The phenomenal is a mode of the noumenal, as heat is a mode of motion. "_Ex_-istence" is a mode of "istence." There is no "beyond," no "behind the veil"; it is all one. If we take, as a provisional analogy, the flower of a tree to be the noumenal, and the root the phenomenal, they are both--as belonging to the tree--the same, and yet not the same. The soul might be likened to the blossom at the apex, at a point farthest away from the earth. The more perfect this soul-blossom becomes, the nearer it approaches the possibility of entering upon the unconditioned as immortal beauty-- "Like to the flower That fades into itself at evening hour," and becoming thereby identical with truth. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Many people assign to music a power, exceeding that of all other arts, of sublimating the emotions of the human heart. Altering somewhat the form of the definition of Poetry as given by Theodore Watts, in his article on the subject in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, one might say that absolute music is the _non_-concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional and rhythmical sounds. The state of the mind under the influence of music has been compared to a "sea of emotion--uncurdled by thoughts." This mental condition may also be super-induced, I think, by means of sculpture, painting, and poetry. In fact, I would maintain that the success of an artist, whether he be musician, poet, or painter, must always be measurable by his power of suggesting the unconditioned, or of bringing the human mind as near as possible to a _thoughtless_ state of emotion, and, finally, to that of non-emotion. In the gospel according to Buddha it is written: "There lurks in transient form immortal bliss." The true artist can cause this immortal bliss to be felt, in all its Nirvanic beauty, by those naturally susceptible to such influences, as well as by those who, by a course of training, have rendered themselves capable of receiving them. There is no line of demarcation between the noumenal and phenomenal. The one fades into the other, as all forms and outlines would disappear into the surrounding atoms or cosmic dust under a sufficiently powerful magnifying glass. "Appearance (the world of phenomena) is the real, as confusedly and partially understood.... The real is the apparent completely understood, and seen in the light of the whole.... Appearance is the appearance of reality.... If we know 'only phenomena,' we must thereby know _something_ of that of which they are phenomena."[Y] [Y] _Vide Mind_, October, 1898; "The One and the Many," by D. G. Ritchie.