and what it cannot express has been carried on wrong lines. We are
always referred back to language as actually expressing an idea, when,
as a matter of fact, language expresses nothing but that which its
vital parallel means of expression, gesture and facial expression,
permit it to express. Words mean nothing whatsoever in themselves; the
same words in different languages mean wholly different things; for
written words are mere symbols, and no more express things or ideas
than any marks on paper would. Yet language is forever striving to
emulate music by actually expressing something, besides merely
symbolising it, and thus we have in poetry the coining of
onomatopoetic words--words that will bring the things they stand for
more vividly before our eyes and minds. Now music may express all that
words can express and much more, for it is the natural means of
expression for all animals, mankind included. If musical sounds were
accepted as symbols for things we would have another speech. It seems
strange to say that by means of music one could say the most
commonplace thing, as, for instance: 'I am going to take a walk'; yet
this is precisely what the Chinese have been doing for centuries. For
such things, however, our word-symbols do perfectly well, and such a
symbolising of musical sounds must detract, I think, from the high
mission of music: which, as I conceive, is neither to be an agent for
expressing material things; nor to utter pretty sounds to amuse the
ear; nor a sensuous excitant to fire the blood, or a sedative to lull
the senses: it is a _language_, but a language of the intangible, a
kind of soul-language. It appeals directly to the _Seelenzustände_ it
springs from, for it is the natural expression of it, rather than,
like words, a translation of it into set stereotyped symbols which may
or may not be accepted for what they were intended to denote by the
writer"--a _credo_ which sums up in fairly complete form his theory of
music-making, whatever validity it may have as a philosophical