to trace from its initial point.
I proceed, then, to the consideration of the phenomena of the sense of
TOUCH.
If priority of sensation alone were to be regarded, the sense of
_touch_ might deserve to be considered in the first place; as it must
have been exercised long before birth, and is probably the very feeling
with which sentient life commences. The act of _birth_, in relation to
the mind of the little stranger, who is thus painfully ushered into the
wide scene of the world, is a series of feelings, of this class; and
the first feeling which awaits him, on his entrance,--in the change of
temperature to which he is exposed,--is still to be referred to the
same organ. It is at this most important moment of existence, when one
dark and solitary life of _months_, of which no vestige is afterwards
to remain in the memory, is finished, and a new life of _many
years_,--a life of sunshine and society,--is just beginning, that, in
the figurative language of the author, whom I am about to quote to you,
_Pain_, the companion of human life, receives him on the first step of
his journey, and embraces him in his iron arms.
“Primas tactus agit partes, primusque minutæ
Laxat iter cæcum turbæ, recipitque ruentem.
Non idem huic modus est qui fratribus; amplius ille
Imperium affectat senior, penitusque medullis,
Viceribusque habitat totis, pellisque recentem
Funditur in telam, et late per stamina vivit.
Necdum etiam matris puer eluctatus ab alvo
Multiplices solvit tunicas, et vincula rupit;
Sopitus molli somno, tepidoque liquore
Circumfusus adhuc; tactus tamen aura lacessit
Jamdudum levior sensus, animamque reclusit.
Idque magis, simul ac solitum blandamque calorem
Frigore mutavit cœli, quod verberat acri
Impete inassuetos artus; tum sævior adstat,
Humanæque comes vitæ Dolor excipit; ille
Cunctantem frustra et tremulo multa ore querentem
Corripit invadens, ferreisque amplectitur ulnis.”[83]
It is at this moment, so painful to himself, that he is affording to
_another_ bosom, perhaps the purest delight of which our nature is
capable, and has already kindled, in a heart, of the existence of which
he is as ignorant, as of the love which he excites in it, that warmth
of affection, which is never, but in the grave, to be cold to _him_,
and to which, in the many miseries that may await him,--in sorrow,
in sickness, in poverty,--and perhaps too in the penitence of guilt
itself,--when there is no other eye, to whose kindness he can venture
to look, he is still to turn with the confidence, that he has yet, even
on earth, _one friend_, who will not abandon him,--and who will still
think of that innocent being, whose eye, before it was conscious of
light, seemed to look to her for the love and protection, which were
ready to receive him.
FOOTNOTES:
[79] Pope's Essay on Criticism, v. 374--381.
[80] Quintus Curtius, lib. v. cap. 7.
[81] Mart. Scrib. Book I. c. 7. with some exclusions.
[82] Page 98, 99.
[83] Gray de Princip. Cogit. lib. i. v. 64-80.
LECTURE XXII.
ON THE FEELINGS ASCRIBED TO THE SENSE OF TOUCH,--AND ANALYSIS OF THESE
FEELINGS.
In my Last Lecture, Gentlemen, I finished the remarks which I had to
offer, on our sense of _hearing_; and in the conclusion of it, had
begun the consideration of a very important order of our feelings,
those which belong to the sense of _touch_.
Of these, I may mention, in the first place, the sensations of _heat_
and _cold_,--sensations that arise from affections of our nerves
of touch, or at least from affections of nerves, which, as equally
diffused and intermingled with them, it is impossible to distinguish
from those which constitute our organ of touch, the same wide surface
rendering us sensible, as it were, at every point of warmth as of
pressure.