Church of the Portiuncula; or by Martin Luther in the Santa Scala at Rome or John Wesley in the little chamber in Aldersgate Street, London; single lines of poetry like those of Shakspere's Tempest, We are such stuff As dreams are made on,—and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Oftentimes the reading of a book has had the strange power of inducing the transcendental mood; as in the case of St. Augustine, who tells us how the "Hortensius" of Cicero had roused him to higher ideals; or Fichte reading Kant's "Critique of Practical Reason," and crying out: "It raises my whole being to an indescribable elevation, above all earthly considerations, and gives me a peace I have never felt before." But perhaps the book that has had the greatest influence in this respect, is the "Divina Commedia" of Dante, the great Italian poet, who stands, in the words of Schelling, in the sanctum sanctorum where poetry and prophecy meet in one. Countless testimonies could be given as to the transcendental influence exerted by this great poem of the earth and air. We have room for only one here. When Longfellow came home one day and found his wife burnt to death by a tragic accident, he sought occupation and comfort in the labor of translating Dante's poem; and in a beautiful sonnet he tells us how he found a refuge and solace in that great book: Oft have I seen at some cathedral door, A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden and with reverent feet, Enter and cross himself, and on the floor, Kneel to repeat his pater-noster o'er. Far off the noises of the world retreat; The loud vociferations of the street, Become an undistinguishable roar. So as I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate, One of the most potent of these "openings into the Infinite" is art; in all true works of which, says Carlyle, "wilt thou discern eter ; nity looking into time, the Godlike rendered visible." Schleiermacher declares, "If it is true that there are sudden conversions whereby in men, thinking of nothing less than of lifting themselves above the finite, in a moment, as by an immediate, inward illumination the sense for the highest comes forth and surprises them by its splendor, I believe that more than anything else, the sight of a great and sublime work of art can accomplish this miracle." Yet this art must be more than imitation of nature, or the mere pleasure it gives by means of perfect form or flawless technique. Just as not all phases of nature or merely formal religion give the mystical mood, so pictures of still-leben or a Dutch kirmess, or the merely frankly nude form of French art, however perfect the technique may be, however it may please the practised eye of the connoisseur, may have nothing to do with the transcendental sense. Only that form of art or music or poetry which induces a feeling of the σπουδαιότης, σTоvdaιórηs, "High-Seriousness," as Matthew Arnold calls it, belongs to the province of the transcendental. It is this form of art of which Schopenhauer speaks when he says, "Such is the splendid dower of Beauty, either in nature or in art; it carries us beyond the Individual to their universal and everlasting meaning; it shows us in its specific mode of delineation, that infinite and absolute being, which each individual really rests upon, if he could only see far enough. This faculty of vision avails, at least for a time, to lull cares and anxiety to sleep, to silence the cravings of the individual will and to give us even in the waste of the world, a brief taste of the Sabbath repose of the blessed." As a matter of fact the sense of the Infinite, like all other phases phases of soul-experience, has undergone an advancing development, becoming less and less subject to extravagance and more and more refined. In early days it was almost entirely religious, largely charged with magic and theurgy. In the centuries that have gone, it has become purified in religion, while it has broadened out and spread over other fields, producing the mystical contem plation of nature and a spiritualized form of romantic sexual love, developing to a far greater extent the feeling for cosmic beauty. Perhaps in no one thing is this so true as in music, which is practically the only art in which modern civilization owes nothing to the ancients. Harmonic music is a product of medieval Europe, and is due to the combination of Christian sentiment, Teutonic genius, and Italian art. In the words of Rambaud, "the elaboration of this musical art, more powerful and more penetrating, in many respects, than the other arts, has revealed in the human soul faculties which antiquity had never suspected." The transcendental power of music is seen in all forms, from the tender pathos of the German folk song to the most elaborate opera of our own day. In the latter case, however, there is a certain discordant tone, given by the sharp contrast between the sense of the Infinite aroused by such an opera, for instance, as the "Parsifal," and the great crowd of beauty and fashion, that throng the hall, radiating on all sides the frivolity, the |