The use of discords in music is singularly suggestive in this
regard. There are combinations of musical sounds which, when
produced as isolated combinations, are harsh, and even painful.
But let them be heralded by other chords, and let them be parted
from by suitable resolutions, and they can charm, or thrill, or
kindle deep emotion. What does this fact imply? That discords
in music, when used with knowledge and mastery, do not take
their places as aliens in musical progressions--as insertions of
ugliness in a texture of surrounding beauty--_but as themselves
beautiful_. Their aesthetic value is gained by their being linked
up in a network of relations which makes them part and parcel
of that which is an ordered and rational whole. In short, discords
are potential beauties; they have capacity for form and reason.
The ugly, then, is not to be opposed to the beautiful as its
contrary, but as standing in the relation to it of the less to the
more perfect. There will thus be grades of beauty as there are
grades of reality. And mystic intuition will have corresponding
grades of dignity and insight. The grand process of evolution is
thus revealed as a many-sided whole--the amount of real
existence increases in proportion to the increase of capacity for
sharing in form and reason; and along with this goes a growth in
power to appreciate the ever higher forms of beauty which
emerge in the upward-striving universe.
A further thought calls for emphasis.
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