for we have quite an assortment. Should the idea survive
and grow too large for the bed, and if we have learned to
love it too much to cut off its feet and thus _make_ it fit
(as did that old robber of Attica), why we run the risk of
having some critic wise in his theoretical knowledge, say,
as was and is said of Chopin, "He is weak in sonata form!"

There are two ways of looking at music: first, as impassioned
speech, the nearest psychologically-complete utterance of
emotion known to man; second, as the dance, comprising as it
does all that appeals to our nature. And there is much that is
lovely in this idea of nature--for do not the seasons dance,
and is it not in that ancient measure we have already spoken of,
the trochaic? Long Winter comes with heavy foot, and Spring is
the light-footed. Again, Summer is long, and Autumn short and
cheery; and so our phrase begins again and again. We all know
with what periodicity everything in nature dances, and how the
smallest flower is a marvel of recurring rhymes and rhythms,
with perfume for a melody. How Shakespeare's Beatrice charms us
when she says, "There a star danced, and under that was I born."

And yet man is not part of Nature. Even in the depths of the
primeval forest, that poor savage, whom we found listening
fearfully to the sound of his drum, knew better. Mankind lives
in isolation, and Nature is a thing for him to conquer. For
Nature is a thing that exists, while man _thinks_. Nature is
that which passively lives while man actively wills. It is the
strain of Nature in man that gave him the dance, and it is his
godlike fight against Nature that gave him impassioned speech;
beauty of form and motion on one side, all that is divine in man