THE RELATION OF MUSIC TO MENTAL PROGRESS. 381 



timent of universal brotherhood. " Nun danket alie Gott," which won 

 the battle of Leuthen, during the late Franco-German War, proved its 

 influence over the people to be unimpaired. 



Music and literature thence went hand in hand down to the school 

 of the Romanticists, in which the middle ages became the ideal, and 

 appeals were made to the national pride of the German. Then Wag- 

 ner produced art-works that are similarly founded on national myths, 

 and are more ambitious in scope and intention, as well as in musical 

 and dramatic structure, than any works of his predecessors. Let us 

 now take a broader historic but a narrower musical survey. 



The Church accepted the musical teachings of Pythagoras and the 

 astronomical theory of Ptolemy ; and thus, for some unknown reason, 

 progress was retarded. When the world accepted what the Church 

 rejected, progress began in both sciences. For Ptolemy had demon- 

 strated a new "section of the canon/' by which our modern major 

 scale was scientifically determined, and justified, and which made our 

 harmony possible. 



The invention of counterpoint in the north of England in mediae- 

 val times, and the subsequent practice of canonic forms of imitation, 

 led to the general treatment of music on scientific methods by com- 

 posers, however it obtained among the populace. In China we find 

 music among: the uneducated classes as unlike that of the musical 

 mandarins as can well be imagined. 



Subsequently, the discovery of harmony in nature opened a new 

 realm to the musician. It was a revelation. It provided him with a 

 scale of sounds analogous to that of color in the spectrum, and he 

 soon determined the proportions mathematically. Hence a new sci- 

 ence arose within the art of music, by which the composer no longer 

 proceeded by a kind of " rule of thumb," but with a perfect knowl- 

 edge of the ratios of speeds of vibrations, at which sounds would 

 combine to form chords, as chemists after John Dalton learned to 

 make new compounds unerringly. 



The musician followed up the soft whisperings of Xature, until he 

 found that each tone was attended by myriads of other tones as truly 

 as attendant planets, asteroids, etc., surround a primary sun. 



Heretofore music was made to conform to certain laws of propor- 

 tion when viewed horizontally on the paper, but now it was made to 

 conform to another series of laws, when regarded horizontally ; the 

 art of fugue was seen to be one of the greatest triumphs of the 

 humammind, and the great universities in England instituted exami- 

 nations for degrees in music, making the projection of an eight-parted 

 fugue or canon in silence the supreme test of the mental prowess of 

 each candidate. 



It is thought that the opera was intended to be a resuscitation of 

 the Greek drama, in which all was to be elevated and made musical. 

 The music, however} differed but little from the prevailing style. It 



