Who does not feel, under the charm of music, or the influence of a great
painting, reasons for high living which no words can express? The tear
which often gathers in the eye of the most abandoned, hardened man, under
the power of song, bespeaks the fact that chords have been touched which
vibrate responsive to no earthly interest or relation.
III.
The melody in sound and the harmony in color are correlated to the
æsthetic nature of man through the ear and the eye. In the ear is found
the musical scale, and in the eye the prismatic scale.
Notes are in the ear which correspond with the C D E F G A B of the
musical scale, and parts are in the eye which correspond to the red,
orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet of the prismatic scale.
It is only through D in the ear that D out of the ear can be heard, and
it is with C in the ear that C out of the ear is heard.
If there were no notes in the ear except D, and all other notes in
nature were destroyed, the ear could hear no notes at all. A hears A,
and B hears B, and C hears C. What A hears, B does not hear, and what C
hears, A does not hear. What is true of the ear is true of the eye. The
parts of the eye with which red is seen are not the parts with which
green is seen. Red in the eye sees red out of the eye. Blue in the eye
sees blue out of the eye, and green in the eye sees green out of the eye.
If there was in the prismatic scale located in the eye only the part
with which blue is seen, no color in the world would be visible except
the blue. The notes latent in all natural objects are addressed to the
æsthetic sense, through the corresponding notes latent in the ear; and
the seven colors, capacity for which is latent in all earthly objects,
address themselves to the æsthetic nature through the corresponding
capacities for color contained in the eye. That man is related to
the kingdom of beauty in a sense which marks him off from the animals
below him, is proven by the fact that he can take the elements of this
kingdom into his imagination and send them back to the realms of sense,
in oratorios and paintings. The masters have given all history ideal
and permanent setting by means of sound and light. Man cannot only see
the truth, but repeat it; not only recognize the right, but conform to
it, and not only appreciate beauty, but express it. In this he has the
evidence of his kinship with the author of the true, the good, and the
beautiful. The lower animals, as far as we know, may be thrilled with
that which is beautiful; we do know they never repeat the beautiful. In
the art galleries and conservatories of the world all the past is brought
to life again and stands before the eye and the ear, under the ideal
forms of time and space. Moses is not only immortal in the laws which he
wrote, and in the race which he civilized, but, through Michael Angelo’s
genius, he has been made eternal in the kingdom of beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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