VIII
EPILOGUE: THE MEANING OF MUSIC
In the foregoing studies we have been considering, first, certain fundamental principles of musical effect in the light of which alone all special contributions to music, however various, can be understood, and second, the particular contributions of half a dozen of our contemporary composers, in which we have seen those principles exemplified. We have assumed, all along, that music is of undeniable interest to us, that it has something to say, that it is of sufficient human value to be worth studying. But now, before closing, it will be well to examine for a moment the grounds of that tacit assumption, to ask ourselves what, after all, is the reason of our interest in music. Why do we care for it? What does it mean? To such questions there are doubtless many answers. Doubtless different hearers take different kinds of delight in it, and its modes of appeal are as various as their temperaments. Yet music has one sort of appeal which is deeper than all others, which indeed acts universally, and which depends on its extraordinary power to tranquilize the heart, to instil a peace quite magical and beyond explanation. It soothes while it excites; and more wonderful than its ability to stimulate our emotions is its power to reconcile and harmonize them. And this it does without the aid of any intellectual process; it offers us no argument, it formulates no solacing philosophy; rather it abolishes thought, to set up in its stead a novel activity that is felt as immediately, inexplicably grateful. To suggest how the combination of sounds can have upon us so profound an effect will be the object of this final paper.
Mortal life, as we become acquainted with it in experience, unshaped by any philosophic or artistic activity, is complex, confused, and irrational. From our babyhood, when we put our fingers in the pretty fire and draw them forth cruelly burned, until the moment when a draught of air or the bursting of a blood-vessel suddenly arrests our important enterprises in mid-course, we constantly find our faculties, both animal and divine, encountering a world not kindly adjusted. On the material plane we find drought, frost, and famine, storm, accident, disease. On the plane of feeling and sentiment there are the separation of friends, the death of dear ones, loneliness, doubt, and disappointment; in the world of the spirit are sin and sorrow, the weakness and folly of ourselves and of others, meaningless mischance, and the caprice of destiny. In such a world, good fortune must often seem as insulting as bad, and happiness no better than misery. Where all is accidental, how can aught be significant? When our highest interests are defenceless against the onslaught, not of grave evil but of mere absurdity, how is it possible to live with dignity or hope?
Nevertheless, men have, by various means, fought sturdily against the capriciousness of life and the despair it engenders. All practical morality, to begin with, is one form of defence—comparatively a low form, but still of use. The moral man, facing the universe undaunted, asserts his own power to develop in it at least his personal particle of righteousness. As much strength as he has shall be spent on the side of order. If the world be unjust, he at least will love justice. If every one else be ruled by chance, he at least will be ruled by reason. If wicked men pursue evil, he will pursue good. From the earliest to the latest times literature has recorded such resolve. The letters of Stevenson no less than the journal of Marcus Aurelius relate the purpose of the brave individual to graft, to impress—yes, to inflict—human meaning upon an untamed universe. The stoic faith has always built on the practical power of the single man; a phrase of Thoreau's might serve for its motto: «In the midst of this labyrinth let us live a thread of life.»
The intellect is more ambitious than the moral sense. Not content with the degree of unity a man can develop in the seething world by his single action, philosophy seeks to prove that the world itself, as a whole, deriving its nature as it must from mind, is orderly. Constructive idealism, beginning with the argument that a subject cannot truly know an object unless both are included in a higher mental organism, deduces from the common facts of consciousness the real existence of an all-inclusive Spirit. Furthermore, one of its ablest modern exponents, Professor Josiah Royce, has worked out the ethical implications of the doctrine in a way that concerns us here. He shows that the apparent irrationality of our world proceeds from the fragmentariness of our finite view, and that God, who sees his universe as a whole, must find it rational; so that «our chaos is his order, our farce his tragedy, our horror his spirituality.» Were our span of consciousness widened until we could perceive the whole of existence in one thought, we should find the deep organic beauty that now we yearn for in vain. Philosophy, then, assures us both of the fundamental perfection of the world as a whole and of the inaccessibility of this perfection to us. Deeply satisfying because so sure and so ultimate, it tells us nothing of details, it has no direct word for the sorrows and the perplexities of our daily lives. It leaves us often longing for a warmer, nearer assurance of the rightness of things.
