The Making of a Man

by James W. Lee

II.

All truth, as we have before stated, which man has tried to express, is but a transcript of divine truth. The truth of astronomy is a transcript from the reality of the stars. The truth of botany is a transcript from the reality of plants. The truth of geology is a transcript from the reality of the earth’s structure. All right, which man has sought to embody in statutes, in constitutions, in enactments, is but a transcript from the will of God. So all beauty, which man has attempted to symbolize, is contained in the nature of things, and has its source in God. The beauty man has seen has taken in the process of history many forms. It is seen in architecture, sculpture, poetry, painting, and music. These are different forms of the same thing. As the persistent physical force expresses itself in heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, so genius is the persistent mental force which expresses itself in art. Sometimes the persistent mental force comes to such unity and fullness in some massive soul that from him it goes out into all the fine arts. Michael Angelo was by turns poet, painter, sculptor, and architect. Had he lived in Germany in the time of Beethoven he would have added to his other accomplishments that of music. The noblest specimens of music are only great cathedrals constructed out of sound, as Michael Angelo’s “Moses” was a great epic poem wrought in stone.

We wish to consider beauty in its relation to the æsthetic sense, in two aspects of itself.

The most important forms of beauty have as the physical conditions of their existence light and sound, and as the ideal conditions of their existence space and time. The names man gives to these forms of beauty, when he expresses them, or re-expresses them, are painting and music. For no element of man’s nature has more marvelous provision been made than for the æsthetic element. The objective conditions of the beauty, which correspond to the subjective æsthetic sense, are contained in sound and light. Sound and light are the invisible physical forces which play upon the objects of nature, and call from them the responses of melody and vision which the æsthetic nature appropriates for ecstasy and delight.

Capacity for sound is lodged in well-nigh all created objects. Minerals, woods, gases, and liquids even, contain the notes of the musical scale. Builders of pianos, harps, put no notes in the elements they use in the construction of these instruments. They simply comply with conditions necessary to bring them out. The music we get out of wood and steel and brass, as we find them arranged in the piano, the organ, the harp, by striking them at regular intervals, is the melody breathed into them when they were created. Beethoven, Handel, and Mozart created no music. Their genius was manifested simply in the power to bring out of forest and mine and cane-brake what God put into them.

As to what note a body shall give up under tension and pressure, is owing to its ultimate structure, and the elements which compose it; and also the note latent in the object by which it is struck, or pressed. Sing into a piano and the same notes respond which are used in the execution of the song. A storm, howling through a forest, makes a loud noise, but no music. Its notes do not synchronize with those contained in the limbs and leaves of the trees. But when the low, sad murmur of the evening winds gently strike the needles of the long-leaf pine there is music. The notes of the one are related to the notes of the other.

As all things have capacity for sound, so well-nigh all created things have capacity for color. The color which an object takes on in the presence of light is determined also by its ultimate structure and the elements which constitute it. Nearly every object absorbs a portion of the light and throws back to the eye of the beholder a portion. Bodies absorb those rays which are synchronous with their constituent elements. When the particles which compose a body are not capable of vibrating at the rate of any portion of the light particles, then they are all thrown back, and the body is pronounced white. It is to be observed that no body has color or sound of its own, but only the capacity for these. The note of a body is discovered by striking it, and its color by stimulating it with a light ray.

Another interesting fact is to be noted here—that is the analogy between sound and light, or music and painting. The difference between a sound wave and a light wave is only a difference of length. The principles underlying them are the same, and the methods by which they are produced are the same. Sound waves, to be heard, must vibrate at least as often as sixteen beats to the second. Light waves, in order to pass through the organ of vision, and reach the retina of the eye, must not vibrate at a less rate than four hundred trillions of times to the second. The difference between the eye and the ear is, one is more refined than the other. A painting is a silent piece of music, and a piece of music is an audible picture. The notes of the musical scale and the colors of the prismatic scale are analogous. The distance between C and A of the musical scale is the same as the distance between red and orange of the prismatic scale. The notes of the one scale may be translated into the colors of the other. Harmony of colors in a silk dress, would, if translated into their analogous notes, produce a piece of music that would be equally as pleasing to the ear as the colors are to the eye. Painting is only a more refined form of music. This is not fancy; it is mathematics and science. All things about us are capable of music, silent or audible. Notes belonging to some part of a great song are lodged in all created objects. Things are not measured off in continents, oceans, islands, mountains, forests, and mines only, but also in octaves. The music of the spheres is no longer a dream of the poets, but in accordance with exact science. The material system into which we are born is capable, then, not only of furnishing us food to eat and clothes to wear, but music and painting for the sense of the beautiful. A mere utilitarian, bread-and-butter philosophy does not exhaust the possibilities of even the material world. In its very construction respect to man’s higher nature was had, as well as to his lower. By so much as music and harmony of color surpass in their subtlety and refinement the coarser elements necessary to sustain the lower nature; by so much has God emphasized the value of the higher nature. Had God intended his children for no higher plane than that upon which the animals live, and no greater future for them than that which belongs to “the beasts that perish,” doubtless the beauty would have been left out. Men have been told, by one having authority, not to cast their pearls before swine. The beauty that was flung at the feet of man contained a message to a side of himself keyed to a radiant and imperishable realm.

Who does not feel, under the charm of music, or the influence of a great painting, reasons for high living which no words can express? The tear which often gathers in the eye of the most abandoned, hardened man, under the power of song, bespeaks the fact that chords have been touched which vibrate responsive to no earthly interest or relation.