an 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.

Since we are on the subject of the phenomena of sonority, let us draw
another illustration from it, quite as overwhelming in its illogicalness
as the former.

When two similar phenomena differ from one another on any side, the
discord brought about by this difference is more apparent and more
striking by reason of the closer conjunction of these phenomena. By way
of compensation the dissimilarity is less appreciable in proportion as
these phenomena are farther apart from each other.

This is rigorously logical and perfectly conformable to reason; yet
there are cases where we must affirm the contrary. Thus the same sound
produced, I will suppose, by two flutes not in accord with one another,
forms those disagreeable pulsations in the air which discordant sounds
inevitably produce. There seems to be no doubt that by gradually
bringing these discordant instruments together, the falseness of their
relation must be more and more striking, more and more intolerable.
Wrong! For then, and above all if the mouths of these instruments be
concentrically directed, a mutual translocation is produced between the
two discordant sounds, which restores the accuracy of their agreement.
Thus the lower sound is raised, while the higher one is lowered, in such
a way that the two sounds are mingled on meeting and form a perfect
u