Now here we meet the deplorable parochialism that does duty for patriotism, and which is so utterly out of place in connexion with art; for art is not national but universal, and, further, it is not modern or ancient, but again universal; so that an attempt to limit the sympathies of art-lovers to the products of their own age or of their own nation is bound to fail, and can only be tolerated as an antidote to an excessive worship of what is old or of what is foreign, these being matters of perhaps no consequence at all.
It is of course well that people should do the duty that lies nearest to hand first, and so if it be a duty to encourage, to endow, or to patronize art, that duty should begin at home. But this again is a very narrow way of looking at the matter. It is not at all essential that art should be national; on the contrary, art is universal and cannot be bound by any such limits. No barriers stand in the way of one who would admire a foreign painting; one may speak no language but one's own and yet find as much beauty, joy, and inspiration in foreign works of art as in those produced by men of one's own nationality. A visitor to a collection of works of art has to be told by a catalog, or he would not know, what country produced any particular work; so it is with music, and largely with architecture; indeed that which is of Art is universal: the national characteristics are limitations imposed by circumstances upon the free expression of the soul.
The soul of man is not eternally bound within the limits of one nation, but must, in the course of constant reincarnations upon earth, experience the limitations of many varying nationalities. It is bound to the great human family; and it may be, for a certain period, identified with a special group. Nations are evanescent, though family groups may survive, and though an artist may be intimately bound by many ties with the destinies of some one group or family or race, in its reincarnations and in its varying national appearances, yet the artistic part of his nature is just that higher part that rises beyond such limits and appeals to all humanity, and it is the higher part of human nature that responds to the appeal of art and disregards all other limitations, such as questions of time or place or nationality, rising to what is more broadly human or more divine in the nature of man. For "Brotherhood is a fact in nature," and the soul responds unconsciously to the call of the Soul in all nature and in all humanity in such degree as it is able to throw off for a time the temporary bonds of local conditions. So it is a matter rather of satisfaction to see works of art circulating around the world and awaking the deeper sympathies that tend to unite humanity.
MUSIC AND LIFE: by William A. Dunn
THERE is not a problem which perplexes human life that may not be loosened and solved by the aid of music. Based as it is upon the vibratory movements of Nature, and subject to rigid mathematical law and geometrical ratio, music represents an incorruptible and direct medium between the higher and lower natures of man. Its dynamical and spiritual power proceeds from the blend of its related vibrating numbers; which blend is that living force (within outward harmony) that electrifies the heart and mind and lifts the whole nature to the plane of soul. It is that living field of energy in which all numbers, all forces, all substances, are lost in the unity of least-common-multiple of all possible vibrations. It is the Veil of Isis.
No motion can take place without causing sound. This must be equally true of atomic and planetary movements, and all that lies between. All sounds that appear to the senses as different must obviously vibrate in some universal medium which permits movement and unifies their seeming diversity. It is the actual presence of such a medium in man which enables him to perceive that which music is the expression of. Notes and chords are merely alphabetical symbols. These are classified and combined to express ideas as truly as words are combined to convey the thought that lies beyond them.
It has been said that "The Universe is built by number." This is obvious truth when all natural forces and elements are conceived of as modes of vibration (as they actually are) blending and interblending in the universal etheric medium, according to the immutable law of harmonious ratios. Why should the etheric world be thought of as an abstraction or a far-off possibility? It is in reality a nearer thing in life than its comparatively trifling contents. All our thoughts and feelings move in it as their medium, and the process of self-conquest is nothing more than to live in this our universal home, and harmonize dissociated thoughts and feelings into musical symphonies.