J68 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



ten men any of the sounds proceed, and we shall 

 be incapable of perceiving that there is any differ- 

 ence in the direction of the sounds emitted by 

 the two outermost. If a man and a child are 

 placed within the same angle, and if the man 

 speaks with the accent of a child without any 

 corresponding motion in his mouth or face, we 

 shall necessarily believe that the voice comes 

 from the child; nay, if the child is so distant 

 from the man that the voice actually appears to 

 us to come from the man, we shall still continue 

 in the belief that the child is the speaker ; and 

 this conviction would acquire additional strength 

 if the child favoured the deception, by accom- 

 modating its features and gestures to the words 

 spoken by the man. So powerful, indeed, is the 

 influence of this deception, that if a jack-ass, 

 placed near the man, were to open its mouth, 

 and shake its head responsive to the words 

 uttered by his neighbour, we should rather 

 believe that the ass spoke than that the sounds 

 proceeded from a person whose mouth was shut, 

 and the muscles of whose face were in perfect 

 repose. If our imagination were even directed 

 to a marble statue or a lump of inanimate matter, 

 as the source from which we were to expect the 

 sounds to issue, we would still be deceived, and 

 would refer the sounds even to these lifeless 

 objects. The illusion would be greatly promoted, 

 if the voice were totally different in its tone and 

 character from that of the man from whom it 

 really comes ; and if he occasionally speaks in 

 his own full and measured voice, the belief will 

 be irresistible that the assumed voice proceeds 

 from the quadruped or from the inanimate object. 



