down and lay it to rest, and through the sight of their own crime are turned to God, and offer themselves in contrition wholly to him.
Moreover, is not precisely such an attitude towards life implied by the very polyphonic nature of Bach's art? Are not his prodigious counterpoints the results in a musical mind of the vision in nature of opposing objects combining and giving life to each other; and its attendant hearing of a polyphonic universe? Certainly, polyphony is the art which achieves unity and power through the simultaneous combination of two or more individual voice-parts which never forfeit their independent interest, and still create a harmony. Certainly, although Bach may not have made a more perfect music than did the madrigalists, he created one no less wonderful than theirs and increased the physical apparatus of music by including the sounds of instruments in his immense contrapuntal edifices. So, it seems not too overweening to presume that this peculiar feeling about man grew together with his technique; and that the two interplayed and increased each other until the gigantic soul that was Bach’s had fleshed itself in notes.
But down in Bethlehem; in every American town, how many are there who know what Bach knew? Is not well-nigh the whole of American civilization builded on the completest ignorance of that truth; established on the principle that the welfare of man lies in each one taking what he can and in giving as little as possible; vowed to the great game of getting the other fellow's money? What else, pray, is going on in our competitive, uselessly over-productive society? Of those who really believe that it is not in what each holds, but in what all share, in what lies between man and man, that the wealth of the world consists, there are very few. And yet, of all those millions engaged in supplying themselves with material goods, there is not one who truly believes in what he is doing one half as much as Bach believed in the usefulness of making music. Not any of the steel-workers down in the iron sheds of the Bethlehem steel plant where the great iron cranes go down the ceilings like sunset down the sky. There may be a sense of power flowing from the enormity of the physical apparatus they handle. But faith there is none; for men who have faith look not so sad and grey even in hellish labour. Nor does the millionaire who heads the company believe in his job as Bach believed. Bach gave no power into the
