The
value to mankind--to mankind here and hereafter--may be incalculable.
* * * * *
For some day, when all is found out that can be found out on earth, and
made the common property of all (or even before that), the great man
will perhaps arise and make the great guess that is to set us all free,
here and hereafter. Who knows?
I feel this splendid guesser will be some inspired musician of the
future, as simple as a little child in all things but his knowledge of
the power of sound; but even little children will have learned much in
those days. He will want new notes and find them--new notes between the
black and white keys. He will go blind like Milton and Homer, and deaf
like Beethoven; and then, all in the stillness and the dark, all in the
depths of his forlorn and lonely soul, he will make his best music, and
out of the endless mazes of its counterpoint he will evolve a secret, as
we did from the "Chant du Triste Commensal," but it will be a greater
secret than ours. Others will have been very near this hidden treasure;
but he will happen right _on_ it, and unearth it, and bring it to light.
I think I see him sitting at the key-board, so familiar of old to the
feel of his consummate fingers; painfully dictating his score to some
most patient and devoted friend--mother, sister, daughter, wife--that
score that he will never see or hear.
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