[*] In view of a possible misunderstanding at this point, compare Chapter X, especially the final paragraph. If a belief in Retributive Justice, for example, is fatal to Prometheus Unbound, so in another way is the belief that the Millennium is at hand. To steer an unperplexed path between these opposite dangers is extremely difficult. The distinctions required are perhaps better left to the reader’s reflection than laboured further in the faulty terminology which alone at present is available.
[*] Cf. Gurney, The Power of Sound, p. 126. “A splendid melodic phrase seems continually not like an object of sense, but like an affirmation; not so much prompting admiring ejaculation as compelling passionate assent.” His explanation, through association with speech, seems to me inadequate. He adds that the use of terms such as “expressiveness and significance, as opposed to meaninglessness and triviality, may be allowed, without the implication of any reference to transcendental views which one may fail to understand, or theories of interpretation which one may entirely repudiate.”
[†] Percy Dearmer, The Necessity of Art, p. 180.
[†] A.W. Pollard, ibidem, p. 135.