RABELAIS, _Pantagruel_, bk. ii. ch. vi. It matters little from what point we view the tendency of musical art as it is disclosed to our vision through its most potent manifestations. We are driven inward upon the central and all-important question, How far can music go in the direction of depicting things which lie outside itself? Is it to convert itself into a language, or shall it sink into a kind of rapt mysticism which shall be accepted in a vague way as a species of philosophic speculation? Walter Pater in his essay on Coleridge says: "The true illustration of the speculative temper is not the Hindoo mystic, lost to sense, understanding, individuality, but one such as Goethe, to whom every moment of life brought its contribution of experimental individual knowledge; by whom no touch of the world of form, color, and passion was disregarded." Herein lies a deep, pregnant suggestion. Pater knew little enough of the inner nature of music, but he was able to make some sensible deductions from his comprehension of art in the broader sense, and in another place in the volume just quoted ("Appreciations") he suggests the possibility that music might be the ideal of all art, "precisely because in music it is impossible to distinguish the form from the substance or matter, the subject from the expression." Against such a summary of the nature of music the whole practice of composition to-day cries out. And at the same time it finds itself unsatisfied by such a standard of speculative thought as that set up by Mr. Pater. Music would perhaps profit highly by a faithful adherence to that law of continual regard to the suggestions of the "world of form, color, and passion." But the rapt vacancy of the Hindoo mystic woos and wins the favor of composers, for outwardly it has a philosophic appearance, and to philosophize in music seems now to be the highest desire of its masters. It is useless to attempt to blind one's self to facts. The march of music from pure beauty of form and development of melodic ideas toward the representation of ideas not musical in themselves has been going on, as we have seen, from the very beginning. But at the outset there was no endeavor to translate mental processes into musical terms. As far back as the middle of the fifteenth century the story of Susanna was told in unaccompanied choral music of purely contrapuntal pattern. But there was no subtlety in such music. The text set forth the narrative; the music was a mere framework. Jannequin wrote his "Cries of Paris" in a similar style, but his musical effects consisted of a few primitive imitations of externals.