Among such writers on music Schopenhauer is notorious; and it is worth while to dwell a little on his speculations, fantastic as they may seem, since they contain an element common to all such interpretations, which does serve to isolate the essential problem of music. In Schopenhauer’s æsthetic the object of all arts, except music, is to lead, by the description of objects, to the recognition of the Ideas (Platonic) whose appearance in multiplicity constitutes the world. All arts, therefore, have a transcendental function; their aim is to reveal to us the Platonic world of eternal essences or Ideas. But they have to raise us to this region _via_ the objects of experience; in that sense they are also, therefore, concerned with the world of appearance and are dependent upon it. The case is different with music. Music is not concerned with the external world either as a symbol or as a reality. It is not even, in Schopenhauer’s language, concerned with the Ideas, but refers directly to that “Will” which, in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, underlies the Ideas themselves. The essence of his theory is given in the following passage: ... so ist die Musik, da sie die Ideen übergeht, auch von der erscheinenden Welt ganz unabhängig, ignoriert sie schlechthin, könnte gewissermaassen, auch wenn die Welt gar nicht wäre, doch bestehen: was von den anderen Künsten sich nicht sagen lässt. Die Musik ist nämlich eine so unmittelbare Objektivation und Abbild des ganzen Willens, wie die Welt selbst es ist, ja wie die Ideen es sind, deren vervielfältigte Erscheinung die Welt der einzelnen Dinge ausmacht. Or, as he says a little later on, the world may be regarded as embodied music.