I pointed to the piano with the finger of interrogation.
“Yes,” said Vernet, with a delicate sweep of the keyboard, “it is this! It is music; music, which is felt to be the most subtle, most appealing, most various of tongues even while we know that we are never more than half awake to its pregnant meanings, and have not learnt to think of it as becoming the last perfection of speech. But that may be its appointed destiny. No, I don't think so only because music itself is a thing of late, speedy and splendid development, coming just before the later diffusion of spiritual growth. Yet there is something in that, something which an evolutionist would think apposite and to be expected. There is more, however, in what music is—a voice always understood to have powerful innumerable meanings appealing to we know not what in us, we hardly know how; and more, again, in its being an exquisite voice which can make no use of reason, nor reason of it; nor calculation, nor barter, nor anything but emotion and thought. The language we are using now, we two, is animal language by direct pedigree, which is worth observation don't you think? And, for another thing, when it began it had very small likelihood of ever developing into what it has become under the constant addition of man's business in the world and the accretive demands of reason and speculation. And the poets have made it very beautiful no doubt; yes, and when it is most beautiful it is most musical, please observe: most beautiful, and at the same time most meaning. Well, then! A new nature, new needs. What do you think? What do you say against music being wrought into another language for mankind, as it nears the height of its spiritual growth?”
“I say it is a pretty fancy, and quite within reasonable speculation.”
“But yet not of the profoundest consequence,” added Vernet, coming from the piano and resuming his seat by the window. “No; but what is of consequence is the cruel tedium of these evolutionary processes. A thousand years, and how much movement?”
“Remember the sudden starts towards perfection, and that the farther we advance the more we may be able to help.”
“Well, but that is the very thing I meant to say. Help is not only desirable, it is imperatively called for. For an unfortunate offensive movement rises against this better one, which will be checked, or perhaps thrown back altogether, unless the stupid reformers who confront the new spirit of kindness with the highwayman's demand are brought to reason. What I most willingly yield to friend and brother I do not choose to yield to an insulting thief; rather will I break his head in the cause of divine Civility. Robbery is no way of righteousness, and your gallant reformers who think it a fine heroic means of bringing on a better time for humanity should be taught that some devil has put the wrong plan into their heads. It is his way of continuing under new conditions the old conflict of evil and good.”
“But taught! How should these so-earnest ones be taught?”
“Ah, how! Then leave the reformers; and while they inculcate their mistaken Gospel of Rancour, let every wise man preach the Gospel of Content.”
“Content—with things as they are?”
“Why, no, my friend; for that would be preaching content with universal uncontent, which of course cannot last into a reign of wisdom and peace. But if you ask me whether I mean content with a very very little of this world's goods, or even contentment in poverty, I say yes. There will be no better day till that gospel has found general acceptance, and has been taken into the common habitudes of life. The end may be distant enough; but it is your own opinion that the time is already ripe for the preacher, and if he were no Peter the Hermit but only another, another——”