Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)

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.”

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 JoveNow 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.