have long found for myself that I cannot attain to the highest range of
my intellectual power except when hearing good music. All poets, and
most writers of prose, will say that their thought is never so exalted,
their sense of beauty and proportion never so just, as when they are
listening either to the artificial music made by man, or to some of the
grander tones of nature, such as the roar of a western ocean, or the
sighing of wind in a clump of firs. Though I have often felt on such
occasions on the very verge of some high mental discovery, and though
a hand has been stretched forward as it were to rend the veil, yet it
has never been vouchsafed me to see behind it. This you no doubt were
allowed in a measure to do last night. You probably played the music
with a deeper intuition than usual, and this, combined with the
excitement under which you were already labouring, raised you for a
moment to the required pitch of mental exaltation."

"It is true," John said, "that I never felt the melody so deeply as when
I played it last night."

"Just so," answered his friend; "and there is probably some link between
this air and the history of the man whom you saw last night; some fatal
power in it which enables it to exert an attraction on him even after
death. For we must remember that the influence of music, though always
powerful, is not always for good. We can scarcely doubt that as certain
forms of music tend to raise us above the sensuality of the animal, or
the more degrading passion of material gain, and to transport us into
the ether of higher thought, so other forms are directly calculated to
awaken in us luxurious emotions, and to whet those sensual appetites
which it is the business of a philosopher not indeed to annihilate or to
be ashamed of, but to keep rigidly in check. This possibility of music
to effect evil as well as good I have seen recognised, and very aptly