68 THOUGHTS UPON THE MUSICAL SENSE [X. 



the Mediterranean, had already, at the very dawn of their 

 history, attained the highest level of intellectual development. 

 If any further growth has occurred since then in European 

 nations, it has certainly been so imperceptibly small that it 

 could cause no sensible difference in the susceptibility of the 

 human soul to music. The times which produced such legis- 

 lators as Moses and Solon, poets like Homer and Sophocles, 

 philosophers and men of science like Aristotle, Plato, and 

 Archimedes, — times which created the Egyptian temples and 

 pyramids and the statues of Greek gods, most undoubtedly 

 display the achievements of the human intellect at its best. 

 And an age which produced the gentle and forgiving Christian 

 philosophy shows us that, as regards character and feeling, the 

 human mind had attained the highest development. 



We may therefore safely assume that the nations of ' anti- 

 quity ' possessed a capacity for music in all respects equal to 

 our own, and that the times during which the human intellect 

 was raised, at least to any considerable extent, lie far behind 

 them. 



The fact however that the music of antiquity was so poor, 

 depends, as we have seen, upon the complete distinction 

 between music and musical talent : the latter is due, and due 

 only, to the nature of the individual body and mind, while the 

 former is also due to a slow process of development by means 

 of tradition. Music is an invention and rests upon tradition,— 

 the power on which depend the entire growth of culture, the 

 development of language, of the sciences and their practical 

 applications, and of every kind of art. 



Painting and sculpture also have not been developed, viz. 

 increased and perfected, because of any growth in the physical 

 means by which we practise them. The human eye and the 

 corresponding part of the brain, the visual centre, have certainly 

 not been improved since the age of the lowest culture, or even 

 since the times of primitive man. But the artistic acquirements 

 of generations have been built one upon another until there 

 arose the great art-palace of the present day with all its varied 

 chambers. In this case it is even easier to prove that the 

 instrument by which art has been invented existed in all its 

 present perfection long before the invention had been made, 

 and that it did not originate for the sake of art, but to be used as 



