Art, then, is thus always striving to be independent of the mere
intelligence, to become a matter of pure perception, to get rid of its
responsibilities to its subject or material; the ideal examples of
poetry and painting being those in which the constituent elements of the
composition are so welded together, that the material or subject no
longer strikes the intellect only; nor the form, the eye or the ear
only; but form and matter, in their union or identity, present one
single effect to the "imaginative reason," that complex faculty for
which every thought and feeling is twin-born with its sensible analogue
or symbol.
It is the art of music which most completely realises this artistic
ideal, this perfect identification of form and matter. In its ideal,
consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form
from the matter, the subject from the expression; they inhere in and
completely saturate each other; and to it, therefore, to the condition
of its perfect moments, all the arts may be supposed constantly to tend
and aspire.
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