HEARING. 59 



tinguish as different in themselves, sounds which, but 

 for the habitual attention, we should have regarded as 

 the same, it may well be supposed that continued 

 inattention from earliest infancy may render us in- 

 sensible to musical relations still more obvious and 

 precise than those which we have thus only learned 

 to distinguish; or, which is the same thing, that 

 continued attention from infancy to slight musical 

 differences of sound an attention which may be 

 regarded as the natural effect of pleasure received 

 may render us capable of distinguishing tones as 

 very dissimilar, the difference of which, however ob- 

 vious at present, we should scarcely, but for such 

 original attentive discrimination, have been able to 

 detect. What, in comparison, the refined ear of a 

 performer, almost every moment of whose life has 

 been spent amidst sounds 



1 Untwisting all the chains that tie 

 The hidden soul of harmony,' 



is to a common musical ear, that common musical 

 ear may be to those in whom this discriminating 

 skill seems to be wholly, or nearly defective. The 

 refined musician, who, but for the long practice of 

 his art, would have shared that incapacity which 

 now excites his wonder, is astonished that persons 

 of a common ear do not distinguish the nice dif- 

 ferences which appear to him almost as remarkable 

 as those differences which they are capable of per- 

 ceiving; and the person of common musical ear only 

 does the same thing, when he is astonished that the 

 less refined differences remarked by himself are not 

 obviously distinguishable to all mankind, or, at least, 

 by all who have no deafness to ' incapacitate them 

 from hearing the separate sounds. The discrimina- 

 tion in both has depended on previous attention, 

 which has necessarily been greater in the one case 



G 



