An Introduction to a Biology 



to now and again, then in the course of time his 

 hearers would get to know it, or rather to recognise 

 parts of it when they heard it again ; and that in 

 this way a man's compositions would gradually 

 come to be recognised as music. 



[According to this view it will be seen that music 

 was pure invention. 



The second stage in the history of my conception 

 of natural law was analogous to the second stage 

 in the history of my conception of music. In it I 

 believed that natural laws were pure inventions of 

 the human mind, and projected by the mind, or 

 rather allowed to escape from the mind, into things. 



My third and present stage with regard to music 

 is, to a great extent, a return to the first stage. 

 Music can convey to us part of the order of nature, 

 that part which is alive. The great musicians are the 

 springs through which this message wells up, for us. 



My third and present stage with regard to natural 

 law also returns to the first stage, but it returns a 

 very much shorter distance. I believe that the present 

 system of scientific laws relating to life is very much 

 further from portraying the essence of life, than is, 

 for instance, the eighth symphony of Beethoven. But 

 a theory of life cannot be communicated at present 

 by music, and one must make an attempt to communi- 

 cate it through the inadequate medium of words. The 

 point to which we have now reached in this attempt 

 is that from which we see natural law to be, to a 

 very great extent, a product of the human in- 

 tellect.] 1 



1 This passage is half deleted in the MS., and was clearly intended 

 to be re-written. 



C I 7 



