But that lyre, our only real possession, is our _Soul_. It must be
shaped, and strung, and kept carefully in tune; no easy matter in
surroundings little suited to delicate instruments and delicate music.
Possessing it, we possess, in the only true sense of possession, the
whole world. For going along our way, whether rough or even, there are
formed within us, singing the beauty and wonder of _what is_ or _what
should_ be, mysterious sequences and harmonies of notes, new every
time, answering to the primæval everlasting affinities between
ourselves and all things; our souls becoming musical under the touch
of the universe.
Let us bear this in mind, this symbol of the lyre which Abbot Joachim
allowed as sole property to the man of spiritual life. And let us
remember that, as I tried to show in my previous chapter, the true
Lover of the Beautiful, active, self-restrained, and indifferent to
lower pleasures and interests, is in one sense your man of real
spiritual life. For the symbol of Abbot Joachim's lyre will make it
easier to follow my meaning, and easier to forestall it, while I try
to convince you that art, and all æsthetic activity, is important as a
type of the only kind of pleasure which reasonable beings should admit
of, the kind of pleasure which tends not to diminish by wastefulness
and exclusive appropriation, but to increase by sympathy, the possible
pleasures of other persons.