2IO ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



tive scope, partly because music works in a medium 

 — sound, and the scale, and the harmonic and the 

 rhythmic system — not only more ethereal, but in- 

 comparably more complex than that of painting, 

 giving rise to an enormous increase in the alterna- 

 tives for combination ; partly because music is almost 

 wholly released from space, having its proper form 

 in time, and even in this is unconstrained by any 

 rigidly defined boundaries ; but most of all, because 

 music, in its medium of sound, has an organ of 

 utterance more expressive of the mystery of exist- 

 ence than any other, more immediately answering 

 to the obscure and inarticulate longings with which 

 the soul looks into the dim Unknown from whence 

 the ideal unveils itself. It is in sound that the human 

 heart spontaneously pours itself forth when in com- 

 munion with those thoughts "that wander through 

 eternity," or when thrilled by those other thoughts 

 "that do often lie too deep for tears." 



Poetry, finally, is the form of art where not only 

 are the unities of time, place, and action freed 

 from the restrictive bounds of the single instant, the 

 single spot, the single simple transaction, but the 

 medium of embodiment is thought itself, with its 

 completely articulate utterance in language. Here 

 the very source of the ideal view of the world, the 

 very origin of the creative artistic impulse, becomes 

 the material and the instrument of its own purpose, 



