ontains a whole gamut of experience,
from sensuous elements to ultimate intellectual harmonies. Yet this
second existence, this life in music, is no mere ghost of the other; it
has its own excitements, its quivering alternatives, its surprising
turns; the abstract energy of it takes on so much body, that in
progression or declension it seems quite as impassioned as any animal
triumph or any moral drama.

[Sidenote: It justifies itself.]

That a pattering of sounds on the ear should have such moment is a fact
calculated to give pause to those philosophers who attempt to explain
consciousness by its utility, or who wish to make physical and moral
processes march side by side from all eternity. Music is essentially
useless, as life is: but both have an ideal extension which lends
utility to its conditions. That the way in which idle sounds run
together should matter so much is a mystery of the same order as the
spirit's concern to keep a particular body alive, or to propagate its
life. Such an interest is, from an absolute point of view, wholly
gratuitous; and so long as the natural basis and expressive function of
spirit are not perceived, this mystery is baffling. In truth the order
of values inverts that of causes; and experience, in which all values
lie, is an ideal resultant, itself ineffectual, of the potencies it can
conceive. Delight in music is liberal; it makes useful the organs and
processes that subserve it. These agencies, when they support a
conscious interest in their operation, give that operation its first
glimmering justification, and admit it to the rational sphere. Just so
when organic bodies generate a will bent on their preservation, they add
a value and a moral function to their equilibrium. In vain should we ask
for what purpose existences arise, or become important; that purpose, to
be such, must already have been important to some existence; and the
only question that can be asked or answered is what recognised
importance, what ideal values, actual existences involve.

[Sidenote: It is vital and transient.]

We happen to breathe, and on that account are interested in breathing;
and it is no greater marvel that, happening to be subject to intricate
musical sensations, we should be in earnest about these too. The human
ear discriminates sounds with ease; what it hears is so diversified that
its elements can be massed without being confused, or can form a
sequence having a character of its own, t