Tertium Quid (Volume 2); Chapters on Various Disputed Questions (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887. Excerpt: ... 251 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC.1 MR. James Sully, in a generous review of The Power of Sound published in Mind, vol. vi, put forward certain objections in so clear and compact a form as to invite reply. And though I can 1 Some apology is perhaps needed for including in a collection of Essays what is in form merely a reply to criticisms of a previous book. A good deal of what is here said might, no doubt, have found a more appropriate place in a second edition of the work itself: might, but for one sufficient reason--the practical certainty, namely, that the work itself will never reach a second edition. Though expressly addressed to the 'naive layman, ' demanding no preliminary knowledge of even the simplest technicalities, and largely devoted to a vindication of the essentially popular character of the art which is its subject, its bulk got it at once stamped as 'ponderous, ' and it has been supposed to be an esoteric treatise, comprehensible only to experts. After seven years, an impression of this sort is not likely to get corrected. But so strange a thing is authorship that even the failure of a book does not preclude the desire that its positions should be made as intelligible as possible; and it is as tending possibly to make some points clearer that these brief supplementary remarks are reprinted, with some notice of foreign criticism which has appeared since they were first published. Though necessarily much compressed, they are so written as to be understood without consultation of the 'ponderous' tome to which they refer. scarcely hope here to make any positive addition to my side of the case, or to be more convincing in a brief paper than in a long book, there may be some advantage in embracing the views attacked in a succinct statement, and pointin...