Category: Psychology
(Christmas carols celebrate the Nativity as being, above all else, an event that brings hope to mankind. “O Holy Night,” one of the most beautiful carols, makes the point explicitly: “a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.” But I suspect that Christmas is not unique among winter festivals in this emphasis on hope. The Winter Solstice, after all, is the moment of greatest darkness and, also, necessarily, the moment when the Sun begins to return to the world.
Music is an art without an apparent object – there are no scenes to look at, no
sculptured marbles to touch, no stories to follow – and yet it can cause some of the most
passionate and intense feelings possible. How does this happen – how can sounds from
resonant bodies produce emotion (1) in man?
Originally published in Objectivity, Volume 1, Number 2.
In Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, Ken Danagger asks Dagny Taggart:
“And if you met those great men in heaven, . . . what would you want to say to them?”
“Just . . . just hello, I guess.”
“That’s not all,” said Danagger. “There’s something you’d want to hear from them . . . you’d want them to look at you and say, Well done.”
She dropped her head and nodded silently. . . . (Rand 1957, 735)
