I listen to two people speaking in a language which is unknown to me. Do I therefore hear them talk? The vibrations which reach my ears are the same as those which strike theirs. Yet I perceive only a confused noise, in which all sounds are alike. I distinguish nothing, and could not repeat anything. In this same sonorous mass, however, the two interlocutors distinguish consonants, vowels and syllables which are not at all alike, in short, separate words. Between them and me where is the difference?
The question is, how can the knowledge of a language, which is only memory, modify the material content of a present perception, and cause some listeners actually to hear what others, in the same physical conditions, do not hear. It is alleged, indeed, that the auditory recollections of words, accumulated in memory, are called up by the sound-impression and come to strengthen its effect. But if the conversation to which I listen is, for me, only a noise, we may suppose the sound increased as much as we like: the noise will be none the more intelligible for being louder. I grant that the memory of a word will be called up by the sound of that word: yet it is necessary, for this, that the sound of the word should have been heard by the ear. How can the sounds perceived speak to memory, how can they choose, in the storehouse of auditory images, those which should come to rejoin them, unless they have been already separated, distinguished,—in short, perceived,—as syllables and as words?
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