Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/143

 NEW BOOKS. 129 numerical ratios of the tones, the writer opens up his own theory of fusion. He defines fusion of sense-elements as a tendency to unity which shows itself as resistance to analysis ; that is to say, the recog- nition of a plurality of elements. The greater the degree of fusion the harder will it be to disengage the separate constituents. Hence the degree of certainty with which the ear can separate out the elements gives us the measure of the fusion ; the one varying inversely as the other. Prof. Stumpf here seeks to show by help of experimental investigations of his own that the degree of fusion as thus ascertained coincides with the degree of harmonic affinity as recognised in music. The most striking example of this coincidence is that of the octave. Here there is the maximum number of errors in answering the question : Is this a single tone, or two tones ? And it is well known that the octave has in music by far the closest degree of affinity. This is sufficiently shown in the familiar fact that we regard two tones forming the interval of an octave as in a sense the same tone. The view that harmony is a running together of tones, discord a standing apart or aloof, is, as the writer reminds us, an old one, having the weight of authority on its side. He, however, can claim the credit of having given precision to the idea, and supported it by a methodical investigation of facts. It will at once be evident that his theory has this considerable advantage over Helmholtz's theory of beats, that it appears to assign a positive sensuous basis to the effect of harmony : for a tendency to fusion looks like a difference in the behaviour of the sensations. At the same time, as its advocate seems to recognise, it cannot be said to offer an explanation of the esthetic value of conso- nance. Indeed, Prof. Stumpf seeks to keep out rigorously all considera- tion of the affective accompaniment. But he hardly justifies this rather violent course. The distinction between harmony and dissonance is essentially, in part, at least, a difference of feeling, even though it be true that the most obvious harmonies are not necessarily the most pleasing. It may be safely said that the value of Prof. Stumpf s investigations will turn on the adequacy of his theory for the purpose of explaining the aesthetic impression of harmony. That the series of harmonic combina- tions answers in general to combinations difficult to analyse is an interesting generalisation ; but what one wants to know is how this can be made to explain the fact that art seeks such combinations as agreeable, and avoids their opposites, save indeed for reasons lying out- side themselves. If the writer had addressed himself to this aesthetic question he might have found it necessary to give even yet greater pre- cision to his idea of fusion. He might have probed the question : What really happens in the consciousness of a person of ordinary musical sensibility when he listens, say, to the interval of a fifth ? Does the ' sweetness ' of such a combination which sweetness seems to be the very soul of its harmony depend on momentary extinctions of a sense of the duality of the tones ? If not, how does the tendency to fusion work in differentiating this combination as ' sweet ' ? Unity in difference is commonly supposed to be the fundamental principle of all aesthetic combination ; and it may turn out that musical harmony is an example of it somewhat analogous to certain chromatic effects, as when different adjacent colours are reduced each to a very small area, so that there is a ' partial blending '. My difficulty is to understand how such a tendency to fusion, or muffling, so to speak, of the distinctness of the elements, can be regarded as a sensuous effect at all. Does it not look more like the result of supervening intellectual processes, and more particularly of 9