of God.' But this is not because, as you think, music is
vague. On the contrary, I believe that musical expression is
altogether too definite, that it reaches regions and dwells
in them whither words cannot follow it and must necessarily
go lame when they make the attempt as you would have them
do."

[Sidenote: _The tonal language._]

[Sidenote: _Herbert Spencer's definition._]

[Sidenote: _Natural expression._]

[Sidenote: _Absolute music._]

If I were to try to say why musicians, great musicians, speak thus of
their art, my explanation would be that they have developed, farther
than the rest of mankind have been able to develop it, a language of
tones, which, had it been so willed, might have been developed so as
to fill the place now occupied by articulate speech. Herbert Spencer,
though speaking purely as a scientific investigator, not at all as an
artist, defined music as "a language of feelings which may ultimately
enable men vividly and completely to impress on each other the
emotions they experience from moment to moment." We rely upon speech
to do this now, but ever and anon when, in a moment of emotional
exaltation, we are deserted by the articulate word we revert to the
emotional cry which antedates speech, and find that that cry is
universally understood because it is universally felt. More than
speech, if its primitive element of emotionality be omitted, more than
the primitive language of gesture, music is a natural mode of