III.
The melody in sound and the harmony in color are correlated to the æsthetic nature of man through the ear and the eye. In the ear is found the musical scale, and in the eye the prismatic scale.
Notes are in the ear which correspond with the C D E F G A B of the musical scale, and parts are in the eye which correspond to the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet of the prismatic scale. It is only through D in the ear that D out of the ear can be heard, and it is with C in the ear that C out of the ear is heard.
If there were no notes in the ear except D, and all other notes in nature were destroyed, the ear could hear no notes at all. A hears A, and B hears B, and C hears C. What A hears, B does not hear, and what C hears, A does not hear. What is true of the ear is true of the eye. The parts of the eye with which red is seen are not the parts with which green is seen. Red in the eye sees red out of the eye. Blue in the eye sees blue out of the eye, and green in the eye sees green out of the eye. If there was in the prismatic scale located in the eye only the part with which blue is seen, no color in the world would be visible except the blue. The notes latent in all natural objects are addressed to the æsthetic sense, through the corresponding notes latent in the ear; and the seven colors, capacity for which is latent in all earthly objects, address themselves to the æsthetic nature through the corresponding capacities for color contained in the eye. That man is related to the kingdom of beauty in a sense which marks him off from the animals below him, is proven by the fact that he can take the elements of this kingdom into his imagination and send them back to the realms of sense, in oratorios and paintings. The masters have given all history ideal and permanent setting by means of sound and light. Man cannot only see the truth, but repeat it; not only recognize the right, but conform to it, and not only appreciate beauty, but express it. In this he has the evidence of his kinship with the author of the true, the good, and the beautiful. The lower animals, as far as we know, may be thrilled with that which is beautiful; we do know they never repeat the beautiful. In the art galleries and conservatories of the world all the past is brought to life again and stands before the eye and the ear, under the ideal forms of time and space. Moses is not only immortal in the laws which he wrote, and in the race which he civilized, but, through Michael Angelo’s genius, he has been made eternal in the kingdom of beauty.
Thus, through his æsthetic side, man not only receives, but he gives. The melody of sound and the harmony of color not only come to him, but go from him; and from him, too, charged and shot through with all the suffering, temptation, sin, and sacrifice he has known.