80 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Hofmann. Hence his conception of music or, what he 

 was fond of calling, his metaphysic of music, is strikingly- 

 original, and plays *an important part in his system. 

 In musical composition, especially in the higher forms, 

 such as the symphony and the mass, we attain to the 

 greatest that the human soul can produce in the realm 

 of art. We have seen that the other arts are occupied 

 with representing the world - ideas in their ascending 

 scale. But the world-ideas themselves are the objectiva- 

 tions of the Will, they are only partial representations 

 of the latter, they all represent the Will not in its 

 purity, in its original essence, not in its self, but in its 

 not-self, in the process of falling away from its original 

 full and pure unity. In the highest of the arts, in 

 Music, the human soul ascends to the highest possible 

 artistic performance that it is capable of, — it repre- 

 sents not an objectivation of the Will but the Will 

 itself. 



Music does more than the other arts ; it is the language 

 of feeling and emotion ; it expresses joy, sorrow, pain, 

 horror, exultation, and also the absolute rest of the soul, 

 the complete negation of self, of the individual will. 

 It expresses these states, as it were, in the abstract, in 

 their universality, without any admixture. But this 

 abstraction is not indefinite but clothed in a definite 

 form. Music gives the innermost soul of the human 

 feelings without the body. Music is capable of doing 

 this, according to Schopenhauer, because it expresses the 

 original will, the soul of everything in its most original 

 and elemental form, not in the relations of space but 

 only in the sequence of time. Thus music occupies 



