Music Trade Review

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Music Trade REVIEW.
The Only Music Trade Paper in America, and the Organ of the Music Trade of this Country.
July,
VOL. IX. No. 17.
NEW YORK, APRIL 5 TO APRIL 20, 1886.
idea, audible, visible, legible, pronounceable, requir-
ing for different modes of its perception or produc-
tion, the co-operation of an enormous number of
separate cells, fibres, and ganglia.
Let us take an illustration from a kindred case.
AND
How clumsy and awkward a supposition it would be
if we were to imagine there was a muscle of dancing,
and a muscle of walking, and a muscle of rowing, and
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a muscle of cricketing, and a muscle for the special
practice of the noble art of lawn tennis ! Dancing ia
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not a single act; it is a complex series of co-ordinated
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action of almost all the muscles of the body, indiffer-
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ent proportions, and in relatively fixed amounts and
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manners. Even a waltz is complicated enough : but
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when we come to a quadrille or a set of lancers,
everybody can see at once that the figure consists of
so many steps forward and so many back; of a bow
A THINKING MACHINE.
here and a twirl there; of hands now extended both
together, and now held out one at a time in rapid suc-
(Concluded from
cession ; and so forth, throughout all the long and
NCE more (and this shall be my last attempt to complicated series. A quadrille, in short, is not a
point out the absurdity of the extreme cell the- name for one act, for a single movement of a single
ory), what are we to make of the case of a man muscle, but for many acts of the whole organism,
who knows more than one language ? Take, for ex- all arranged in a fixed sequence.
ample, the word chien. Here, in one direction, all the
It is just the same with the simplest act of mental
associations and connections of idea are exactly the perception. Orange, for example, is not the name
same as in the word dog. If I happen to be speaking of a single impression ; it is the name of a vast com-
English I say, "It'sadog;"if I happen to be speaking plex of impressions, all or most of which are present
French, I say, " C'est un chien," and in both cases to consciousness in the actuality whenever we see
with about the same idea in my mind. The picture an organge, and a great many of which are present
called up by the one word is exactly the same, in in the idea whenever we remember or think of an
most respects, as the picture called up by the other. orange. It is the name of a rathersoft, yellow fruit,
Yet not precisely. If I write Paris, so, the notion round in shape, with a thick rind, white inside, and
immediately aroused in the reader's mind is that of possessing a characteristisic taste and odor; a fruit
a white and glaring brand-new city across the Chan- divisible into several angular, juicy segments, with
nel, where we all go to waste our hard-earned money cells inside, and with pips of a recognized size and
at periodical intervals. But if in the preceding line shape—and so forth, ad infinitum. In the act of per-
I had happened to talk of Priam and Helen, the idea ceiving an orange, we exercise a number of separate
called up by the self same combination of one capital nerves of sight, smell, taste, and feeling, and their
letter and four small ones, would have been a wholly connected organs in the brain as well. In the act
different one, of an idyllic shepherd, as in Tennyson's of thinking about or remembering an orange,
" Enone," or of a handsome scamp, as in (Homer's) we exercise more faintly a considerable number
"Iliad." If I write "baker," everybody knows I of these nerves and central organs, though
mean the man|who supplies hot rolls for breakfast; not, of course, all distinctly, or all together; other-
but if I write "Baker," everybody is aware that I wise, our mental picture of an orange would be as
allude to Sir Samuel or to his brother, the Pasha. vivid and all-embracing as the sight of the actual
Now, this alternative possibility is even worse in the orange itself.
case of chien. For, if I am talking French, the sight
Now, the name orange calls up more or less defi-
of a particular animal which usually calls .up to my nitely the picture of several among these separate
lips the word " dog," calls up instead the totally dif- qualities. But it doesn't call them all up; indeed,
ferent word chien. And if the subject in hand is phil- the word in itself may not perhaps call up any of
ology, while dog immediately suggests to me the them. For instance, in the phrase, the Prince of
curious practical falling out of our language of the Orange, where identical symbols meet the eye, I
primitive word hund, hound, now only applied to a don't think of the fruit at all; I think, according to
special class of dogs, and the substitution for it of a circumstances and context, either of William III. of
Scandivanian and Dutch root not found in Anglo- blessed memory, or of the eldest son of the present
Saxon, chien immediately suggests to me its ultimate King of the Netherlands, whoso memory (in Paris
derivation from its original canis, and the habitual especially) is somewhat more doubtful. An orange-
change of c before a into ch, in the passage of words man and an orange-woman are not, as one might
into French from Latin. By this time, I think the innocently imagine, correlative terms. Even with-
reader (with his usual acuteness) will begin to per- out this accidental ambiguity, derived from the
ceive into what a hopeless network of cross connec- name of the town of Orange on the Rhone, the won)
tions and crooked combinations we have managed to orange need not necessarily connote anything more
get ourselves in search after the definitely localiz- than the color by itself; as when we say that Miss
Terry's dress was a deep yellow or almost orange.
able.
