to his natural instinct. It has often happened that a man who
listens to a melodious and beautiful piece of music is gradually aroused
and excited by its sweet power, so as to be carried away into a world of
new sensations, in which all our sentiments and affections, our deepest,
tenderest, and dearest aspirations blossom afresh in our memory, and are
fused into and strengthened by these harmonies; we seem to be
transported into ethereal regions, and unconsciously surrender ourselves
to their influence. This kind of natural ecstasy is not produced merely
by the physiological effects of music on the organism, by the education
of our sense of beauty, and of our reminiscences of earlier mythical
emotions, but also by the innate impulse which still persists, leading
us to idealize and vivify all natural phenomena, and also our own
sensations.

But if among the common people, the devout, and occasionally also among
people of culture, this highest art is not divested of its mythical
environment, which still persists, although in a more ideal form, yet it
has followed and still follows the general evolution of human ideas. The
art of music was identified with song and with the mythical personality
ascribed to it, of which these instruments were the extrinsic and
harmonious echo; at first, like the other arts, it, was a religious
conception and entity pertaining to the Church, but it gradually
assumed a character of its own, was dissociated from the Church, and
became a secular art, diverging more and more from the mythical ideas
with which it had before been filled. When instruments increased in
number, and became more perfect in quality; when harmony, strictly so
called, was developed and became more efficient, instrumental music
still continued to be the servant of vocal music, and was employed to
give emphasis, relief, warmth, and colour to the art of song, which
continued to be supreme. Song had its peculiar musical character, and
the human voice, alone or in a chorus, might be regarded as the type of
instrumental music, rendered more effective by the words which expressed
the ideas and sentiments of such songs by harmonizing the various vocal
instruments in accordance with their tones and varying _timbre_.
Instrumental music, by the melodious harmony of artificial sounds, had
however a vast field peculiar to itself, and an existence independent of
the human voice. This was and is, in addition to its release from the
bonds