Sympathetic Vibratory Physics

Things are not always as they seem. On that account first ideas in science are often erroneous. The errors, however, exist only in the mind itself; and they serve to fill the mind until the truth is seen, and then their occupation is gone. The thing held is then seen to have had no real existence. Truth is independent of the mind; its author is its upholder.
     In science, where there is not a correct beginning, there is not end to the confusion which follows. Initial errors taint everything; and when they have become venerable with age, they are clung to by those who are not able to judge for themselves. Hitherto, writers on the science of music have not detected these fundamental errors, and have hindered the progress of the science by adding their own misconceptions.
     Burns speaks of those who "think to climb Parnassus by dint o' Greek;" and mathematicians have thought to climb the musical system by dint of ratios. But the knowledge of ratios did not give the knowledge of how to use them in music in conjunction with other laws which rule in that domain. Not only did the mathematicians err in getting the major system by beginning at the wrong place, C instead of F, and in using an arithmetical series instead of numbers produced geometrically; but they erred also in their attempt to get the minor system. They showed that they were entirely unacquainted with the law of DUALITY, and the production of the minor system by ratios descending, as distinguished from the ascending ratios in the genesis of the major.
     As the present knowledge of music has been for the most part derived from the tempered system in keyed instruments, so when anything has been attempted to be done which required a knowledge of the mathematical element, instead of the beauty and symmetry of truth, what followed has for the most part been error and disorder.
    An example of this will be found in a work recently published by Mr. Sedley Taylor. The portion of his work which more particularly required a knowledge of the system of music is that on "Pure Intonation and Temperament."
     It does not seem to have occurred to him that, to produce related scales, it is necessary to build the one upon the other, in the same way that the chords are

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Ramsay - A Wrong Method - Sedley Taylor's Scales