d fierce, there
was a necessity for tempering those exercises with others, with a view
to rendering the people more susceptible of humane feelings. For this
purpose, said Montesquieu, music, which influences the mind by means of
the corporeal organs, was extremely proper. It is a kind of medium
between manly exercises, which harden the body, and speculative
sciences, which are apt to render us unsociable and sour. . . . Let us
suppose, for example, a society of men so passionately devoted to
hunting as to make it their sole employment; they would doubtless
contract thereby a kind of rusticity and fierceness. But if they
happened to imbibe a taste for music, we should quickly perceive a
sensible difference in their customs and manners. In short, the
exercises used by the Greeks could raise but one kind of passions,
namely, fierceness, indignation, and cruelty. But music excites all
these, and is likewise able to inspire the soul with a sense of pity,
lenity, tenderness, and love.

In a rare work, styled "Reflexions on Antient and Modern Music, with the
application to the Cure of Diseases,"[175:1] we find that the custom
prevailed, among certain nations of old, of initiating their youth into
the studies of harmony and music. Whereby, it was believed, their minds
became formed to the admiration and esteem of proportion, order, and
beauty, and the cause of virtue was greatly promoted. "Music," moreover,
"extends the fancy beyond its ordinary compass, and fills it with the
gayest images."

Christianus Pazig, in "Magic Incantations," page 29, relates that the
wife of Picus, King of Latium, was able by her voice to soothe and
appease wild animals, and to arrest the flight of birds.

And the French traveller Villamont asserted that crocodiles were
beguiled by the songs of Egyptian fishermen to leave the Nile, and
allowed themselves to be led off and exposed for sale in the markets.

Recent experiments have confirmed the traditional theory of the soothing
effect of music upon wild animals. A graphophone, with records of Melba,
Sembrich, Caruso, and other operatic stars, made the rounds of a
menagerie. Many of the larger animals appeared to thoroughly enjoy
listening to the melodious strains, which seemed to fascinate them. The
one exception, proving the rule, was a huge, blue-faced mandrill, who
became enraged at hearing a few bars from "Pagliacci," and tried to
wreck the machine. Of all the animals, the lions were apparentl