Likewise, the most difficult of all questions, that concerning the origin and reason of evil, remains insoluble. Whether, like the theists, we fall back upon the "inscrutable decree of God" as our last defense, or, more pantheistically, harp upon the connection of the divine Spirit with the laws of nature, or conceive of evil, even of wickedness, as a part of God's nature, and look upon the development of the world as the immanent becoming of the absolute: it amounts to just about the same thing. To many people the notion that God suffers with us and in us might even appear as the greatest comfort. Undoubtedly the struggle with the problem of theodicy has led many to pantheism, especially in its intensely mystical forms. But in these matters, just as in ethics, learned formulae serve no real purpose save that of hiding our ignorance. Even the pantheist may in the darkest hours of trouble place his life and fate in the hands of [p. 437] God, and in time of greatest happiness thank his Creator that this world, full of sorrow though it be, is also full of joy, and that he was given a heart to appreciate it. It is, after all, a matter of degrees of anthropomorphism, and can be talked about only in metaphor. If even natural science apprehends the laws of the external world by means of symbols, why should we completely repudiate symbolism? Symbols are not mere fictions by any means. Only their status must be remembered lest the name of God be misused and the anthropomorphism carried altogether too far.
The consciousness that our life was planned for Eternity has never left me. Although the spiritual originates in the material and during our existence here must constantly be stimulated and nourished by sensory impressions, still it does not seem to be entirely dependent on them. A continued existence of the higher mental life, proportionate to the degree to which its nucleus, the moral personality, has developed, is thinkable, howbeit the form of this existence remains entirely unimaginable. Surely it was not narrow egotistic motives that inspired men like Lessing, Kant, and Goethe, as well as Lotze, Fechner, and Brentano, to hold to such ideas, but the feeling of respect and awe of the Eternal within us, and the senselessness of a world in which the only creation of real value arises merely to be obscured again, and finally to vanish entirely.
I need hardly mention that spiritualistic and occult tendencies never interested me. It is a matter of taste whether one likes to be taken in and whether the guitar-strumming of the mediums, their wise sayings about the future life, and their other emanations seem to be sufficient compensation.
7) Aesthetics and Science of Music. Reflections about the effect of art, especially of music, formed the beginning of my scientific thinking. In conferences and lectures, I have often discussed aesthetic problems, but have published only one of these lectures, Die Lust am Trauerspiel (1887). It seemed to me that this ancient question could not be solved by finding some one principle of explanation, but rather by observing the cooperation of all mental qualities, from the mere desire for sensation to the loftiest ethical and metaphysical ideas. Another fundamental idea was that truly artistic enjoyment does not depend on being carried away instinctively, but develops gradually, concomitant with an objective, imaginative survey, wherein the totality of actions and characters presents itself to us like a pageant. Empathy is only a way-station. Even the [p. 438] ethical effects, to be artistic, must be conveyed by observation of ethical dispositions in this spirit. Only within such a setting does the defeat of the hero achieve artistic effect. Finally, I called attention to the difference between the instant-effect and the aftereffect, which was elucidated at considerable length.
The other arts seem to lend themselves to the same approach. It was not my good fortune to develop it systematically for the art of music, where the determination of the aesthetic object is especially difficult, and where all important questions of aesthetics converge. Three main factors I would distinguish in the musical effect, which, however, may be combined in most different relations according to the individual: the purely sensory euphony (including the sensory effect of rhythm), the delight in the construction and technical execution, and, finally, the enjoyment of the content of the composition. In this third, highly controversial, point my ideas coincide most nearly with those of Lotze.
But my real purpose was to carry these controversies, which were discussed ad nauseam in the accepted aesthetics of music, into a greater universe of discourse, namely, psychology of music, and to fit this in turn into a general systematic science of music. To most professionals, even at the present day, the science of music means only the history of music. And yet, for this very art, leaving aside its profoundest effects, the conditions are extraordinarily favorable for an objective, logical understanding. Physics, physiology, ethnology, general aesthetics, and philosophy could cooperate with the history of music. My efforts to encourage such cooperation have met with gratifying approval, but also with resistance. Since the time of Helmholtz and Spitta, the philosophical faculty of Berlin has recognized the need of such a connection by requiring knowledge of the systematic branches (acoustics, tone psychology, aesthetics of music) on the final examination in musical theory.
To the systematic science of music belong, besides my works on physical and psychological acoustics, especially the treatise, Psychology of Music in England, and the book about the beginning of music[5]5. In the treatise, which is an introduction to the later works on Tonpsychologie, I discussed the relation of music to language, and of human speech to the utterances of animals -- with reference to Spencer [p. 439] and Darwin -- but also the exaggerated nativism of Gurney (power of sound), who practically ignored all genetic explanations and resorted entirely to the erotic feelings of animal ancestors. Here the ground had to be cleared for some explanation based upon mnemonic experiences of the individual and upon musical thinking as a product of such experiences. Gurney, incidentally a connoisseur of music, published an answer to my observations (Tertium Quid); to this I did not reply, as I did not wish to continue the methodological controversy which Lotze has aptly called "a mere whetting of knives." Later on, especially in K�lpe's school (also in England and America), the effects of single intervals were tested on many subjects and their statements carefully recorded. But these experiments, it seems to me, dealt only with superficial and accidental data and thus have little significance for real musical feeling; besides, one seemed to forget that isolated intervals lose their real effect, which depends mainly on compound chords and sequences; and that, furthermore, satisfactory judgments could be passed on such separate data only by someone gifted in music as well as in psychology, who could give prolonged attention both to the total structure of our music and to his own experiences. But even he will not presume to put the deepest thoughts concerning the whole or the details into words -- and that is well.
