ANCIENT SCIENCE. IS 



segments being shown by the figures marked on the sounding-board. 

 The other wire represented in the apparatus is used for the purpose 

 of showing the effects of different tensions in altering the note. This 

 also appears to have been a subject of investigation by Pythagoras or 

 some of his disciples. The experiments are performed by attaching 

 known weights to the end A of the wire, and in this way it is found 

 when the wire is stretched by a weight of 9 Ibs., it will yield a note a 

 fifth above that given out with a tension of 4 Ibs. ; and the octave is 

 reached when the wire is stretched by a weight of 16 Ibs. It will be 

 noticed that these numbers are inversely as the squares of those ex- 

 pressing the relative lengths of wire for the same intervals. 



The reader can hardly have failed to observe the circumstance of 

 the relative lengths of the same cord which yield the harmonious in- 

 tervals of octave, fifth, and fourth being expressed by the first four 

 numbers, i, 2, 3, and 4. Whatever mystical importance Pythagoras 

 had before this discovery been accustomed to attach to numbers we 

 may well suppose would be vastly increased when he found that music 

 itself depended on numbers. The people of ancient Greece were 

 perhaps more susceptible to the influences of music than the moderns, 

 although it is capable of rousing even in these last the wildest enthu- 

 siasm. Music, it is said, produces states of feeling which are incapable 

 of being awakened by words, and are inexpressible by them. By the 

 very absence of distinct ideas or images, it seems the more directly to 

 address the heart, lifting from it trie burden of ordinary existence, so 

 that the listener feels as if admitted into the innermost sanctuary of 

 being, where life itself is ready to reveal its mystery. Can we, then, 

 wonder that Pythagoras should have supposed that he had at length 

 discovered the world-secret, and that he should have taught that har- 

 mony, proportion, number, ruled all things? Pythagoras applied this 

 doctrine in his famous conception of the music of the spheres. His 

 ideas on astronomical subjects appear in some respects to have em- 

 bodied certain truths ; for example, by his placing fire in the centre 

 of the universe we may infer that he intended to represent the position 

 of the sun. He conceived the planets to revolve around the central 

 luminary, and he observed, as he thought, that their different velocities 

 had the same proportions to each other as he had discovered in the 

 musical intervals. But as these velocities were great, Pythagoras could 

 not think of them otherwise than as necessarily accompanied by a 

 sound a mighty rushing noise. " All things he had ever observed in 

 rapid motion, the horse, thundering with hoof of speed ; the chariot, 

 with flashing wheels raising the Olympian dust; the ship, with raging 

 prow urged by a keel-compelling gale through the waters, failed not 

 to loudly impress the ear. But the vast velocities of the planets being 

 exactly in the harmonic ratios, the result could not, he concluded, be 

 noise, but music, and music excelling in sweetness as well as in power 

 all earthly music. We may here parenthetically remark that these 



