Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of ConsciousnessBergson, Henri
Philosophy
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness
Bergson, Henri
Consciousness; Free will and determinism; Space and time
Now, besides the intensity, we distinguish another characteristic
property of the sound, its pitch. Are the differences in pitch, such
as our ear perceives, quantitative differences? I grant that a sharper
sound calls up the picture of a higher position in space. But does it
follow from this that the notes of the scale, as auditory sensations,
differ otherwise than in quality? Forget what you have learnt from
physics, examine carefully your idea of a higher or lower note, and see
whether you do not think simply of the greater or less effort which
the tensor muscle of your vocal chords has to make in order to produce
the note? As the effort by which your voice passes from one note to
another is discontinuous, you picture to yourself these successive
notes as points in space, to be reached by a series of sudden jumps,
in each of which you cross an empty separating interval: this is why
you establish intervals between the notes of the scale. Now, why is
the line along which we dispose them vertical rather than horizontal,
and why do we say that the sound ascends in some cases and descends in
others? It must be remembered that the high notes seem to us to produce
some sort of resonance in the head and the deep notes in the thorax:
this perception, whether real or illusory, has undoubtedly had some
effect in making us reckon the intervals vertically. But we must also
notice that the greater the tension of the vocal chords in the chest
voice, the greater is the surface of the body affected, if the singer
is inexperienced; this is just the reason why the effort is felt by
him as more intense. And as he breathes out the air upwards, he will
attribute the same direction to the sound produced by the current of
air; hence the sympathy of a larger part of the body with the vocal
muscles will be represented by a movement upwards. We shall thus say
that the note is higher because the body makes an effort as though to
reach an object which is more elevated in space. In this way it became
customary to assign a certain height to each note of the scale, and as
soon as the physicist was able to define it by the number of vibrations
in a given time to which it corresponds, we no longer hesitated to
declare that our ear perceived differences of quantity directly. But
the sound would remain a pure quality if we did not bring in the
muscular effort which produces it or the vibrations which explain it.
[Sidenote: The sensations of heat and cold. These soon become affective
and are measured by reactions called forth.]
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