to be consistent with the poetical and thoroughly idealistic character of his whole doctrine. His stage realism is as thoroughgoing as the realistic accuracy which he expects from the singer, the actor, and the player; whether it is equally justifiable is another question. The æsthetic effect, he argues, must be complete, and to make it complete, the scenic illusion must not be destroyed by awkward failures and other relapses from a realm of poetic fictions into a world of coarse realities. In the theatre we ought to find a refuge from this world of realities, and not be rudely reminded of it by the flaws of the performance and the shortcomings of the scenic apparatus. We hardly know how to qualify this part of Wagner's theory. It seems idealistic in its aims and realistic only in the choice of means. But it is doubtful whether these means can produce the desired result. An excessive perfection of stagethunder and stage-lightning, though insufficient to curdle the milk in the neighboring dairies, is amply sufficient to draw the spectator's attention from the work of art to a clever piece of mechanism, and is therefore far more likely to destroy the desired totality of effect than the well-known imperfection of these performances, whose conventional meanings and symbolical intentions are readily understood without impelling the spectator to conscious reflection. It is clear that admiration must be fully as mischievous as ridicule in such cases. The group of Laocoon could not impress us as it does, if the scales of the serpent had been chiselled with obtrusive accuracy; and that thousands of pictures are spoilt and æsthetically ruined by an uncalled-for exactness in the delineation of embroidery-stitches, flower-petals, and other accessories, is a fact well known, though rarely admitted in these days. But Wagner has the misfortune of having, like Faust, "two souls, alas! within his breast." His reflective power is fully as strong as his artistic intuitions. Had he followed the latter, he would have been the last mon to advocate stage realism. But it was the logical consistency of his system that led him into error whenever false premises had crept into it. He himself denounces the electric sun in Meyerbeer's Prophet which shines upon the just and the unjust with such fierce impartiality. That sun, it may be said, is not even realistic, but simply painful through the failure of attempted realism. But he denounces it, not as a failure, but as an uncalled-for attempt, and in an eloquent passage of his

principal work openly condemns all scenic effects not called for by the dramatic situation as "absolute effects," that is to say, as "effects without a cause," which being logical absurdities must be æsthetic monstrosities. It is one of Wagner's false premises that a true work of art should leave little or nothing to the imagination. We know that in the Greek tragedy death, murder, and all that was deemed revolting or indecorous was brought before the public through the medium of description or narration. Who cares to see the smothering of Desdemona? and what is the use of having an imagination, if it cannot be made to save us the painful necessity of witnessing the accomplishing of a deed which is essential to the drama only as an accomplished fact? And if this is a legitimate use of our imagination, the legitimacy of stage realism becomes more than doubtful.

Wagner reproaches the modern public at large with æsthetic degeneracy. They seem incapable of grasping the unity of a work of art which requires concentration and dote on the plurality of details which insures distraction. And as if the scenic and orchestral details were not sufficient, the audience itself and the dress-circle must furnish additional materials for the play-goer's distraction. He wants the pleasure of distraction, not the labor of concentration. Wagner knows this foible of the modern Mæcenas. He endeavors, in fact, to intellectualize him by darkening the theatre and forcing him to concentrate his attention on the strongly illuminated stage. But having secured it there, he unwittingly undoes his work again and sensualizes him through a mistaken and exaggerated stage realism. By thus ministering to the lower wants of the spectator, Wagner distracts him and seems to defeat his own object, which was to insure concentration.

We cannot afford to follow up this criticism any farther. The system of musical philosophy which we have endeavored to trace in the foregoing pages is altogether too grand for mere hole-picking. It is impossible not to be impressed with its compactness and richness in truths. We admire the former and feel grateful for the latter. Yet, invulnerable though this system seems at first sight, we are inclined to believe that its fundamental principle either hides an error or errs through incompleteness. And the following theoretical digression will not only justify our suspicion, but may assist us in forming an independent opinion on at least

two points, which Wagner's system seems incapable of settling or explaining satisfactorily, the relation between song and speech, and the existence of instrumental music.