My studies of musical ethnology and comparative science of music I have already reported in Part I. All that had so far been presented in histories of music as specimens of exotic music had for the most part been collected by travelers and was based generally on unreliable first impressions of the melodies, which, to make matters worse, were, often harmonized according to modern European patterns. But, after A. Ellis had accurately determined the scales of different exotic instruments and W. Fewkes used the phonograph for making records of the songs, the way was open for an exact comparative musical science, and this was most effectively developed in our small circle in Berlin, especially by von Hornbostel. We know now, without appreciating the wonderful masterpieces of our period any less or intending to advocate a return to primitive forms, that the "world language of feeling," alleged to be universally understood, has not only undergone enormous changes in the course of time, but presents equally significant simultaneous differences on the different parts of the globe. The impressive development of harmonic music has led many, even Hugo Riemann, to the foregone conclusion that [p. 440] all music had to originate in triads, and that a hidden harmony must lurk even in one-part music, as though neutral thirds and other deviating intervals could be only discordant approximations to an intended pure interval. Such prejudices have been set aside; only occasionally is a false friend of ancient Greek music tempted to perpetrate stylistic outrages of harmonization. We know a great variety of musical forms, among them the heterophonic type widely used in Asia for which I suggested the name of heterophony in accordance with a passage in Plato's Laws, where probably the same musical form is referred to. We know that the wonderful expressiveness of our harmonies is hampered by certain rhythmic limitations, and that not only the ancient Greeks but also many primitive races excel us in regard to rhythm. I need not point out how much general aesthetic science, too, gains by such a widening of the horizon.
Anf�nge der Musik, a little book based on a public lecture, traces the origins of music back to the practice of signalling and the phenomena of tonal fusion, summarizes the general conclusions I had reached through my comparative studies, and adduces several well-authenticated examples, chiefly phonographic; and furthermore it attempts a review of the most important basic forms of music production, as these have appeared in the course of time.
Two of my articles on the science of music are purely historical, yet even these are closely connected with theory; I mean the essay on the concept of antiquity, and that on pseudo-Aristotelian problems of music. For years, these problems had fascinated me, since they represent a kind of ancient tone psychology, which is of the highest value for the deeper understanding of the music and apperception of music of classical antiquity. How much light does the single sentence, "The consonant chord has no ethos," throw on the entire ancient musical consciousness? I did, indeed, come to the conclusion that the treatise as a whole could not have been written by Aristotle, or even during his time, but belonged to the first or second century a.d. I believe to have proved this as well as such matters can be proved. Among the few philologists who had studied the treatise, Ruelle declared the matter settled thereby (tranch�e), whereas Th. Reinach, whose forced interpretations of the text I had criticized, attacked my article in such an insulting manner that I could not reply. The comprehension of many parts, here just as in meteorological and other types of problems, is possible only for one versed in that line, i.e., here acoustics, tone, and music psychology. This is [p. 441] especially true of problems concerning the peculiarities of octaves, fusion, and antiphony. My interpretation and correction of the text in Paragraph 14, which so far had been perfectly obscure, but is perfectly comprehensible in the light of fusion-phenomena, was approved by Usener and von Jan, later also by H. Riemann. A short notice in the Literarisches Zentralblatt remarked that very few people would appreciate the time and effort I had spent on these articles. The author counted himself among these few, adding regretfully: "Graeca sunt, non leguntur." This experience discouraged me to such an extent that I did not continue the history of the conception of consonance through the Middle Ages up to modern times. Later, Riemann gave a sort of continuation in his Geschichte d. Musiktheorie im 9-19 Jahre.
These are about the outlines of my scientific views and ambitions, which I was destined to carry out only in part. The work that I did do I should like to see improved upon now, and I am well aware of my shortcomings -- of all my works, only the Tafeln zur Geschichte der Philosophie went through "revised and enlarged" editions. Many buyers probably mistook it for a syllabus. Thus, I had no chance to correct mistakes. But I am quite certain that the observations and experiments which I carried out with the utmost care will stand and will not have to be repeated. The general ideas, enlightening and valuable as they seemed to me subjectively, must submit to the sifting, trying test of time. Whatever truth they contain will prevail by its own virtue. I have never endeavored to found a school in the strict sense; and have found it almost pleasanter, certainly more interesting, to have my students reach different conclusions than to have them merely corroborate my theorems. I derive all the more joy and gratitude from the loyalty of the young people who, in the same scientific spirit, but by their own independent plans, continue the work of research.
Footnotes
[*] Translated for the Clark University Press by Mrs. Thekla Hodge and Mrs. Suzzanne Langer from Philosophie der Gegenwart Selbstdarstellungen, Volume 5 (1924), edited by Dr. Raymund Schmidt. Translation rights obtained from the Publisher, Felix Meiner, Leipzig.
[1] Further details of the developments of the Institute up to 1910 will be found in Lenz�s history of the University of Berlin, Volume 3, and in the annual chronicle of the University.
[2] In the "apodeictic judgments" traditional logic jumbles together four conceptions which are by no means always identical: necessity, certainty, self-evidence, exactness (Brentano).
[3] To the axioms belong also those expressions which state the connection between premises and conclusion of a compelling syllogism -- "normative axioms" -- which one cannot deduce from experience without incurring a vicious circle.
[4] Brentano deduced the law of causality in its most general form (no change without cause) a priori, but at the same time made use of the laws of probability. I have my doubts concerning this "immanent induction." The probability of the law according to this conception (which is essentially that of Helmholtz) becomes immeasurably great and can be considered equivalent to absolute certainly.
[5] Besides this the aesthetics of music will be found in several later publications, also in a popular article in the Berlin Volkskonzerts, and in some reviews.