But, indeed, I honour the
barbarians too much by supposing them capable of any pleasures
approaching to the intellectual ones of an Englishman. For music is an
intellectual or a sensual pleasure according to the temperament of him
who hears it. And, by-the-bye, with the exception of the fine
extravaganza on that subject in "Twelfth Night," I do not recollect more
than one thing said adequately on the subject of music in all literature;
it is a passage in the _Religio Medici_ {14} of Sir T. Brown, and though
chiefly remarkable for its sublimity, has also a philosophic value,
inasmuch as it points to the true theory of musical effects. The mistake
of most people is to suppose that it is by the ear they communicate with
music, and therefore that they are purely passive to its effects. But
this is not so; it is by the reaction of the mind upon the notices of the
ear (the _matter_ coming by the senses, the _form_ from the mind) that
the pleasure is constructed, and therefore it is that people of equally
good ear differ so much in this point from one another. Now, opium, by
greatly increasing the activity of the mind, generally increases, of
necessity, that particular mode of its activity by which we are able to
construct out of the raw material of organic sound an elaborate
intellectual pleasure.
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