Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/178

 more or less, or if, possessing the same number of senses, our sight or hearing had been greatly different in their powers. Other species of poetry and eloquence would have arisen; the plans of architects would have introduced fewer ornaments and more uniformity had our sight been more feeble and confused; and had our sense of hearing been constituted like that of many other animals, most of our musical instruments would have required a different construction or modulation. "Hence, the perfection of the arts consisting in their presenting to us their respective objects in such a manner as will render them as agreeable and striking as possible, a different constitution of our nature from the present would necessarily require a change in the present state of the arts adapted to the change which that new constitution would occasion in the means of enjoyment." Had Montesquieu paused to ask what he intended by "our nature," he might have found that the "nature" of which he spoke was a certain average humanity, a certain type of character which by no means results from the mere possession of the human senses. He would have found that this type is largely the outcome of peculiar social conditions; indeed, he himself admits—without making much use of the admission—that, beside the senses and intellect, "those impressions and prejudices which are the result of certain institutions, customs, and habits" have moulded our ideas of taste. Nay, more, he would have discovered that even the senses themselves, sight and hearing for example, possessed a far higher degree of average acuteness, though an inferior degree of aesthetic discrimination, among American Indian clansmen of the prairies than in the average Frenchman or Englishman of his day. Finally, if he had compared together the music of France and China,