We know that whatsoever has the power of pleasing, either sensually or æsthetically, must be a unum e pluribus, whatever else it may be besides. This is no adequate definition either of the beautiful or of the agreeable, but unity and plurality are essential to both. When the component elements are equal in kind and in degree, they cannot form a unity so long as their plurality is perceived as such. But when their plurality ceases to be perceptible, as is the case with the vibrations of ether, their indistinguishableness constitutes their unity, and this relative unity is then translated by us into a quality, which we call green or red. In like manner we hear sound when we cease to be able to count or to perceive as plural the vibrations of air. These simplest perceptions, then, involve a partial loss of consciousness, which furnishes that unity which a succession of indifferent elements could not have furnished. But when the elements are not indifferent and indistinguishable, when they differ in degree if not in kind, then their unity, in order to become a pleasing perception, must lie in the commensurateness of their differences or in the simplicity and intelligibleness of their proportions. Two successions, for instance, the velocities of which are to each other as one is to three, are perceived by us as dactyllic rhythm without our being conscious that there are two successions to whose commensurateness alone the unity of our perception is due; and the same may be said of two or more sounds whose intervals enable them to form either a harmony or a melody. The perception of a rhythm or musical interval is therefore of a higher order than the simple perceptions of color or sound, because the generating elements are no longer co-ordinate and indifferent, but subordinate to one another. If we now go a step further and combine elements which differ in kind as well as in degree, forming a variety rather than a plurality, we may have some difficulty in making them coalesce to a unity; and it is with these difficulties that the province of æsthetics begins; in other words, the conditions under which heterogeneous elements can coalesce to a unity are no longer physiological, but psychological, no longer verifiable by sensual pleasure, but by aesthetic gratification.

There is no real breach of continuity, however, but a gradual rise from the agreeable to the beautiful, from the unconscious to the conscious. For if the unity of vibrations lies in their indifference and indistinguishableness, and the unity of ratios of vibrations in the difference and commensurateness of these ratios, the psychological unity of more varied elements must lie in their mutual dependence, or in their common dependence, from one principal element, and, generally speaking, in the possibility of arranging them as a group of essentials and accessories. It is this hierarchical differentiation which the beautiful has in common with the organic, and it is, if not the essence, the first condition of beauty as well as of life.

If, therefore, two or more arts are expected to co-operate so as to constitute a complex form of art, we may safely assume that they cannot do so by meeting on equal terms. Whatever their relative dignities and however elastic this relation of dignities may be, one must become for the nonce the accessory of the other. Arts which cannot serve one another cannot merge to form a new art. They may operate side by side and simultaneously; we may look at a statue while listening to a poem, but there can be no unity of perception, and our attention must remain divided. Even the melodrama, which bids us listen to spoken poetry and to instrumental music, is a questionable form of art, it being next to impossible to perceive, with undivided attention, any tertium aliquid that could convey to us the full meaning of the words and the full beauty of the music in a united impression. On the other hand, gesture, or dance, not only combines with instrumental music for a perfect form of art, but cannot exist without it. Their unity lies in the rhythm, which, though one thing, is audible and visible at the same time. But there is no equality of rank in this instance. Music not only stands infinitely higher than dancing, but is more self-sufficient than the latter; it may induce the hearer to beat time with his head or hand, but even of dance-music it cannot be said that it is enjoyable only during actual dancing. And if, notwithstanding its superiority of rank and its greater selfsufficiency, music can stoop to become the accessory of dancing, it is not unreasonable to infer that the union of these two arts owes its strange intimacy and fitness, not merely to their rhythmic affinity nor to their great disparity as such, but to the negation

of this disparity through the self-subordination of the higher art to the lower for the sake of their rhythmic affinity. The greatness of the sacrifice gives greater prominence to the object for which it was made, and as this object constitutes the unity of the two arts, the artistic completeness of their union is at once proclaimed and explained by this process. Of course, self-subordination alone cannot effect this; it must be needed by the other. When two very self-sufficient arts are made to combine, such as drawing and painting, the self-degradation of the latter is not really wanted by the former; a good drawing does not require coloring or illustration; and the combination of the two, notwithstanding their apparently close relationship, has never occupied a high rank among the possible forms of compound art.

If we now wish to test the legitimacy of the musical drama, which is a highly complex combination of poetry, song, instrumental music, mimic art, scene-painting, scene-shifting, and tailoring, we must begin by finding out the purpose for which these arts pretend to co-operate, and whether this unity of purpose is enough to constitute artistic unity. If these arts cannot co-operate without dividing our attention, the musical drama is no genuine form of art. The purpose of a drama is the manifestation of the poet's intentions. Music not only is a means of expressing these intentions, as Wagner has it, but all the other component arts, and especially the poet's own poetry, contribute their share. The true relation between speech and song is not that of contents and form, of meaning and expression, but they are both means of expression, each in its own way and for its own special part of the exprimendum. By putting them in the relation of end and means, Wagner has misled us and deceived himself. They are both means, and in this sense they are co-ordinate, but this co-ordination cannot be tolerated, as it would entitle them to equal shares of our attention and thus destroy the unity of perception. Which, then, is to become the subordinate?

It is a physical fact that words are apt to become unintelligible when sung, and the more unintelligible the more perfect is the singing. We cannot help that. The singing voice can dwell only on vowels, while the consonants, which alone specify a word, are evanescent appendages which, even when pronounced distinctly, are too far removed from the beginning of the syllable to convey