book, where a living science and
a Gothic spirit are closely intermingled (I use the word "Gothic" in its
best sense; I know it is the highest praise one can give M. d'Indy).
This work has not received the attention it deserves. It is a record of
the spirit of contemporary art; and if it stands rather apart from other
writings, it should not be allowed to pass unnoticed on that account.

In this book, Faith is shown to be everything--the beginning and the
end. We learn how it fans the flame of genius, nourishes thought,
directs work, and governs even the modulations and the style of a
musician. There is a passage in it that one would think was of the
thirteenth century; it is curious, but not without dignity:

"One should have an aim in the progressive march of modulations, as
one has in the different stages of life. The reason, instincts, and
faith that guide a man in the troubles of his life also guide the
musician in his choice of modulations. Thus useless and
contradictory modulations, an undecided balance between light and
shade, produce a painful and confusing impression on the hearer,
comparable to that which a poor human being inspires when he is
feeble and inconsistent, buffeted between the East and the West in
the course of his unhappy life, without an aim and without
belief."[141]

[Footnote 141: Vincent d'Indy, _Cours de Composition musicale_, p. 132.]

This book seems to be of the Middle Ages by reason of a sort of
scholastic spirit of abstraction and classification.

"In artistic creation, seven faculties are called into play by the
soul: the Imagination, the Affections, the Understanding, the
Intelligence, the Memory, the Will, and the Conscience."[142]

[Footnote 142: _Id._, _ibid._, p. 13.]

And again its mediaeval spirit is shown by an extraordinary symbolism,
which discovers in everything (as far as I understand it) the imprint
of divine mysteries, and the mark of God in Three Persons in such things
as the beating of the heart and ternary rhythms--"an admirable
application of the principle of the Unity of the Trinity"![143]

From these remote times comes also M. d'Indy's method of writing
history, not by tracing facts back to laws, but by deducing, on the
contrary, facts from certain great general ideas, which have once been
admitted, but not proved by frequent recurrence, such as: "The origin of
art is in religion"[144]--a fact