103/115 SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS By FRANK H. SPRAGUE
Hearing is the most recently evolved of the five specific senses known to exist in the animal kingdom. It surpasses the others in its qualifications as a vehicle of pure ideas. Sight and hearing are far superior as avenues through which to discern the spiritual aspect of things; and it is with these two that we have to deal in considering the fine arts.
The loftiest function of hearing is exhibited in musical perception. Sound brings one nearer to the realm of pure ideas than does sight. The attractions of those outward phenomena with which one is instinctively associated in active life are less prominent in sound. The daily occupations of nearly all persons lead them to deal much more closely and carefully with distinctions in quality of color and figure than of tones;
therefore the mind, being engrossed by the former, is more inclined to dwell upon them whenever they are present.
The most meaningful phenomena tend to grow commonplace when observed steadily, and lose their suggestive potency through constant familiarity.
On beholding a painting or natural landscape, the average mind is inclined to linger on the plane of phenomena, instead of penetrating deeper, and discerning through them the pure ideas it is their function to disclose. But let us imagine ourselves occupied with daily pursuits requiring a more constant and intimate association with distinctions in quality of tone than of color and figure,
so that musical sounds in various combinations would be present to the mind as continually as objects of vision now are, and enter as thoroughly into the practical economy of living; let us also imagine ourselves paying as little attention to relations of color and figure as we now do to tonal relations; it is clear that our minds would then be more engrossed with the phenomena of sound, and more familiar with tone effects,
than with those of color and figure. The natural inference is that sight would then be the more direct avenue to the ideal realm, because our attention would be less likely to become occupied with those phenomena which, owing to the familiar relation they sustain to our every-day life, tend to interfere with the discernment of a Spiritual Reality beyond.
It is possible, indeed, to become surfeited with the visions of beauty and grandeur everywhere apparent in the natural world, so common and persistent are they in every waking moment; but how infrequently is this true of musical harmony! Our ears are seldom greeted by agreeable combinations of sounds, while our eyes are continually met by attractive scenes; and, even then, how quickly our power of appreciation loses its keenness!