THE GOOD DEVILS 



steel filings on a metal surface will dance and ar- 

 range themselves in symmetrical groups under the 

 influence of musical chords! Harmony is at the 

 heart of nature, but, in the music of creation, dis- 

 harmony plays a part also. The world is not all 

 beautiful unless seen as a whole; all its discords 

 are harmonized in the curve of the sphere. Emer- 

 son's own line, " Beauty is its own excuse for being," 

 is better and truer than the one he quotes from 

 Ben Jonson. 



When saying that in the music of creation dishar- 

 mony plays a part also, I do not mean to imply that 

 this is not also true in human music. The dissonances 

 are just as much a part of great music as are the 

 harmonies. What would the operas of Wagner be 

 without the tremendous dissonances? That is what 

 makes Wagner one of the greatest in music; he 

 sees things whole, just as Whitman does in his art 

 — sees that "all are but parts of one stupendous 

 whole," and that the merely pretty in music, in 

 poetry, in any art, as in nature, is only one little 

 phase of it, only an arc of the great circle. 



in 



What trouble we get into when we identify God 

 with Nature ! and what trouble we get into when we 

 refuse to identify the two! In the first case we 

 reach the unity that the mind craves, but it is a 

 unity made up of those antagonisms which revolt 



77 