And so, to many, human love first reveals the divine unity all are seeking. The lover reasons little about consciousness; he knows, directly and overpoweringly, that his one need is to serve the beloved. This commanding aim employs all his impulses and appetites, and he finds in pure disinterested service a peace that his own warring desires cannot invade. He comprehends for the first time his own true identity, he becomes integral and serene. Furthermore, as his love grows deeper, as it spends its inexhaustible wealth more widely, learning to take for object not only the human beloved, but all virtue and beauty, his spiritual life becomes daily larger and surer, it unifies an ever complexer body of thought and deed in its perfect organism. It acquires an alchemy with which it can dissolve even the stubborn externalities of fate; for fate itself cannot take away the power to serve, and in service love finds its joy. Renunciation, even, it never enters upon except to gain a higher good, and that essence in the soul which makes a sacrifice is one with that which in happier circumstances would enjoy. Love thus shares already the nature of religion, and confers the same benefits. In exacting entire self-surrender it bequeaths superiority to accident, an unassailable serenity. Indeed, religion is but love expanded and made universal.
Religion, then, man's final means of reading rationality in the countenance of an irrational world, is the culmination toward which the other three naturally tend. It is the natural goal of love, because he who loves the divine in one person must soon love it in all. It is the goal of science and philosophy, because these place the heart open-eyed upon the threshold of the radiant reality, where it cannot but worship. It is the natural outcome of morality, too; for the moral man, seeing others eager for goodness, learns that the divine virtue is everywhere. And religion retains in itself the character of all these tributary insights. Like morality it prompts devotion of personal strength to the good cause; like philosophy, it affords clarity and breadth of vision; it is animated by the same pure, deep passion that is at the soul of love. It offers man a code of conduct, a cosmology, and an object of devotion. Surely, one would think he could ask for nothing more.
But, alas! we are not perfect creatures, capable of living always on these heights. Hours of weariness and confusion overtake us, our glimpses of the shining cosmos fade away, and we are left groping in a formless world. The universe does not change, but our faculties become jaded, we cannot keep them at the necessary pitch. The moralist knows moods of discouragement, when his power is at ebb, and the forces of evil press him sorely, entering even his own heart in the forms of temptation, sloth, and despair. The scientist encounters facts which his schemes cannot embrace, and for the moment interprets his own limitation as a disorder in nature. The philosopher often finds the universe more than a match for his synthetic powers of thought. Love has its tragedies, and faith its hours of eclipse. Even Christ must cry out, «My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?» The world, in a word, is too big for us. Facing its vast whirl and glitter with our modest kit of senses, intellect, and spirit, we are blinded, deafened, dizzied, completely bewildered. And then, recalling with wistful regret our partial insights, we fancy them gone forever and ourselves wholly lost.
It is just at these moments, when the mind momentarily fails in its unequal struggle with reality, that we discover the deep meaning and the supreme service of Art. For Art is the tender human servant that man has made himself for his solace. He has adjusted it to his faculties and restrained it within his scope; fashioning it from the infinite substance, he has impressed upon it finite form. It is a voice less thunderous than nature's, a lamp that does not dazzle like the great sun. It simplifies the wealth that is too luxuriant, and makes tangible a fragment of the great ethereal beauty no mortal can grasp. Thus art is visible and audible rightness; it is the love of God made manifest to the senses, a particular symbol of a universal harmony. When we are too weary to be comforted by the remote, abstract good that religion promises, art comes with its immediate, substantial, caressing beauty. Seeking to prove nothing, making no appeal to our logical intellects, requiring of us no activity, saying nothing of aught beyond itself, it is supremely restful. Finding us defeated in our search for rationality, it says, «Search no longer, puzzle no more; merely listen and look; see, here it is!» Its beauty answers our problems never directly, but by gently making them irrelevant.