74 



DISCOVERY 



Mr. Gray, who ranked well above the average in some 

 factors (sense of pitch and keenness of hearing), and 

 well below in others (sense of intensity, sense of time, 

 and sense of consonance), had average musical ability. 

 With little musical education, he possessed an artistic 

 tj-pe of mind and lived much in musical feeling. 



Value of These Investigations 



It may be urged in objection to this kind of investiga- 

 tion that the possession of all the simple functions 

 described — sense of pitch, sense of time, etc. — does 

 not in itself make a musician. Something more than 

 these must be supposed to be necessary to make up 

 the difference between a Pachmann and a merely 

 mechanically accurate performer, and this something 

 may elude psychological analysis. This is probably 

 true. We could not even give an account of what 

 makes a champion tennis player, apart from such 

 physical qualities as strength of wrist and arm, accuracy 

 of co-ordination of hand and eye, etc. Two players 

 may be equal in all these respects, and while one 

 remains a good, but not very good, match player, 

 the other may become English champion. What makes 

 the analysis and investigation of these simple factors 

 in musical ability much more important than the 

 corresponding physical measurements of tennis players 

 is their more elusive character. No one is likely to 

 start training as a tennis player if he is blind, or club- 

 footed, or has lost the use of his right hand. Yet 

 a precisely similar error is constantly being made 

 when money and time are wasted in giving children 

 musical training who are totally deficient in one of 

 the unitary factors which are necessary for any 

 musical success at all, such as the sense of pitch or 

 the possession of auditory imagery. If blindness 

 and club feet were defects not immediately apparent 

 on inspection, we would have reason to be grateful 

 to anyone who discovered a way by which these defects 

 could be detected otherwise than by the wasteful 

 process of teaching tennis to all children and only 

 discovering that they were blind or lame by the failure 

 of prolonged attempts to teach them the game. 



Dr. Seashore has, however, done more than this. 

 His analysis of the factors which make up musical 

 talent is in itself a great advance in the theory of 

 musical ability. His list of twenty-five factors is a 

 welcome recognition of the complexity' of a condition 

 which is simply explained in po]3ular speech by the 

 phrase : " He has no ear " — a phrase which assumes 

 that the only difference between the musical and the 

 unmusical person is that the latter is deficient in his 

 power of discriminating pitches. How rmtrue this is 

 can be proved by anyone who cares to experiment on 

 the subject. I have myself found in a single test one 

 person of exceptionally high and one person of excep- 



tionally low musical ability, who showed exactly the 

 same rating as each other in pitch discrimination. 



Can the More Elusive Factors in Musical 

 Talent be Analysed ? 



The presence in musical talent of factors which so 

 far elude psychological analysis is indicated by the 

 complex character of the later functions investigated 

 by Professor Seashore. Musical taste is not an 

 elementary function like pitch discrimination. Perhaps 

 it is one which may be further analysed, even although 

 it may be impossible to split it up into really simple 

 constituents. Such further analysis belongs to a 

 branch of experimental psychology which may be 

 called experimental aesthetics. 



As an example of the investigation of these more 

 elusive factors in musical talent, I will mention shortly 

 some experiments performed by Dr. C. S. Myers on 

 individual differences in listening to music. He used 

 fifteen subjects of various degrees of musical apprecia- 

 tion, and obtained from them introspective reports of 

 their impressions and mental attitudes while they were 

 listening to music produced by means of a gramophone. 

 It is impossible to give even a short summary of the 

 results of such work as this. These investigations 

 have been mentioned here only to illustrate the fact 

 that experimental inquiry need not stop at the investi- 

 gation of simple functions, although as it approaches 

 more complex problems it must adapt its methods to 

 their requirements. 



READING RECOMMENDED 



The Psychology of Musical Talent. By Professoi- C. E. Sea- 

 shore. (Silver, Burdett & Co., Boston, 1919.) 



Individual Differences in Listenim; to Music. By Dr. C. S. 

 Myers. {British Journal of Psychology, General Section, 

 July 19-2, Cambridge University Press, gs.) 



Substances Existing in 

 Various Forms 



By A. J. Berry, M.A. 



Fclhiw of Downing College, Cambridge 



Everyone is familiar with the fact that substances 

 are, in general, capable of existence in more than one 

 form. For example, the substance known as water 

 may exist as ice, liquid water, or steam. We have thus 

 become accustomed to classify the various states of 

 aggregation of matter — that is, the different ways in 

 which units of matter may be grouped together — as 

 the solid, the liquid, and the gaseous states. This 

 classification is, however, incomplete. There is usually 



