101/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE

In the Renaissance, arts which had prevailed in ancient times revived, and did their utmost to manifest this fresh inspiration; but not until the inner mysteries of life were revealed in tone harmonies, was the expression adequate.

Then, for the first time in human history, Music took its rank with the fine arts. Indeed it then became virtually a new art; for, although its elementary forms were handed down from a remote period, it first appeared within this modern era as an important factor in human development.

On first thought, it may seem strange that the greatest and most marvelous of the arts should scarcely have appeared at all in those ancient civilizations among which other branches attained to such perfection. Even among the Greeks it did not reach a sufficient development to render it a worthy companion to its sister arts, for it never surpassed the forms of simple melody.

Harmony, as the term is now understood, was not employed by them. Pythagoras discovered the relations of the different intervals, and demonstrated, from a scientific standpoint, the physical basis of a series of tones which practically coincides with our diatonic scale. Within this limited field the Greeks constructed simple melodies.

But such a scale was ill-adapted to the development of harmony, and altogether insufficient as the basis of an art in any way comparable to our modern Music. The elaborate art-form we now possess owes its existence to the employment of a more complete system of mathematically arranged scales.

Its consummation could only have been reached after centuries of slow progress; for, in technical demands and practical requirements, it rests on a purely mechanical basis, requiring time for elaboration, and involving physical discoveries as well as psychical development.

Then, again, fulness and warmth of emotional feeling qualities in which nearly all ancient races were on the whole deficient prevail to a far greater extent in our latter-day civilization.
The effect upon music, of the modern awakening was apparent in its advance from simple, crude melodies to harmony (the combination of melodies or chords).