entrance. That is, all uoise or sounds reaching and passing the
entrance of the ear immediately strike the tympanum behind, or, as
after this I will simply call it, the drum, which trembles or quivers
in sympathy. Why this drum in your ear so trembles is because all
sound or music comes through the air in waves, just pretty much as if
the drum of the ear were the sea-shore, and music the waves beating
on it, long or short, big or little, loud or soft. This explains noise,
but music is something finer. It is really noise that is numbered,
sounds that are worked out like a sum of arithmetic in figures.
Take, for instance, low DOH. When I make this noise I excite a
long line of air-waves which curl towards all the drums in all your
ears at a certain easily calculated rate, say 20 waves between my
lips or the piano and your ears. But if I sing high DOH I excite
waves which pass to your ears at exactly twice that previous rate —
or 40. SoH, which is between the two, between low and high DOH,
excites waves which go from me or the piano to you at half-speed —
or 30. Eepresented by lines, these waves may be shown thus —
When I sing low DOH xx'wv%-v'vx> ; when I sing SOH ^^^^^^^^.^ ;
and when I sing high DOH ...^^^^^^ . All these waves of difi'erent
rates cause a corresponding vibration, an equal rate of trembling in
the drum of your ears, which rate of trembling or vibration is
carried from the ear to the brain by the nerves. It is therefore
upon the arithmetical relation or rate of sound-waves that the
harmony of music is founded and aff'ects us bodily. Notes which
excite waves running at simple proportional rates, as 2, 4, 6, are
in harmony or accord. A discord or unharmonious sound is
created when the waves interrupt one another by less proportional
rates, as, say, 2, 3, 7, or otherwise when the waves pass and cross
each other in a mixed manner. It is quite possible for a man who
does not absolutely know one tune from another to sit down and
write out from figures a true musical, harmonious composition. We
each enjoy sensuously or can judge scientifically the harmony and
melody of music just as far as the drums of our ears feel the delicacy
and number of these waves. Some people don't appear to have any
kind of drum at all unless for noise. These we must pity, not
despise.
So music affects the life in our body, our flesh and bone, by air- waves. Just before I pass to the effect of music upon the higher life, upon the soul, let me make an allusion to colour, about which some of you surely must have thought when at work. Colour is closely related to sound, and its eff'ect upon our eyes is as music on the ear. You fancy, don't you, that something in your eyes reaches out to the coloured object, or that your eyes are like looking-glasses'? They are much more like another form of drum, to which very fine colour-waves are reaching of difi'erent rates. Thus all the green on the wall sends waves to your eyes of a certain length, the yellow on the forms of another.
But, to proceed, you have understood that sounds aff'ect our body
