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.
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.