Their Relation to Life. Their Influence in the Work of Evolution. The Power of Love. The Power of Music. All Emotions Produced by and Subject to These Two Forces.
Love and music had their birth and growth simultaneously, and have continued their journey side by side.
Primeval man through passion or the procreative tendency, surrounded himself with offspring. Through the appeal made by the helplessness of his children paternal love was evolved. From this was evolved love of family, tribe, clan, and country. In all this music moved side by side with love. The mother before language was born crooned her lullaby to her baby, and the father imitating the birds pursed his lips and made similar sounds. Later he used hollow reeds and fashioned pipes or flutes. Thus music was born, becoming a universal language, and has been involved throughout all the ages. Music and love are inseparable, and their influence upon mankind is unfathomable. We read a love story, or hear a love song, and each brings a thrill of emotion or vibration that stimulates, and brings to the body that harmony, the perfection of which is fullness of life—health. The[24] birds sing their love songs to their mates and these vibrations fill the woods with music. The humming bird with continuous accompanying melody gathers the honey from the flowers to feed its young. All music is life and life is love. The youth is transformed into a man, the maiden into a woman, by love. And this is a new birth or regeneration. Emerson says, “The passion remakes the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on the bough of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. The trees of the forest, the waving grass and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent.” All nature breathes love, which is expressed in self-abnegation, dying that other species may live. Prof. Darwin at a meeting of a Scientific Society in Dublin made this statement, “All vegetation sees, hears, breathes and feels.” Witness the action of the sensitive and carnivorous plants.
We have said all organic and inorganic existence is subject to and lives by the same vibratory energy of the one substance—Electricity. Its vibrations produce “the exquisite tint of the rose, the velvet of the lily and the ethereal daintiness of the orchid. Each is but some trifling variation in the timbre, the tempo or the pitch of vibration that produces it.”
The breathing of zephyrs through the trees echoes the universal language of music in[25] which all nature voices its thought. The purling of the brooks, are but other notes by which nature sings her song of love. “All one’s life is music if one touches the notes rightly and in tune.”
Musical vibrations are full of healing power. Their effect upon mind and body soothing and vitalizing beyond description, and producing every emotion of which we are capable. It is the key that will unlock for us the deep secrets of the universe. Its universal language enables the composer to reveal his thoughts to an audience, by notes, tones, rhythms, cadences, which are but different rates of vibration. As he describes a storm, the wind wails through the trees, the branches sway, the rain patters on the leaves. Then the rush of the storm, the pealing thunder, the flash of lightnings, the rush and downpour of angry waters. Then comes the lull, the dying away, the burst of sunlight, the birds singing their songs of joy. We see and hear it all. It is a painting. It is a symphony. It is vibration. Carlisle says, “All deep things are songs; see deep enough and you see music. The heart of nature breathes everywhere music if you can only reach it.”
This love force or vibration, great in volume, is like a great white light whose radiant energy absorbs and burns up all its opponents, such as hatred, dislike, malice, uncharitableness,[26] etc., just as the sun in the solar system absorbs all cosmic matter (vibrations) that comes within its radius. This cosmic matter furnishing the combustion necessary to continue the radiant energy, which for us means continued existence.
The maiden in her fresh and glorious beauty, with rosebud tinted cheeks, the aureole of the sun crowning her hair, her form swaying with graceful mien, bursts like an apparition on the youth, and the refulgence of her beauty dazzles him like the sunlight and blinds him to all else. While these intense love vibrations continue he has no eyes, no ears for aught save her. He exalts her in poem and in song. He “protests” like Romeo and she like Juliet “doubts” and “doubts,” these very doubts calling forth more prolerlations. The vibrations called love produce a condition, an emotion, akin to hysteria. Indeed the brain once attuned to its vibration becomes obsessed and all sorts of vagaries are evolved amounting to madness or insanity.
The brain being attuned by some dominant thought immediately assumes telepathic conditions. It becomes as we say enrapport with this or that class of thought deposited in the reservoirs of the universe.
Music is the language of love. Listening to some forgotten note or song, what is called memory is established, and thoughts are awakened[27] we deemed were long dead. They speak to us in no uncertain or unfamiliar tones, and many a lover’s quarrel of long standing has been healed by this sacrament of music.
The universe voices this immortal power. The morning stars sing together, the brooks ripple their course, the skylark sings his glad carol as he rises in the air to greet the morning sun, and all light and color vibrate their praises in the glorious landscapes they are ever painting on the land. The sea with its ceaseless vibration sings a lullaby to the tired brain, or in its stormy moods incites man to deeds of daring. All nature is music and all music is the language of the universe, and “the world is full of beauty if the heart is full of love.”