Song, or music, has always exerted a wonderful, incomprehensible power, which men have long endeavored to understand and define. The early Greeks recognized this power, and worshiped it in the form of the god Apollo.
The Egyptians compared the seven tones of the diatonic scale to the seven planets. They conceived the grand idea, which afterward extended through all antiquity, and has been transmitted even to modern times, the idea of the harmony of the spheres. Music was no longer an expression of material forces, it came to be regarded as a manifestation of the celestial Spirit which governs the universe. Harmony ceased to be confined to the earth, but was the ruling Principle of all creation.
The old Egyptians had a truer conception of harmony, or music, than we at the present time. In modern times men have checked growth in this direction. They have applied to all things the test of intellectual reasoning. Buried deeply in materialism, they hardly find time to recognize anything outside the domain of intellect. When the subject of music, or song, is broached, they are compelled to admit that it is something not to be explained by words, or understood by intellect. They simply relegate it to the realm of the emotions.
