harmony; or he will tell you about the gamut of sounds—­sounds found in the wind upon the mountains, found in the surging sea, found in the voice of childhood, found in the whisper of your dreams—­sound that is everywhere, sound that wanders up and down this wild, wild universe.  He will tell you all that, and explain how in proper steps, in wise modulations, that is melody, as the union of sounds is harmony.  Is that enough?  Would that produce “The Last Judgment” of Spohr, that made you dissolve in tears?  Would that produce the chorus of Handel that made you almost rise and march in majesty?  Would that fill you with deep thoughts in Beethoven, or fire you into joy in Mendelssohn?  Oh, no!  You have your skeleton, but you have not one thing, the deepest; genius has to touch with its fire the fact that is before you; you want the mystery of life.  And then suppose you turn to an artist and ask him to guide you in painting, and he talks to you about light and shadow, about the laying of the color, about the drawing of lines, about the exact expression of the distant and the present, of the foreground and the background, and having learned it all, you produce what seems an abortion; you ask yourself, “What is the meaning of this?” Is this enough to make you quiver, in Dresden, before the San Sisto, carried away by those divine eyes of the “Mother of Eternity,” or rent with sorrow before the solemn eyes of the Child?  Is this enough to fill you with tears of delight when you enter the Sistine Chapel and see St. John as he kneels with his unshed tears about the dead Christ?  What is there wanting in the touch of your artist?  There is wanting genius; there is wanting life.  Or to take one instance more.  You ask somebody to teach you sculpture, to tell you how to make yourself master in the treatment of stone.  He will tell you wise things about the plastic material that you have to mold with thumb and finger, and then about the use of the chisel and the hammer to produce the result in the stone, following the treatment of that plastic material.  But when you have learned it all, can you really believe that you will produce the effect of that majestic manhood that you see in the David of Angelo in the Piazza of Florence, or that wise, determined progress that is exprest in Donatello’s St. George?  What is the difference between your failure and the results of those men?  Genius—­life.  And when you turn to the moral law, and when you ask yourself, “How can I learn to be athirst for God?” the preachers say, “Accept the moral law; act exactly in distinct duty to your parents; say, ’Corban, it is a gift by whatsoever thou mayest be profited thereby’; do your duty strictly to the letter and nothing more; be conservative about your property; restrain yourself from desire of change; do not stimulate and do not satisfy your passions beyond what is exactly exprest in the moral law.”  But then, if you speak the truth, you say, “And in the end what am I?  Why, after all, most commonplace,