that content is to be sought, and how
defined, will be decided in each case by the student for himself, on
grounds which may be said to be as much in his nature as they are in
the argument. The attitude of man toward the art is an individual one,
and in some of its aspects defies explanation.

[Sidenote: _A musical fluid._]

The amount and kind of pleasure which music gives him are frequently
as much beyond his understanding and control as they are beyond the
understanding and control of the man who sits beside him. They are
consequences of just that particular combination of material and
spiritual elements, just that blending of muscular, nervous, and
cerebral tissues, which make him what he is, which segregate him as
an individual from the mass of humanity. We speak of persons as
susceptible or insusceptible to music as we speak of good and poor
conductors of electricity; and the analogy implied here is
particularly apt and striking. If we were still using the scientific
terms of a few decades ago I should say that a musical fluid might yet
be discovered and its laws correlated with those of heat, light, and
electricity. Like them, when reduced to its lowest terms, music is a
form of motion, and it should not be difficult on this analogy to
construct a theory which would account for the physical phenomena
which accompany the hearing of music in some persons, such as the
recession of blood from the face, or an equally sudden suffusion of
the same veins, a contraction of the scalp accompanied by chilliness
or a prickling sensation, or that roughness of the skin called
goose-flesh, "flesh moved by an idea, flesh horripilated by a
thought."

[Sidenote: _Origin of musical elements._]

[Sidenote: _Feelings and counterpoint._]

It has been denied that feelings are the content of music, or that it
is the mission of music to give expression to feelings; but the
scientific fact remains that the fundamental elements of vocal
music--pitch, quality, and dynamic intensity--are the results of
feelings working upon the vocal organs; and even if Mr. Herbert
Spencer's theory be rejected, it is too late now to deny that music is
conceived by its creators as a language of the emotions and so applied
by them. The German philosopher Herbarth sought to reduce the question
to an absurdity by expressing surprise that musicians should still
believe that feelings could be "the proximate cause of the rules of
simple and double counterpoin