How, then, does the mechanism of the brain really Nay, when we actually mean the fruit in person, not
act? I believe the true answer to this question is the the tree, flower, or color, the picture called up will
one most fully given by M. Ribot, and never yet com- be different according to the nature of the phrase in
pletely accepted by English psychologists. It acts, which the word occurs. For, if I am talking about
for the most part, as a whole; or at least, even the ordering dessert, the picture in my mind is that of
simplest idea or mental act of any sort is a complex five yellow fruits, piled up pyramid-wise on a tall
of processes involving the most enormously varied center-dish ; whereas, if I am talking to a botanical
brain-elements. Instead of dog being located some- friend, my impression is rather that of a cross-
where in one particular cell of the brain, dog is an section through a succulent fruit (known technically
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as a hesperidium), and displaying a certain familiar
arrangement of cells, dissepiments, placentas, and
seeds. In short, the word orange, instead of being
a single unity, localizable in a single ganglion, repre-
sents a vast complex, of which now these elements
are uppermost in consciousness and now those, but
which seems to demand lor its full realization an
immense co-operation of very diverse and numerous
brain-organs.
Every thought, even the simplest, involves for its
production the united or associated action of a vast
mass of separate brain-cells and separate brain-
fibers. One thought differs from another dynami-
cally rather than statically. It differs as running
differs from dancing—not because different muscles
are employed, but because the same muscles are em-
ployed, in a different manner.
Trains of thought are therefore like a quadrille.
One set of exercises is followed by another, which it
at once suggests or sets in motion.
Of course, I do not mean to deny that every cell and
fiber in the brain has its own particular use and func-
tion, any more than I would deny that each particular
muscle in the body is intended to pull a particular
bone or to move a particular definite organ. But
what I do mean is that each such separate function
is really elementary or analytical: its object is to as-
sist in forming a conception or idea, not to contain, as
it were, a whole conception ready made. Chinese
symbols stand each for an entire word, and it takes
thousands of them to make up a language; alpha-
betical letters stand each, not for a word, but for
an elementary sound or component of a word, and
twenty-six of them do (very badly, it is true) for all
the needs of our mother English. Just so, each cell
or fiber in the brain does not stand for a particular
word or a particular idea, but for some element of
sensation or memory or feeling that goes to make up
the special word or idea in question. Horse is made
up ot five letters, or of four phonetic sounds; it is
made up also'of a certain form and size and color
and mode of motion; and when we speak of it all
those elements are more or less vaguely present to
our consciousness, coalescing into a sort of indefi-
nite picture, and calling up one another more or less
symbolically.
This theory at first sight seems to make the expla-
nation of memory far more difficult and abstruse
than formerly. For on the old hypothesis (never
perhaps fully pushed to its extreme in realizable
thought by any sensible person) it seemed easy
enough to say that every act of perception and every
fact learned was the establishment of a line of com-
munication between two or more distinct cells or
ganglia in the brain, and that the communication,
once fairly established, persisted pretty constantly
ever afterward. I am told " Shakespeare was born at
Stratford-on-Avon ;" and forthwith, cell Shakespeare
(or Shakspere, or Shakspear, etc.) has a lino run from
it to cell birth and cell Stratford-on-Avon (a pretty
complex one indeed, this last), which line remains
from that day forward permeable to any similar exer-
cise of nervous energy. This method is undeniably
simple, neat, and effective. But, setting aside the dif-
ficulty of realizing that any one tract of the brain can
possibly hold our whole vast mental picture of Shake-
speare or of Stratford on-Avon (especially if we have
ever read the one or visited the other), there is the
grotesque difficulty of the innumerable lines and
cross-connections of association. A central telephone
station would be the merest child's-play to it. For
evon so simple a word and idea as gooseberry is
capable of arousing an infinite number of ideas and
emotions. It may lead us at once to the old garden
in the home of our childhood, or to the gooseberry-