This seems an elementary
matter. It is as clear, you say, as that one and one make two. Well, no,
it is not so clear as you suppose. It is, on the contrary, a mistake;
for attentive experiment proves that the result is diametrically
opposite to the logical conclusion.
This is a fact which no argument can destroy. Two double basses, placed
in the above-named conditions--conditions of vicinity and tonal
identity--far from adding up their individual result, are thus reduced
each to a quarter of its own sonority, which in the sum total, instead
of producing a double sound, produces a sound reduced to half of that
given individually by each instrument taken alone. This is how a power
plus an analogous power equals together with it but half a power; and
thus we are forced to admit that one and one do not necessarily make
two.
I have carried the experiment still farther; in the instrument which
gained me a first-class medal at the exhibition of 1854, I was enabled
to put thirty-six strings of the same piano into unison at once. Well!
All these strings, struck simultaneously, did not attain to the
intensity of sound produced by one of them struck singly. All these
sounds, far from gaining strength by union, reciprocally neutralized one
another. This is not logical, I admit; but we must submit to it.
Logic must be silent and reason bow before the brutal force of a fact to
which there is no objection to be raised.
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