[43] Aristotle implies in his discussion (“Pol.,” bk. vii. 1) that there had arisen in his day radical critics who asserted that music was merely an amusement, with no other importance. But he sets aside this opinion as hardly deserving of refutation, seeing how strong was the consensus of opinion against it. [44] Aristotle fully appreciates this, and admits, even in his perfect polity, popular music to suit the vulgar listener, who cannot understand what is really classical (“Pol.,” viii.: ὁ γὰρ θεατὴς φορτικὸς ὤν. κ.τ.λ.). [45] In some cases a very florid adagio is succeeded by a lively plain tune in galop time. [46] Some people have thought these scales only indicated differences of pitch. This is false, or rather a misapprehension, because in a fixed set of notes--like the white notes in our pianos--various scales could only be found by starting higher or lower. But how could a difference of pitch affect morals? [47] It is not difficult for a man who has devoted sufficient time to music, and has known many musical people, to find some analogy to Dorian, Phrygian, and Lydian modes, as moral agents, in our modern music. For surely the real meaning, the real depth, in the art is this: that it represents, and by representing stimulates within us, various emotions. Like all the other faculties of man, the emotions are a great class of mental phenomena improved and strengthened by a certain quantity of stimulus, but exaggerated and injured by being overstrained, or too perpetually exercised. And it is the peculiar province of music to awaken emotions too subtle and various for the coarser utterance of words, and therefore to fill the mind with feelings delightful, indeed, and deep, but from their very nature unutterable in words and inexplicable except by sympathy. You cannot convey to an unmusical man what is called the expression of an air--that is to say, the emotion it has caused within you. Let us add that if you could explain it, it would not have the distinctive value which it really possesses. It is this very feature in the question which has caused the moral effects of music to be wholly overlooked in a cold and logical age, when many men are not affected by it, and in which everything inexplicable by direct statement is likely to be considered unreal.