If a man and a child are now placed so near the
auditor that he can distinguish, without looking at them, the direction of
the sounds which they utter, that is, whether the sound comes from the
right or the left hand person, let the man be supposed capable of speaking
in the voice of a child. When the man speaks in the language and the
accents of the child, the auditor will suppose that the child is the
speaker, although his ear could distinguish, under ordinary circumstances,
that the sound came from the man. The knowledge conveyed to him by his ear
is, in this case, made to yield to the more forcible conviction that the
language and accents of a child could come only from the child; this
conviction would be still further increased if the child should use
gestures, or accommodate his features to the childish accents uttered by
the man. If the man were to speak in his own character and his own voice,
while the child exhibited the gestures and assumed the features which
correspond with the words uttered, the auditor might be a little puzzled;
but we are persuaded that the exhibition made to the eye would overpower
his other sources of knowledge, and that he would believe the accents of
the man to be uttered by the child: we suppose, of course, that the
auditor is not allowed to observe the _features_ of the person who
speaks.
In this case the man has performed the part of a ventriloquist, in so far
as he imitated accurately the accents of the child; but the auditor could
not long be deceived by such a performance.
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