This proposition at first seems inexplicable, but its reason is readily understood by those who know the sway of falsehood over a society perverted in its opinions as in its tastes; to those who know the deplorable facility with which error is spread and the tenacity with which it clings to our poor mind.  Error, moreover, owes to our abasement which it flatters and crushes, the privilege of freedom from contradiction, and it is only in regard to truth that the minds of men are divided and contend.

On retracing in my memory the walks I had taken in the Tuileries, I was struck by an important fact amidst the phenomena called up:  the voice of the nurse or mother, when she caressed her child, invariably assumed the double character of tenuity and acuteness.  It was in a voice equally sweet and high-pitched that she uttered such words as these:  “How lovely he is!” ...  “Smile a little bit for mamma!” Now this caressing intonation, impressed by nature upon the upper notes of all these voices, forms a strange contrast to the direction which all singing-teachers agree in formulating; a direction which consists in augmenting the intensity of the sound in direct ratio to its acuteness.  Thus, to them, strange to say, the entire law of vocal shades would consist in augmenting progressively the sound of the ascending phrase or scale, and diminishing in the same proportion for a descending scale.  Now, nature, by a thousand irrefutable examples, directs us to do the contrary, that is, she prescribes a decrease of intensity (in music, decrescendo) proportionate to the ascensional force of the sounds.

Another blow, I thought, for my masters, or rather I receive it for them, for they, poor fellows, do not feel it.  But how can these phenomena of nature have escaped them, and by what indescribable aberration can they direct, under the name of law, a process absolutely contrary to that so plainly followed by those same phenomena?  However, I added, every supreme error under penalty of being self-evident, must, to endure, necessarily rest upon some truth or other.  Now, on what truth do so many masters claim to base so manifest an error?  This is what we must discover.

I was now convinced that caressing, tender and gentle emotions find their normal expression in high notes.  This is beyond all doubt.  Thus, according to the foregoing examples, if we propose to say to a child in a caressing tone that he is a darling, it would clearly be very bad taste to bellow the words at him on the pretext that, according to singing-teachers, the intensity of the sound is augmented in direct ratio to its acuteness.