We are incomprehensible and mysterious beings. We do not know whence we come nor whither we go; we do not know what agencies guide and sustain us--our end is a tragic one. While the soles of our feet closely adhere to the ground, our heads are in touch with the most distant stars. We exercise faculties to perfection whose origin and mode of operation are unalterably hidden from our knowledge. We possess gifts and talents which raise us above the plane of our ordinary existence and inspire us with the belief that we are related to the divinity, are part of the divinity. It has ever been man's aim to penetrate this darkness, to learn to comprehend _himself_. The vocation of the singer is one to which this knowledge is indispensable. In the fulness of his organization endowed by nature with a divine gift, the singer's aim and desire is to retain and perfect this gift. The birds sing their same individual song throughout their career. Man, however, sings the song of his soul; a song as endless and as varied as his thoughts. Song with him is not a gift alone, but its exercise is a study, an art. He must sing _knowingly_; he must ascertain the source of his song and the reason why certain causes produce certain results. Hence the necessity for a science of the voice. The knowledge of the exercise of our faculties is dependent on the knowledge of life and on that of the spirit, without whose aid no transaction of life of any kind ever takes place. Despairing of his ability to penetrate into the realms of the spirit, aspiring man has ever resorted to that which was next at his command--matter. Hence the effort throughout all of man's history to reach the soul by way of the body. But body and mind, in alliance, have ever succeeded in frustrating these efforts; in keeping the secret of their duality and mutuality intact from the gaze of man. Yet singers are determined to find out _something_ in relation to the _voice_ at least. Finding that we cannot penetrate into the relation existing between mind and matter, the effort is renewed in the most persistent manner to explain the life and the spirit, whose essence and outcome is the voice, by examining into the relation of matter to matter.