These circumstances indisputably prove, that this sensation of the tooth-edge is owing to associated ideas; as it is equally excitable by sight, touch, hearing, or imagination.
In respect to the artificial proportions of sound excited by musical instruments, those, who have early in life associated them with agreeable ideas, and have nicely attended to distinguish them from each other, are said to have a good ear, in that country where such proportions are in fashion: and not from any superior perfection in the organ of hearing, or any intuitive sympathy between certain sounds and passions.
I have observed a child to be exquisitely delighted with music, and who could with great facility learn to sing any tune that he heard distinctly, and yet whole organ of hearing was so imperfect, that it was necessary to speak louder to him in common conversation than to others.
Our music, like our architecture, seems to have no foundation in nature, they are both arts purely of human creation, as they imitate nothing. And the professors of them have only classed those circumstances, that are most agreeable to the accidental taste of their age, or country; and have called it Proportion. But this proportion must always fluctuate, as it rests on the caprices, that are introduced into our minds by our various modes of education. And these fluctuations of taste must become more frequent in the present age, where mankind have enfranchised themselves from the blind obedience to the rules of antiquity in perhaps every science, but that of architecture. See Sect. XII. 7. 3.
XI. There are many articles of knowledge, which the animals in cultivated countries seem to learn very early in their lives, either from each other, or from experience, or observation: one of the most general of these is to avoid mankind. There is so great a resemblance in the natural language of the passions of all animals, that we generally know, when they are in a pacific, or in a malevolent humour, they have the same knowledge of us; and hence we can scold them from us by some tones and gestures, and could possibly attract them to us by others, if they were not already apprized of our general malevolence towards them. Mr. Gmelin, Professor at Petersburg, assures us, that in his journey into Siberia, undertaken by order of the Empress of Russia, he saw foxes, that expressed no fear of himself or companions, but permitted him to come quite near them, having never seen the human creature before. And Mr. Bongainville relates, that at his arrival at the Malouine, or Falkland's Islands, which were not inhabited by men, all the animals came about himself and his people; the fowls settling upon their heads and shoulders, and the quadrupeds running about their feet. From the difficulty of acquiring the confidence of old animals, and the ease of taming young ones, it appears that the fear, they all conceive at the sight of mankind, is an acquired article of knowledge.