Macmillan

he
which
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 181
to recognisesuch duties and requirements, and to listen to
so much art and intention in language? After all,one just
"has no ear for it";and so the most marked contrasts of
styleare not heard,and the most delicate artistryis as it
were squanderedon the deaf." These were my thoughts
when I noticed how clumsilyand unintuitively two masters
in the art of prose- writinghave been confounded: one,
whose words drop down hesitatingly and coldly,as from the
roof of a damp cave
"
counts on their dull sound and
echo; and another who manipulateshis languagelike a
flexiblesword,and from his arm down into his toes feels
the dangerousblissof the quivering, over-sharpblade,which
wishes to bite,hiss,and cut.
247
How littlethe German stylehas to do with harmony and
with the ear, is shown by the fact that preciselyour good
musicians themselves write badly. The German does not
read aloud,he does not read for the ear, but onlywith his
eyes; he has put his ears away in the drawer for the time.
In antiquitywhen a man read "
was seldom enough"
he read somethingto himself,and in a loud voice;theywere
surprisedwhen any one read silently, and
the reason of it. In a loud voice: that is to say,
soughtsecretly
with all
the swellings, inflections, and variations of key and changes
of tempo, in which the ancient publicworld took delight.
The laws of the written stylewere then the same as those
of the spokenstyle;and these laws dependedpartlyon the
surprising developmentand
refined requirementsof the ear
and larynx;partlyon the strength,endurance,and power
of the ancient lungs.In the ancient sense, a periodis above
all a physiological whole,inasmuch as it is comprisedin one