Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/108

50 others that might soften their manners. For this purpose, music, which influences the mind by means of the corporeal organs, was extremely proper. It is a kind of a medium between the bodily exercises that render men fierce and hardy, and speculative sciences that render them unsociable and four. It cannot be said that music inspired virtue, for this would be inconceivable: but it prevented the effects of a savage institution, and enabled the soul to have such a share in the education, as it could never have had without the assistance of harmony.

Let us suppose among ourselves a society of men so passionately fond of hunting, as to make it their sole employment: these people would doubtless contract thereby a kind of rusticity and fierceness. But if they happened to receive a taste for music, we should quickly perceive a sensible difference in their customs and manners. In short, the exercises used by the Greeks excited only one kind of passions, viz. fierceness, anger, and cruelty. But music excites all those; and is likewise able to inspire the soul with a sense of pity, lenity, tenderness, and love. Our moral writers, who declaim so vehemently against the stage, sufficiently demonstrate the power of music over the soul.

If the society abovementioned were to have no other music than that of drums and the found of the trumpet; would it not be more difficult to accomplish this end, than by the more melting tones Rh