e minor mood is one of sadness and resignation as compared
with the major of brightness and activity. It may be advanced that this
is merely a matter of association in the mind, that we have been long
accustomed to relate grief and melancholy and sadness with minor keys,
and that therefore the one idea very naturally brings up the other. The
argument is logical, and cannot be summarily dismissed. But when we
reflect that this contrast of activity and resignation, as typified by
the major and minor modes, also corresponds to the fundamental relation
of the sexes, the active and the receptive, the "doing" and "being," we
may question whether association is sufficient as an explanation. The
major and minor modes may thus be themselves but expressions of some
deeper spiritual relationship embodied in the nature of things.

Without giving rise to any definite emotion, and in the absence of any
specific programme, it is thus quite possible for music to suggest a
mood or to induce an atmosphere. Surely this is, in effect, the
conveyance of a message and a meaning, even though both be inarticulate.
Such influences may call to like moods or atmospheres within ourselves
and bring them into expression: by being made thus explicit instead of
remaining latent they gain added strength, and are recorded in ourselves
by memory. Thus even the mood suggested by the music of the moment may
be a lasting item in our soul's growth. Art in all its variety of noble
forms is ever beckoning to the best in us, to the sense of the beautiful
and to the unformulated ideal: it is the spirit clothed in form calling
to the spirit not yet expressed, bidding it build beauty. "This building
of man's true world--the living world of truth and beauty--is the
function of Art. Man is true, where he feels his infinity, where he is
divine, and the divine is the creator in him. Therefore with the
attainment of his truth he creates."[23] This call to spirit is the old
allegory of the sleeping beauty waiting to be awakened to her royal
rank by the kiss of the seeking prince: it is the same truth as
expressed in the Bible--"We love Him because He first loved us."

[Note 23: Rabindranath Tagore. "What is Art?"]

It is not music alone that thus seeks to arouse our latent divinity and
to stimulate the tenuous virtues which expression alone can make robust.
When rhythm without calls to the rhythm within, it answers because it
must. "Dancing is symbolical, it means some