While Scott's literary oeuvre includes many works that deal with either music or the occult individually, it is those that extrapolate the occult aspects of music that are of primary interest in discerning the aesthetic character of Scott's spiritual quest. Scott published numerous articles developing the notion of an interaction between music and the occult before coalescing his ideas in The Influence of Music on History and Morals: A Vindication of Plato (1928), and finally in Music: Its Secret Influence Throughout the Ages (1933), which represents the clearest iteration of his occult theory of musical affect.

The fundamental notion upon which Scott's theory is based is that sound, in the form of music, has the power to mould the morals and character of the society in which it is produced. To illustrate and substantiate his theory, Scott provided a number of historical examples, as well as information on the physical processes be believed to be at work. This basic notion is clearly not unique to Scott's writing. The link between aesthetics and subjectivity is an idea that has reappeared throughout history in both Western and Eastern thinking. It provides a conceptual vehicle to describe the relationship between the aesthetic or spiritual realm on the one hand, and the ethical or material realm on the other. It is an expression of the idea of the “beautiful soul”—the interaction between the beautiful and the good—or, in the context of the aesthetic tradition to which Scott was exposed during his formative years, between art and life.