his there
may be big waves and little waves travelling at the same rate, and also
the actual shape of the waves may differ very widely. Thus waves have
points of similarity and yet their infinite variety, as do human beings.

This variety in the shape of the waves results in the difference in
timbre between various tones. Nobody could fail to distinguish between
the sound of a note played on a penny whistle and the same note given
out on a violin or a cornet: yet the actual rate of wave would be the
same in each case. The reason is that no tone is a pure fundamental
tone, there are always super-added a number of other tones, termed the
overtones. These are, to the original tone, exactly what the flavouring
is to the pudding. You have your fundamental tone and you can add your
overtones to taste: you can flavour with the penny whistle, the violin,
or the cornet timbre to suit yourself. But according to the flavouring,
so is the shape of the wave. Isolated fundamental tones are apt to be
colourless and monotonous, like the diapason work on an organ. The
organist is able to flavour his fundamental tone at will, by the stops
he draws to add to it: he has a special supply of "mixtures" which sound
truly dreadful and impossible by themselves, but these in combination
with the fundamental go to the making of a successful timbre. Carrots,
by themselves, are not a Christmas diet, but we understand that they go
to improve the flavour of the festive pudding.

In some such way as this thoughts are tuned, and from the thoughts we
think, the desires we entertain, and the aspirations which fill our
souls, the timbre of our life is determined. No one is fundamentally and
wholly good or bad, we have all of us our overtones, and some of us have
very curious mixtures which go to make us what we are. But just as the
gramophone will take in all the wonderful complexity of sound waves
which are sent out by a whole orchestra of instruments, and will combine
these into one wavy line on the record--a kind of compound wave
containing "all the elements so mixed"--so also it is with ourselves.
All the thought elements are so mixed in us that as we go through life
we vibrate to a note that is unique, compounded as it is of all those
inner thoughts and emotions that are so exclusively our own. To those
who sound the same note, or one that is in harmony, we are akin. We meet
them for the first time, and in a moment we have known them for years,
perh