Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/110

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CHAPTER VI

THE PROJECTION OF SENSE-ORGANS

THE EAR

THIS is an age of prodigies. One child after another appears in the concert room, and amazes the public by his or her powers as a violinist or pianist, and at public exhibitions of child drawings the man in the street hears with wonder that a little child is the artist who drew this or that picture. Yet the child prodigy is not a new thing. He has dazzled people for centuries. He is always an artist, a player, and, in rare cases, a composer. Sometimes he is a philosopher.[1] But he is never an instrument-maker—an artisan.

Long delay in the development of a musician is unnecessary, because the musical apparatus in his own body is perfected in all its parts soon after birth. For example, that part of the ear which is concerned with hearing more directly than any other,

  1. The child philosopher is, however, a forced growth, and his philosophy, though borrowed, is a weird product.

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