n: and not from any superior perfection in the organ of hearing, or
any intuitive sympathy between certain sounds and passions.

I have observed a child to be exquisitely delighted with music, and who
could with great facility learn to sing any tune that he heard distinctly,
and yet whole organ of hearing was so imperfect, that it was necessary to
speak louder to him in common conversation than to others.

Our music, like our architecture, seems to have no foundation in nature,
they are both arts purely of human creation, as they imitate nothing. And
the professors of them have only classed those circumstances, that are most
agreeable to the accidental taste of their age, or country; and have called
it Proportion. But this proportion must always fluctuate, as it rests on
the caprices, that are introduced into our minds by our various modes of
education. And these fluctuations of taste must become more frequent in the
present age, where mankind have enfranchised themselves from the blind
obedience to the rules of antiquity in perhaps every science, but that of
architecture. See Sect. XII. 7. 3.

XI. There are many articles of knowledge, which the animals in cultivated
countries seem to learn very early in their lives, either from each other,
or from experience, or observation: one of the most general of these is to
avoid mankind. There is so great a resemblance in the natural language of
the passions of all animals, that we generally know, when they are in a
pacific, or in a malevolent humour, they have the same knowledge of us; and
hence we can scold them from us by some tones and gestures, and could
possibly attract them to us by others, if they were not already apprized of
our general malevolence towards them. Mr. Gmelin, Professor at Petersburg,
assures us, that in his journey into Siberia, undertaken by order of the
Empress of Russia, he saw foxes, that expressed no fear of himself or
companions, but permitted him to come quite near them, having never seen
the human creature before. And Mr. Bongainville relates, that at his
arrival at the Malouine, or Falkland's Islands, which were not inhabited by
men, all the animals came about himself and his people; the fowls settling
upon their heads and shoulders, and the quadrupeds running about their
feet. From the difficulty of acquiring the confidence of old animals, and
the ease of taming young ones, it appears that the fear, they all conceive
at the sight of mankind, is