[135] The instinctive nature of this tendency is shown by the fact that it persists even in sleep. Thus Weygandt relates that he once fell asleep in the theatre during one of the last scenes of Cavalleria Rusticana, when the tenor was singing in ever higher and higher tones, and dreamed that in order to reach the notes the performer was climbing up ladders and stairs on the stage.
[136] See, especially the attractive book of André Pirro, L'Esthétique de J. S. Bach (1907), and also Albert Schweitzer, J. S. Bach (1908), especially chapters xix.-xxiii. 'Concrete things,' says Ernest Newman, summarising some of these results (Nation, December 25, 1909), 'incessantly suggested abstract ideas or inward moods to Bach, and vice versâ. He would time after time use the same musical formula for the same word or idea. He first suggests the external concepts of "high" and "low," as other composers have done, by high or low notes, and motion up or down by ascending or descending themes. But Bach correlates with the outward, objective thing a whole series of things that are purely subjective. Thus moods of elation or of depression are to him the mental equivalents of the physical acts of going up or down. So he gives us a whole series of ascending themes to words that express "mounting" states of mind, as it were—such as pride, courage, strength, resolution—and descending themes to words that express "declining" states of mind—such as prostration, adoration, depression, discouragement, grief at sin, humility, poverty, fatigue, and illness. For the two sets of concepts, internal and external, he will use the same musical symbols. To represent the physical concept of "surrounding," again, he adopts the device of a circling or undulating theme. A crown or a garland suggests the same idea to him, so for this, too, he uses the same kind of theme. But the correspondence goes still further; for when he comes to the word "considering," he uses the same curving musical symbol once more—his notion of "considering" being that of looking round on all sides. Again, a word of purely external signification that suggests something twisted will have an appropriately twisted theme. Then come the subjective applications of the theme—the same disordered melodic outline is used to express a frame of mind like anxiety or confusion, or to depict the wiles of Satan. Careful study of the vocal works of Bach, and especially of the cantatas, has revealed a host of these curious symbols.' The whole subject, it may be added, has been briefly and suggestively discussed by Goblot, 'La Musique Descriptive,' Revue Philosophique, July 1901.
[137] T. Piderit, Mimik und Physiognomik, 1867, p. 73.
[138] J. Cleland, Evolution, Expression and Sensation, 1881.
[139] Féré, 'La Physiologie dans les Métaphores,' Revue Philosophique, October 1895.
[140] Maeder discusses symbolism in some of these fields in his 'Die Symbolik in den Legenden, Märchen, Gebräuchen und Träumen,' Psychiatrisch-Neurologische Wochenschrift, Nos. 6 and 7, May 1908.
[141] So Philostratus, and Pliny (Natural History, Bk. X. ch. CCXI.) puts the same point on somewhat more natural grounds.
[142] It has been translated by F. S. Krauss, Symbolik der Träume, 1881.
[143] A translation of Synesius's 'Treatise on Dreams' is included in Druon's Œuvres de Synésius, pp. 347 et seq. Synesius is probably best known to modern English readers through Charles Kingsley's novel, Hypatia. His treatise on dreams has been unduly neglected, though it commended itself mightily to the pioneering mind of Lord Monboddo, who even says (Ancient Metaphysics, vol. ii., 1782, p. 217) in reference to this treatise: 'Indeed it appears to me that since the days of Plato and Aristotle there has not been a philosopher of greater depth than Synesius.'
[144] K. A. Scherner, Das Leben des Traumes, 1861. In France Hervey de Saint-Denis, in a remarkable anonymous work which I have not seen (Les Rêves et les Moyens de les Diriger, p. 356, quoted by Vaschide and Piéron, Psychologie du Rêve, p. 26), tentatively put forward a symbolic theory of dreams, as a possible rival to the theory that permanent associations are set up as the result of a first chance coincidence. 'Do there exist,' he asked, 'bizarre analogies of internal sensations in virtue of which certain vibrations of the nerves, certain instinctive movements of our viscera, correspond to sensations apparently quite different? According to this hypothesis experience would bring to light mysterious affinities, the knowledge of which might become a genuine science;... and a real key to dreams would not be an unrealisable achievement if we could bring together and compare a sufficient number of observations.'