onal opinion can be of but little help here.

We might offer the suggestion that Debussy's content would have been
worthier his manner, if he had hoed corn or sold newspapers for a
living, for in this way he might have gained a deeper vitality and
truer theme to sing at night and of a Sunday. Or we might say that what
substance there is, is "too coherent"--it is too clearly expressed in
the first thirty seconds. There you have the "whole fragment," a
translucent syllogism, but then the reality, the spirit, the substance
stops and the "form," the "perfume," the "manner," shimmer right along,
as the soapsuds glisten after one has finished washing. Or we might say
that his substance would have been worthier, if his adoration or
contemplation of Nature, which is often a part of it, and which rises
to great heights, as is felt for example, in La Mer, had been more the
quality of Thoreau's. Debussy's attitude toward Nature seems to have a
kind of sensual sensuousness underlying it, while Thoreau's is a kind
of spiritual sensuousness. It is rare to find a farmer or peasant whose
enthusiasm for the beauty in Nature finds outward expression to compare
with that of the city-man who comes out for a Sunday in the country,
but Thoreau is that rare country-man and Debussy the city-man with his
weekend flights into country-aesthetics. We would be inclined to say
that Thoreau leaned towards substance and Debussy towards manner.

5

There comes from Concord, an offer to every mind--the choice between
repose and truth, and God makes the offer. "Take which you
please ... between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the
love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first
philosophy, the first political party he meets," most likely his
father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation. Here is another
aspect of art-duality, but it is more drastic than ours, as it would
eliminate one part or the other. A man may aim as high as Beethoven or
as high as Richard Strauss. In the former case the shot may go far
below the mark; in truth, it has not been reached since that "thunder
storm of 1828" and there is little chance that it will be reached by
anyone living today, but that matters not, the shot will never rebound
and destroy the marksman. But, in the latter case, the shot may often
hit the mark, but as often rebound and harden, if not destroy, the
shooter's heart--even his soul. What matters it, men say, he wil