17th June.
Nortuinc is easier than to write down the scientific difference between music and noise; between the pleasant and the unpleasant sound. It is all a matter of regularity and irregularity. Given sufficient number of vibrations per second, regular in their continuity, and we get a musical sound; without these conditions the same vibrations produce naught but noise. And yet we have to take into consideration other factors besides the mere pi cal motion of the vibrating bodies, viz., the different subjective sensations which these identical vibrations are capable of producing in different persons.
We should not be far wrong if, for example, we were to say that a performance which gives great delight to Chinese—the New Year hammering on gongs for two or three days in succession—would probably drive a foreigner mad. Whence comes the difference? Doctors sum it all up in one single syllable—nerves. But this merely names a result. It does not trace its cause, for which we should have to go not merely to changes in sodom life, to our living in an age of steam and electricity, but to the comparatively sudden
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.