HOW THE MUSICIAN RISES TO THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plotinus and Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan
The musician allows himself to be easily moved by beauty, and admires it greatly; but he is not able by himself to achieve the intuition of the beautiful. He needs the stimulation of external impressions. Just as some timorous being is awakened by the least noise, the musician is sensitive to the beauty of the voice and of harmonies. He avoids all that seems contrary to the laws of harmony and of unity, and enjoys rhythm and melodies in instrumental and vocal music. After these purely sensual intonations, rhythm and tunes, he will surely in them come to distinguish form from matter, and to contemplate the beauty existing in their proportions and relations. He will have to be taught that what excites his admiration in these things, is their intelligible harmony, the beauty it contains, and, in short, beauty absolute, and not particular. He will have to be introduced to philosophy by arguments that will lead him to recognize truths that he ignored, though he possessed them instinctively. Such arguments will be specified elsewhere.346