My observations result in the triumph of the sensation, the feeling (common to all), over the exact sciences (known to but few). Science, for the most part, is satisfied with dissecting or analyzing. My endeavor has been to construct; to form the whole out of parts instead of reducing the whole into parts. My guide has been instinct coupled with common-sense,--that rarest of all the senses in spite of its name. How far it has guided me aright, it will be the province of science to judge. I may be asked why, in treating upon so "simple" a subject as the human voice (my only endeavor in the beginning), I want to move heaven and earth, and press them into my service. My answer is, Wherever I touched the subject of the voice, I found it to be in correlation with all other subjects. My great desire now is, that I may be granted the time and retain the ability to write out all I have ascertained; while my greatest wonder is, that these things should have waited for me at all to be made known; why they should not have been discovered centuries ago. My eyes once opened, I found them lying about within the easy reach of my arm and the mere assistance of my pick and shovel, like precious ore in a newly discovered mining country. I had but to open the lid of the mysterious casket which had been intrusted to me, and all these great truths escaped from the same; not to disappear, however, as they did in the fable, but to remain with me and to be made known through me to the world. * * * * * The best part of my life has been spent in this, my adopted country. Though I experience no difficulty in expressing myself in the English language, still it is not my native tongue, and I sometimes feel as if I might have said some things better if I had said them in German. * * * * * Looking at the many volumes written on the subject of the larynx alone, and considering that during all this time its associate, the replica, without whose assistance _not one_ vocal sound can ever be uttered, has remained unknown, though in plain sight and "in everybody's mouth," one cannot help but think of Goethe's lines: "Ein Kerl der speculirt Ist wie ein Thier, auf duerrer Haide Von einem boesen Geist im Kreis herum gefuehrt, Und ringsumher liegt schoene gruene Waide." ("A theorist is like unto a beast On barren soil by evil sprite led round and round Within a narrow circle, though beyond there is a feast Of pasture green on fertile ground.") "THE BASIC LAW OF VOCAL UTTERANCE"