The number of ways cannot be determined beforehand.  By the study of painting and etching and drawing merely, we could not foresee that there is also possible an art like sculpture, and by studying epic and lyric poetry we could not construct beforehand the forms of the drama.  The genius of mankind had to discover ever new forms in which the interest in reality is conserved and yet the things and events are so completely changed that they are separated from all possible reality, isolated from all connections and made complete in themselves.  We have not yet spoken about the one art which gives us this perfect satisfaction in the isolated material, satisfies every demand which it awakens, and yet which is further removed from the reality we know than any other artistic creation, music.  Those tones with which the composer builds up his melodies and harmonies are not parts of the world in which we live at all.  None of our actions in practical life is related to tones from musical instruments, and yet the tones of a symphony may arouse in us the deepest emotions, the most solemn feelings and the most joyful ones.  They are symbols of our world which bring with them its sadness and its happiness.  We feel the rhythm of the tones, fugitive, light and joyful, or quiet, heavy and sustained, and they impress us as energies which awaken our own impulses, our own tensions and relaxations.

We enter into the play of those tones which with their intervals and their instrumental tone color appear like a wonderful mosaic of agreements and disagreements.  Yet each disagreement resolves itself into a new agreement.  Those tones seek one another.  They have a life of their own, complete in itself.  We do not want to change it.  Our mind simply echoes their desires and their satisfaction.  We feel with them and are happy in their ultimate agreement without which no musical melody would be beautiful.  Bound by the inner law which is proclaimed by the first tones every coming tone is prepared.  The whole tone movement points toward the next one.  It is a world of inner self-agreement like that of the colors in a painting, of the curves in a work of sculpture, like the rhythms and rhymes in a stanza.  But beyond the mere self-agreement of the tones and rhythms as such, the musical piece as a whole unveils to us a world of emotion.  Music does not depict the physical nature which fine arts bring to us, nor the social world which literature embraces, but the inner world with its abundance of feelings and excitements.  It isolates our inner experience and within its limits brings it to that perfect self-agreement which is the characteristic of every art.