INTRODUCING FIRST PRINCIPLES 9 



effort to shape and express the perfect tone or con- 

 sonance with which music began; they explain why 

 it is that the perfect tone or consonance exists nowhere 

 outside of feehng, outside of the mind. This is con- 

 clusively proved by the ascertained fact that under 

 acoustical analysis every tone is a dissonance. But 

 even the form of this acoustical dissonance is not the 

 same as that of the original dissonance of music. That 

 and why this is so is explained by the proximate or 

 immediate cause of the psychogenesis of the specific 

 harmonic forms of music. This cause is relation, 

 A tone's specific relation is the immediate cause of its 

 specific harmonic form. From first to last the origi- 

 nal harmonies of music, headed by the perfect tone 

 or consonance, arose one by one in an evolutional 

 sequence of relations in obedience to an inherent shap- 

 ing principle. As we proceed to trace the psycho- 

 genesis of this evolutional sequence of correlated har- 

 monies we shall obtain a view of music in the light of 

 its origin and development and so discover the nature 

 of our common feeling of music. Let us be explicit 

 as to exactly what is here meant hy feeling of music. 

 By music-feeling I mean simply and only the feeling 

 of music per se, that is, the feeling of tone-rhythm, 

 that is, the feeling of united rhythm and harmony, 

 that is, the feeling of melody, the essence of music. 

 Here at the outset let us understand that this study is 

 not concerned with an analysis of feeling in its con- 

 nection with any specific emotions, sentiments and 

 associated ideas which are evoked by music. All 

 these are most important precisely because they are 

 purely personal, but their proper place is in poetry. 



