Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/53

34 when we learn the true relations, we may come to see the genuine and final unity of internal and external meaning. Our first definition of the idea seems to make, yes, in its abstract statement deliberately tries to make, as you see, the external meaning something sharply contrasted with the internal meaning. Our final result will simply reabsorb the secondary aspect, the external meaning, into the completed primary aspect, — the completely embodied internal meaning of the idea. We shall assert, in the end, that the final meaning of every complete idea, when fully developed, must be viewed as wholly an internal meaning, and that all apparently external meanings become consistent with internal meanings only by virtue of thus coming to be viewed as aspects of the true internal meaning.

To illustrate this thesis by the cases already used: The melody sung or internally but voluntarily heard, in the moment of memory, is, for the singer’s or hearer’s consciousness, a musical idea. It has so far its internal meaning. And to say so much first means simply that to the singer, as he sings, or to the silent memory of a musical imagination, the present melody imperfectly and partially fulfils a conscious purpose, the purpose of the flying moment. On the other hand, the melody may be viewed by a critic as an idea corresponding to external facts. The singer or hearer too may himself say as he sings or remembers: “This is the song my beloved sang,” or “This is the theme that Beethoven composed in his Fidelio.” In such a case, the idea is said to have its apparently external meaning, and this, its reference to facts, not now and here given, is the idea’s general rela-