of molecules of various degrees of elasticity, and capable
of vibrating in as many different periods as there are tones from all
kinds of sonorous bodies; and these molecules, set in motion by the
musician and falling on our ear, answer to our ideas, according to
each man's temperament. I myself believe that sound is identical in its
nature with light. Sound is light, perceived under another form;
each acts through vibrations to which man is sensitive and which he
transforms, in the nervous centres, into ideas.

"Music, like painting, makes use of materials which have the property
of liberating this or that property from the surrounding medium and
so suggesting an image. The instruments in music perform this part, as
color does in painting. And whereas each sound produced by a sonorous
body is invariably allied with its major third and fifth, whereas
it acts on grains of fine sand lying on stretched parchment so as
to distribute them in geometrical figures that are always the same,
according to the pitch,--quite regular when the combination is a true
chord, and indefinite when the sounds are dissonant,--I say that music
is an art conceived in the very bowels of nature.

"Music is subject to physical and mathematical laws. Physical laws are
but little known, mathematics are well understood; and it is since their
relations have been studied, that the harmony has been created to
which we owe the works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Rossini, grand
geniuses, whose music is undoubtedly nearer to perfection than that of
their precursors, though their genius, too, is unquestionable. The
old masters could sing, but they had not art and science at their
command,--a noble alliance which enables us to merge into one the finest
melody and the power of harmony.

"Now, if a knowledge of mathematical laws gave us these four great
musicians, what may we not attain to if we can discover the physical
laws in virtue of which--grasp this clearly--we may collect, in larger
or smaller quantities, according to the proportions we may require, an
ethereal substance diffused in the atmosphere which is the medium alike
of music and of light, of the phenomena of vegetation and of animal
life! Do you follow me? Those new laws would arm the composer with new
powers by supplying him with instruments superior of those now in use,
and perhaps with a potency of harmony immense as compared with that now
at his command. If every modified shade of soun