slow movement is also physically essential to it; a quick run or shake in
the low notes cannot even be imagined. The higher complemental parts,
which are parallel to animal life, move more quickly, but yet without
melodious connection and significant progress. The disconnected course of
all the complemental parts, and their regulation by definite laws, is
analogous to the fact that in the whole irrational world, from the crystal
to the most perfect animal, no being has a connected consciousness of its
own which would make its life into a significant whole, and none
experiences a succession of mental developments, none perfects itself by
culture, but everything exists always in the same way according to its
kind, determined by fixed law. Lastly, in the _melody_, in the high,
singing, principal voice leading the whole and progressing with
unrestrained freedom, in the unbroken significant connection of _one_
thought from beginning to end representing a whole, I recognise the
highest grade of the objectification of will, the intellectual life and
effort of man. As he alone, because endowed with reason, constantly looks
before and after on the path of his actual life and its innumerable
possibilities, and so achieves a course of life which is intellectual, and
therefore connected as a whole; corresponding to this, I say, the _melody_
has significant intentional connection from beginning to end. It records,
therefore, the history of the intellectually enlightened will. This will
expresses itself in the actual world as the series of its deeds; but
melody says more, it records the most secret history of this
intellectually-enlightened will, pictures every excitement, every effort,
every movement of it, all that which the reason collects under the wide
and negative concept of feeling, and which it cannot apprehend further
through its abstract concepts. Therefore it has always been said that
music is the language of feeling and of passion, as words are the language
of reason. Plato explains it as ἡ των μελων κινησις μεμιμημενη, εν τοις
παθημασιν ὁταν ψυχη γινηται (_melodiarum motus, animi affectus imitans_),
De Leg. vii.; and also Aristotle says: δια τι οἱ ρυθμοι και τα μελη, φωνη
ουσα, ηθεσιν εοικε (_cur numeri musici et modi, qui voces sunt, moribus
similes sese exhibent?_): Probl. c. 19.