And then I asked myself, What is the secret of this mysterious power of
music; where shall we look for the cause of those undefinable yet
overwhelming emotions which it never fails to excite? A hopeless
question it seemed, one which the philosophers of all ages have failed
to solve, perhaps because they have not troubled themselves to inquire
very seriously about it; and again, perhaps it has baffled them as it
has me, and tens of thousands of others of the humbler portion of
humanity. And so I fell to dreaming after this wise:
The soul of man is created perfect, so far as regards the presence of
every faculty necessary for its development, for its happiness, or
misery, in this world or the next. Circumstances may alter it in degree,
but in its constituent elements never. The same yesterday, to-day, and
to-morrow, at the moment of its creation and a thousand ages to come.
Not even its passage from the body into its future and eternal home can
endow it with a single new faculty, or eradicate one of the old. Yet
each one of these faculties, capabilities, or sensibilities, is capable
of development to an infinite degree. And in this development lies the
soul's progress to perfection; it is to go on, through all the ages of
its eternal existence, constantly approaching the divine, yet never
reaching the goal, like that space between two parallel lines, which
mathematicians bisect to infinity. Certain of these faculties, of the
very existence of which even the soul itself is unconscious, are those
whose province lies purely in the world beyond, to which we all are
tending.
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