Now this observation, taken by itself, is not, of course, relevant to my present argument. It becomes significant only when we compare it with the view the Greeks themselves took of their own music. To us it seems that this was the one branch of artistic production in which they did not attain a certain mature perfection.[1] Even if we assume that they did all that could be done with the means at their disposal, we must still suppose that the poverty of those means most fatally limited their powers of artistic creation. But this does not seem to have been their own opinion. On the contrary, while the architect was counted as little better than a skilled artisan, the musician ranked with the poet. Music itself they put high among the arts. They devoted endless labour to its theory, and their accounts of its emotional effect would seem exaggerated in the mouths of those familiar with the most impassioned strains of modern composers, aided by all the resources of a modern orchestra. That any tunes, rendered in unison by voice or lyre or pipe, or all three together, should be thought by grave philosophers so moving as to be a danger to society appears incredible. It seems, nevertheless, to have been the fact.
If so, it is a fact which irresistibly suggests that
- ↑ To be sure we know nothing worth knowing of their painting.
