Listen to a person breathing just before falling asleep, in a slow, rhythmical order; material objects retire into the background and assume a semi-spiritual shape. This is a similar condition to the one we are in and in which we breathe during the production of song. [By the by, sleep can be induced by thinking of a song, that is, by mentally singing it]. No two nations, however, breathe just alike in that condition, any more than they do during their waking moments; the mode of breathing during sleep being a reversion always of the one which obtains during our waking moments. Our mode of breathing, however, _always_ determines our mode of vocal utterance. We can reverse our voice, as we do in whispering, but it is always the same voice, as a garment is the same when we turn it inside out. Do you know, by the way, that the English whispering voice is the German speaking, and the German whispering the English speaking voice? Try it, and you will find it so. Go on whispering; that is, continue to use your voice in the _same_ mechanical manner, but instead of for whispering, use it for speaking aloud, and you will have the exact mode of the other tongue. An Anglo-Saxon, in so doing, will be able to speak German aloud, but not English; a German will be able to speak English, but not German. Thinking and speaking are of one and the same order. Thought makes the impression of which speech is the expression. If this were not the case, it would not be possible to pass from thinking to speaking or from speaking to thinking at once, and without an effort. To produce English speech, we must think English in a material way, that is, anteriorly, and in so doing produce an instrument from which English material or speech sounds emanate. To produce English song, we must think English in a spiritual way, that is, posteriorly, and in so doing produce an instrument from which English spiritual or song sounds emanate. We cannot think English in either of these two ways and produce German or Italian sounds for speech or song; nor can we produce the latter sounds in any other manner than by _thinking_, either materially or spiritually, in these languages, and in the proper idiomatic manner inherent therein. How can an English-speaking person, physically and spiritually formed for English expression, and for no other expression, produce proper Italian sounds? She will think Italian in an English way; and, while singing Italian words, produce them with an English expression. That is not singing Italian, however, but English. Is it likely that she will succeed in acquiring the Italian mode of expression while her teacher himself is ignorant of just what that mode consists in, and in what it differs from the native mode of vocal expression of his scholar? You might as well attempt to produce on a violin the sounds of a violoncello or some other instrument.