Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/434

430 (from 65 to 80) on nearly all musical compositions, nor must it be forgotten, as has been said before, that it is these compositions which furnish the only means by which the human brain could, thanks to the metronome, so accurately and sub-consciously give record to the rhythm most natural to it. This rhythm for physical as well as psychological reasons must, it is submitted, in all probability have been suggested, coordinated and regulated by the phenomenon of pulse. The first and patent objection to this theory will be that we have no conscious cognizance of the arterial beat within us. The objection is however fully met by the well-known law that, 'one unvarying action on the senses fails to give any perception whatever.' For familiar examples, we have no conscious sensory impressions from the whirling of the earth, the weight of the air or the weight of our bodies. Yet, inevitably, the recurrent arterial beat, must have left its record and impress on the unconscious and subliminal brain, guiding and determining the conscious and audible expressions. Nor is it without its supporting proof that where the insect's heart beat is 150 to the minute, the insect 's chirp runs to the same speed; and where the human heart beat is 60 to 85 to the minute, human musical rhythm runs within the same limits.

Mr. Fiske says, in his 'Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy,' not only must all motions be rhythmical, but 'every rhythm, great or small, must end in some redistribution, be it general or local, of matter and motion.' It is not probable that a dainty rhythmic wave of color external in character would make its impression on the brain, and the latter in turn remain unaffected by a—relatively speaking—thumping cataract of a pulse impulse. Some disturbance of the brain tissue must occur from this vibration, reaching in course the very portion allotted to music. The basilar artery, the brain's basic artery, feeds the chorda tympani by a direct channel, whereas the rest of the cranial tract is fed by ramifications of its ramifications. The stronger surging is therefore directed against the auditory tract. It may be urged that in that case the brain would know but one rhythm. It might be so were it not that 'the whole cerebral and central nervous organism seems a happy adjustment of fixity of habit not too fixed, and susceptibility not too susceptible.'

"Perception of time duration is always a process and never a state—for us to perceive five seconds, something must durate five seconds, for us to perceive a year some definite sensation would have to durate a year."

On these principles, imagining a composer seated quietly at his desk in the act of composition, is it not feasible to suppose that sub