What I have said about the use of the two senses whose use is most
constant and most important, may serve as an example of how to
train the rest. Sight and touch are applied to bodies at rest and
bodies in motion, but as hearing is only affected by vibrations
of the air, only a body in motion can make a noise or sound;
if everything were at rest we should never hear. At night, when
we ourselves only move as we choose, we have nothing to fear but
moving bodies; hence we need a quick ear, and power to judge from
the sensations experienced whether the body which causes them is
large or small, far off or near, whether its movements are gentle
or violent. When once the air is set in motion, it is subject to
repercussions which produce echoes, these renew the sensations and
make us hear a loud or penetrating sound in another quarter. If you
put your ear to the ground you may hear the sound of men's voices
or horses' feet in a plain or valley much further off than when
you stand upright.
As we have made a comparison between sight and touch, it will be
as well to do the same for hearing, and to find out which of the
two impressions starting simultaneously from a given body first
reaches the sense-organ. When you see the flash of a cannon, you
have still time to take cover; but when you hear the sound it is
too late, the ball is close to you. One can reckon the distance
of a thunderstorm by the interval between the lightning and the
thunder. Let the child learn all these facts, let him learn those
that are within his reach by experiment, and discover the rest
by induction; but I would far rather he knew nothing at all about
them, than that you should tell him.
In the voice we have an organ answering to hearing; we have no
such organ answering to sight, and we do not repeat colours as we
repeat sounds. This supplies an additional means of cultivating the
ear by practising the active and passive organs one with the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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