WHY IS THE HUMAN EAR IMMOBILE? 233 



of these sensations stationary? Suppose the eye were to be trained 

 to give special attention to the changes in objects before it, it would 

 be essential that it should be prevented from making its usual excur- 

 sions round the field open to it, and should be kept looking fixedly at 

 one object. Not that this fixedness involves of necessity the inability 

 to perceive a multiplicity of coexisting objects; it is found by experi- 

 ment that when the eye is perfectly steady any one of the many points 

 exposed to it can be attended to; and moreover, the attention can be 

 directed from point to point. In hearing, too, we know that we can 

 while remaining motionless, listen first to the sound from one quar- 

 ter, then to that from another. But this only shows that when the 

 natural instruments for performing certain acts are withdrawn from 

 us, we may make shift to supply their places. We can see an object 

 with the periphery of the eye, but we can not see it so well as when 

 we freely turn the fovea upon it. And though we can direct our 

 listening power from one point of the compass to another it remains 

 true that the ear, smitten with immobility, can best fulfil its percep- 

 tive function when there is attention to the successive stimulations 

 forming from one object. 



It may seem that we have forgotten that such a sense as smell has 

 an immobile organ, yet does not yield any special perception of suc- 

 cession. It is to be noted, however, that this sense is little developed 

 in its perceptive aspect. We can not get the large number of discrete 

 sensations from this sense that we can from hearing. We may by 

 the ear distinguish five hundred sounds in the second. There is noth- 

 ing in smell comparable to this. We need not wait to consider whether 

 in its own undeveloped way smell does not after all remotely resemble 

 hearing in the kind of perception it yields. 



But we have not yet indicated the special forms assumed by the 

 succession of sounds which it is so important to perceive. They are 

 two — language and music. Language consists of a succession of 

 sounds. When we consider how largely the intellectual life depends 

 on language, we can see the enormous advantage of the development 

 of the faculty of perceiving successive rather than simultaneous sounds. 

 As every one is familiar with the importance of language, the greatness 

 of the gain needs no further emphasis. Of less importance, though 

 its significance for primeval man may yet prove to have been very 

 great, is the appreciation of music. The music that is referred to is 

 that given in melody. There is, apart from the melody, an appeal of 

 each note and complex of notes which does not mean succession at all. 

 Much of the thrill of music is an immediate effect of the individual 

 note. But the appreciation of melody depends on the perception of 

 succession. The eye is appealed to by a spatial combination of colors, 

 the ear by a series of sounds. Headers of Lessing's Laocoon know how 



