Note 228 — Chapter X · THE ÆSTHETIC SENTIMENT.

There is, with regard to this point, a very complete observation of Grant Allen’s (“Note Deafness,” in Mind, iii. 1878). The subject, a young man of great intellectual cultivation, had studied music during his childhood without result. It was discovered, later on, that he was incapable of distinguishing one note from another, except at intervals which were sometimes as much as an octave, or even more. He was quite unconscious of harmonies and discords, or the timbre of instruments. The distinctive features of the latter were, for him, only clearly perceived noises of different kinds—a sound of wire-work for the piano, a scraping for the violin, a puff of air for the organ. He was very sensitive to the rhythm of poetry. It is not known whether anomalies of this kind originate in Corti’s organs or in the cerebral centres.