Thought, too, is Being. An old distinction of the Stoics, which not inaptly represents popular views on this matter, set on one side ὄντα, existences (which were always corporeal, whether they were the things we touch and feel, or the words and breathings by which we utter them), and on the other side the meanings or thoughts proper or σημαινόμενα (which were incorporeal). These λεκτά, as they were otherwise called, were to the Stoics the proper sphere of Logic. In the sense therefore which the Stoics and popular consciousness give to being, the object of logic does not possess being. It is not corporeal. It cannot however be said to be in the sphere of non-being. It is rather a part of reality--of concrete being--which can be considered apart, as if it stood alone. Alone it does not stand. And yet it holds a position so fundamental,--is the same theme again and again repeated under endless variations,--is so obviously the universal of things--that it may properly form the subject of independent study. It is, moreover, a part of Reality, which may well claim to stand for the whole. It is, so to say, the score of the musical composition, rolled up in its bare, silent, unadorned lineaments; the articulated theme, besides, and not the mere germinal concept, of all the variety of melody. But it is only laid up there _in abstracto_, because in the soul of the composer it had already taken concrete form, due to his capacity and training, his mental force, his art and science. It is there that the score has its source. But secondly, the musical work exists in the performance of the orchestra: in the manipulations of the several instruments, in the notes of the singers, in all the diversity of parts which make up the mechanism for unfolding the meaning or theme--that unreality, that mere thought, which to the stricter Stoic might be said to have no ὔπαρξις, or bodily subsistence. And there are still people who will be disposed to assert that it is only in the multitude of notes of violin, trombone, flute, &c., that the music is real:--though perhaps these hardy realists do not quite mean what they say. For what they probably mean, and what is the fact, is that the music exists as a complete reality in those who have ears and minds capable of comprehending and enjoying it: in those who can reunite meaning and theme to execution and orchestration: and we may even add that it is more and more real, in proportion to the greater power with which they can bring these two into one.