750.
It is true it would be an undertaking of the greatest difficulty to do away with the positive character which we are now accustomed to attribute to music—a character resulting from the achievements of practical skill, from accidental, mathematical, æsthetical influences—and to substitute for all this a merely physical inquiry tending to resolve the science into its first elements. Yet considering the point at which science and art are now arrived, considering the many excellent preparatory investigations that have been made relative to this subject, we may perhaps still see it accomplished.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS ON TERMINOLOGY.
751.
We never sufficiently reflect that a language, strictly speaking, can only be symbolical and figurative, that it can never express things directly, but only, as it were, reflectedly. This is especially the case in speaking of qualities which are only imperfectly presented to observation, which might rather be called powers than objects, and which are ever in movement throughout nature. They are not to be arrested, and yet we find it necessary to describe them; hence we look for all kinds of formulæ in order, figuratively at