No doubt the ideal articulation and rounding off in a whole, in which the one part follows inevitably from another, ought to be present in a musical composition. But in some measure the execution here is of a totally different type, and moreover we can only accept the unity in a restricted sense. (_ββ_) In a musical theme the significance which has to be expressed is already exhausted[396]. If it is repeated or carried on to further oppositions and mediations these repetitions, modulations, and elaborations by means of other scales may very readily appear superfluous, and rather are appertinent to the purely musical development and the assimilation of the varied content of harmonic progressions which are neither demanded by the content itself[397], nor remain dependent upon it, whereas in the plastic arts the execution of the detail and the passage to it is simply and always a more accurate exhibition and analysis of the content itself. But of course it is impossible to deny that another theme is actually motived by the way a theme is developed, and each of them, then, in their alternation or their interfusion progress, change, are at one time suppressed, at another emphasized, and by their victory or defeat are able to make a content explicit in its more definite features, oppositions, transitions, developments, and resolutions. But in this case, too, the unity is not made more profound and concentrated by virtue of such elaboration as is the case in sculpture and painting, but is rather an expansion, an extension, a correlative series[398], an addition of remoteness or a return, for which the content, which is thus expressed, remains no doubt the universal centrum, yet does not keep the whole so securely together as we find it is possible to do in the plastic arts, particularly where their subject-matter is confined to the human organism.