intuitions and introspective sensations? The more we try to analyze the
more vague they become. To pull them apart and classify them as
"subjective" or "objective" or as this or as that, means, that they may
be well classified and that is about all: it leaves us as far from the
origin as ever. What does it all mean? What is behind it all? The
"voice of God," says the artist, "the voice of the devil," says the man
in the front row. Are we, because we are, human beings, born with the
power of innate perception of the beautiful in the abstract so that an
inspiration can arise through no external stimuli of sensation or
experience,--no association with the outward? Or was there present in
the above instance, some kind of subconscious, instantaneous, composite
image, of all the mountain lakes this man had ever seen blended as kind
of overtones with the various traits of nobility of many of his friends
embodied in one personality? Do all inspirational images, states,
conditions, or whatever they may be truly called, have for a dominant
part, if not for a source, some actual experience in life or of the
social relation? To think that they do not--always at least--would be a
relief; but as we are trying to consider music made and heard by human
beings (and not by birds or angels) it seems difficult to suppose that
even subconscious images can be separated from some human
experience--there must be something behind subconsciousness to produce
consciousness, and so on. But whatever the elements and origin of these
so-called images are, that they DO stir deep emotional feelings and
encourage their expression is a part of the unknowable we know. They do
often arouse something that has not yet passed the border line between
subconsciousness and consciousness--an artistic intuition (well named,
but)--object and cause unknown!--here is a program!--conscious or
subconscious what does it matter? Why try to trace any stream that
flows through the garden of consciousness to its source only to be
confronted by another problem of tracing this source to its source?
Perhaps Emerson in the _Rhodora_ answers by not trying to explain

That if eyes were made for seeing Then beauty is its own excuse for
being: Why thou wert there, O, rival of the rose! I never thought to
ask, I never knew; But, in my simple ignorance, suppose The self-same
Power that brought me there brought you.

Perhaps Sturt answers by substitution: "We cannot explain the origin