Music is harmony, harmony is perfection, perfection is our dream, and our dream is heaven.

Amiel links aesthetic experience to metaphysical longing through a chain of equivalences: music embodies harmony; harmony suggests an ideal order; that ideal order is “perfection,” which humans desire but cannot fully possess; and this desire becomes a “dream” of heaven. The aphorism treats music not merely as entertainment but as a glimpse of an ultimate, reconciled reality—an intimation that the soul is oriented toward wholeness. In this view, musical harmony functions as a symbol of moral or spiritual harmony, and the pleasure it gives is a sign of our deeper hunger for an absolute, perfected state.