Gradually the distinction between man and nature grew faint, so
that a kind of pantheism arose in which a general power, at once
natural and spiritual, appeared as the ruler of all. We individual men
emerge for a moment from this great central power, ultimately
relapsing into it. Nature had acquired coordinate, if not superior,
rights. Yet the full expression of this independent interest in nature
is more recent than is usually observed. Landscape painting goes back
but little beyond the year sixteen hundred. It is only two or three
centuries ago that painters discovered the physical world to be worthy
of representation for its own sake.
As the worth of nature thus became vindicated in painting, parallel
changes were wrought in the other arts. Arts less distinctly rational
began to assert themselves, and even to take the lead. The art most
characteristic of modern times, the one which most widely and
poignantly appeals to us, is music. But in music we are not distinctly
conscious of a meaning. Most of us in listening to music forget
ourselves under its lulling charms, abandon ourselves to its spell,
and by it are swept away, perhaps to the infinite, perhaps to an
obliteration of all clear thought. Is it not largely because we are so
hard pressed under the anxious conditions of modern life that music
becomes such an enormous solace and strength? I do not say that no
other factors have contributed to the vogue of music, but certainly it
is widely prized as an effective means of escape from ourselves.
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