truth that evolution on any plane and on
any scale proceeds according to certain laws which are in reality only
ramifications of one ubiquitous and ever operative law; that this law
registers itself in the thing evolved, leaving stamped thereon as it
were fossil footprints by means of which it may be known. In the arts
the creative spirit of man is at its freest and finest, and nowhere
among the arts is it so free and so fine as in music. In music
accordingly the universal law of becoming finds instant, direct
and perfect self-expression; music voices the inner nature of the
_will-to-live_ in all its moods and moments; in it form, content,
means and end are perfectly fused. It is this fact which gives
validity to the before quoted saying that all of the arts "aspire
toward the condition of music." All aspire to express the law, but
music, being least encumbered by the leaden burden of materiality,
expresses it most easily and adequately. This being so there is
nothing unreasonable in attempting to apply the known facts of musical
harmony and rhythm to any other art, and since these essays concern
themselves primarily with architecture, the final aspect in which
that art will be presented here is as "frozen music"--ponderable form
governed by musical law.

Music depends primarily upon the equal and regular division of time
into beats, and of these beats into measures. Over this soundless and
invisible warp is woven an infinitely various melodic pattern, made
up of tones of different pitch and duration arithmetically related
and combined according to the laws of harmony. Architecture,
correspondingly, implies the rhythmical division of space, and
obedience to laws numerical and geometrical. A certain identity
therefore exists between simple harmony in music, and simple
proportion in architecture. By translating the consonant
tone-intervals into number, the common denominator, as it were, of
both arts, it is possible to give these intervals a spatial, and
hence an architectural, expression. Such expression, considered as
proportion only and divorced from ornament, will prove pleasing to
the eye in the same way that its correlative is pleasing to the ear,
because in either case it is not alone the special organ of sense
which is gratified, but the inner Self, in which all senses are one.
Containing within itself the mystery of number, it thrills responsive
to every audible or visible presentment of that mystery.

[Illust