66 THOUGHTS UPON THE MUSICAL SENSE [X. 



highly or lowly organized. The ' soul ' is, as it were, played 

 upon like an instrument by the musical nerve-vibrations of the 

 auditory centre. The more perfect this instrument is the 

 greater is the effect produced. The perception of music by 

 the highest animals, such as the dog, cat, or horse, must be very 

 imperfect as regards the purely formal relation between 

 chords and successions of simple notes, because their mind is 

 lowly developed, because their intellect cannot find any 

 interest in following the manifold intricacies of the progress of 

 ' parts.' It is not keen and acute enough even to perceive the 

 varying distinctions between one ' timbre ' of sound and 

 another, for it has no purely mental interests. Only in the 

 most crude and general manner are the souls of animals open 

 to the emotional effects of music. Music impresses them as 

 agreeable or disagreeable, and attracts them entirely irrespec- 

 tive of what we call the ' character ' of a performance. The 

 above-mentioned dog which followed the music of the fair was 

 probably agreeably affected by every performance of the street 

 band, whether it was in a major or minor key, whether it was 

 a polka or a funeral march. So far as the dog was concerned 

 the finer shades of difference, by which we are affected so 

 powerfully, had no existence at all ; it was only impressed by 

 the sound, the mere pure matter of music, a thing which is of 

 no importance to us as compared with the form of it. That 

 which we admire most in music, and which chiefly excites our 

 interest, is the originality and richness of musical forms, as 

 Hanslick has so admirably shown in his interesting essay on 

 ' The Beautiful in Music ^' We are able to enjoy a sj^mphony 

 in a pianoforte arrangement, or, with sufficient practice, by 

 merely reading the notes ; and we appreciate not merely its 

 formal relationship, but also its emotional effect and significance. 

 By reading it we can be sent into a happy or a melancholy 

 frame of mind, and we can fancy that we see in the composition 

 the representation of moods of mind as distinguished from par- 

 ticular ' feelings.' Everyone will admit that, at any rate as re- 

 gards this latter effect of music, even the highest animal can 

 never have any idea, even though its hearing and its auditory 

 centre were practised for the whole of its life ; and this must be 



^ See also ' Sensation and Intuition ' by James Sully, and ' The Power 

 of Sound ' by Edmund Gurney. 



