Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/37

Rh there is a language that speaks to the deeper thought and finer spirit in us as words do not moving them profoundly though they have no power of articulate response. They heave and struggle to reply, till our breasts are actually conscious of pain sometimes; but no articulate answer. Do you recognise—?"

I pointed to the piano with the finger of interrogation.

"Yes," said Vernet, with a delicate sweep of the keyboard, "it is this! It is music; music, which is felt to be the most subtle, most appealing, most various of tongues even while we know that we are never more than half awake to its pregnant meanings, and have not learnt to think of it as becoming the last perfection of speech. But that may be its appointed destiny. No, I don't think so only because music itself is a thing of late, speedy and splendid development, coming just before the later diffusion of spiritual growth. Yet there is something in that, something which an evolutionist would think apposite and to be expected. There is more, however, in what music is—a voice always understood to have powerful innumerable meanings appealing to we know not what in us, we hardly know how; and more, again, in its being an exquisite voice which can make no use of reason, nor reason of it; nor calculation, nor barter, nor anything but emotion and thought. The language we are using now, we two, is animal language by direct pedigree, which is worth observation don't you think? And, for another thing, when it began it had very small likelihood of ever developing into what it has become under the constant addition of man's business in the world and the accretive demands of reason and speculation. And the poets have made it very beautiful no doubt; yes, and when it is most beautiful it is most musical, please observe: most beautiful, and at the same time most meaning. Well, then! A new nature, new needs. What do you think? What do you say against Rh