rticles of matter in suspension in the air and carried by them to the
tympanum of the ear, which acts thus-and-so upon the various components
of the hearing apparatus, and finally arrives through a system of
ganglia to a certain nerve centre, located somewhere in a brain cell, or
the spinal column. He may use a great many other big words and display
various kinds of scientific devices for measuring sound waves and
calculating vibrations, but when he has finished, all his science will
not enable him to compose a touching melody, or feel the beauty and
inspiration of it. A little child, or a negro mammy, with a soul for
music, will feel and give out something, whose very essence has nothing
to do with the intellect and which the most formidable intellect is
powerless to grasp.

The same thing is true of painting and poetry and sculpture. The
feelings which inspire them and the feelings which they arouse in
receptive souls are totally independent of the intellect.

The reason may argue that as one leg of the Venus de Milo is found by
measurement to be considerably shorter than the other, it is absurd to
call that a beautiful figure of a woman--or that it should excite as
much admiration as a scientifically constructed statue in which all the
proportions would be in accord with carefully tabulated statistics.

As a photograph of a young and healthy girl is more accurate and more
pleasing in subject than a painting of an old woman, what reason is
there for it to arouse less esthetic feeling than an immortal portrait
by Rembrandt?

If a description of a small water course, drawn up by a surveyor and a
lawyer, is exact and comprehensive, why should it not appeal to the
imagination and sense of beauty more satisfactorily than a poem by
Tennyson, entitled "The Brook?"

The obvious answer is that in all such questions the intellect is out of
its element, trying to lay hands on something which has no tangible
substance.

If this point-of-view is not enough to give your intellect food for
thought and suggest its very decided limitations in the life of man, you
may turn its light upon the simplest and most material sensations and
feelings which belong to the animal nature and are common to all
mankind.

What reason is there for my brother to dote on fried onions, while I
cannot endure them? Why does my uncle like pig's feet and eels and
snails, while my wife is made almost ill at the sight of them? Your
intellect may tell y