I take a form of pure music as a type of our highest attainment, because when music is allied to words or to action it gives certain hostages. Furthermore, the symphony evolved slowly under the law of its own being, and it represents the application to music of those general laws of proportion and balance, of unity and variety, which govern all artistic expression. It has never been subjected to alien influences; popularity has not been its motive power; virtuosity has never dictated to it. If you understand the symphony you can apply that understanding to any other form of music. If one compares it with the opera this distinction is at once evident. In the opera that antagonism of which Spencer speaks between states of feeling and of cognition does exist, because the mind is there appealed to through objects rather than through pure sound. The symphony speaks in its own terms; opera speaks in terms of characters in action, of costume and of scenery, as well as of music. Even the greatest operas cause you to reflect on something outside themselves--on human motives as they find expression in human action. In either “Don Giovanni” or “Tristan,” although the music reaches great heights of beauty and is profoundly moving, there is the inevitable struggle between seeing and hearing, the inevitable difficulty between a simultaneous state of cognition and of feeling. The symphony entirely escapes this dilemma. Np doubt great motives lie beneath it; no doubt it, too, is a drama of human life, for otherwise it could not be great as a work of art; but the play of motives in a symphony is hidden behind the impenetrable veil of sound. The Third, Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies of Beethoven are truly dramatic, but only in this sense. They range from the tender to the terrible; they have their own emotional climaxes; they philosophize, they brood, they grin like a comic mask; action and reaction follow each other as in life itself; nothing is lacking but that one inconsequential thing, reality. Art is truth; life is but a shadow fading to nothingness as the sun sets. III. THE MATERIALS OF THE SYMPHONY