Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/36

26, conform three classes of character, in whom each respectively predominates. We feel the spirit of the first; we admire the intellect of the second; we deal only with the actions of the third. We turn to the first for inspiration and for influence; to the second for reasons and methods; to the third for execution, whether in the way of amusement or of use. The highest type of the first class is the saint; of the second, the philosopher; and of the third, the statesman. Their collective organizations, from of old, have been the Church, the University, and the State. A corresponding division holds in every department of life, in every art, in every subject of inquiry. Its keen blade passed through each arid all, when Thought began. It is the primary analysis of the universe, which the mysteries of the church have carried even into the inmost nature of the Deity.

These analogies, accidentally started, lead directly into the inmost essence of the science and the art of music. The number Three is the number of science; and there is a certain poetry of science, which consists in tracing the presence of the same great laws, and detecting the same type in all things; so that one sphere becomes an expression and reflection, as it were, of every other; so that the passions and emotions of our soul read themselves acknowledged, and enjoy their own harmonies anew, in every kingdom of nature and the arts. So much it is necessary to glance at in the science of music, that divine source of enthusiasm, that transcendent medium of expression, that homelike yet mysterious element of passion, of the love that yearns for the human, or that climbs in secret aspiration, flame-like, to the infinite Heart of hearts, centre of light and warmth, in whom all spirits seek their unity.

But science is not the essence of music. It is not the warm, glowing thing itself. It is only the measure of its heart-beats, the law that distributes the ramification of the innumerable ducts and channels through which that heart propels its lifeblood. It is the principle of order in the system, the divider of the one into the many, which resent resemblance in each other, and wander off in every way from uniformity, only that they may be the more completely one; or, in other