inspirational standpoint would naturally seem to come under the
subjective and the last under the objective, yet the chances are,
there is something of the quality of both in all. There may have
been in the first instance physical action so intense or so
dramatic in character that the remembrance of it aroused a great
deal more objective emotion than the composer was conscious of
while writing the music. In the third instance, the music may
have been influenced strongly though subconsciously by a vague
remembrance of certain thoughts and feelings, perhaps of a deep
religious or spiritual nature, which suddenly came to him upon
realizing the beauty of the scene and which overpowered the first
sensuous pleasure--perhaps some such feeling as of the conviction
of immortality, that Thoreau experienced and tells about in
Walden. "I penetrated to those meadows...when the wild river and
the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have
waked the dead IF they had been slumbering in their graves as
some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality."
Enthusiasm must permeate it, but what it is that inspires an art-
effort is not easily determined much less classified. The word
"inspire" is used here in the sense of cause rather than effect.
A critic may say that a certain movement is not inspired. But
that may be a matter of taste--perhaps the most inspired music
sounds the least so--to the critic. A true inspiration may lack a
true expression unless it is assumed that if an inspiration is
not true enough to produce a true expression--(if there be anyone
who can definitely determine what a true expression is)--it is
not an inspiration at all.

Again suppose the same composer at another time writes a piece of
equal merit to the other three, as estimates go; but holds that