"Another superstition," she declared. "The great musicians, as they were called, were merely the pioneers of music. Their works were much overrated in foreign countries. We have proved by analysis," she said, "that they were merely groping for their effects. _We_ know what they wanted to effect, and we have discovered how to get those effects. Musical psychology was an unknown science a hundred years ago. Why, the old composers had simply no means of testing the psychological effects of their works by experiment." "I am afraid I am very ignorant of musical science," I said. "In fact, I did not even know there was such a thing as a science of music." "What did you think music was?" she almost snapped. "Simply one of the Arts," I said. "There can be no art in the proper sense without a science." "But I thought you Europeans considered that in Sculpture, for example, the Ancients had never been surpassed; and yet they had no science of sculpture." "Their science was probably lost: but _we_ have recovered the true science. The basis of all sculpture is accurate measurement. Whatever has bulk, whatever occupies space, can be measured, if your instruments are fine enough. Our instruments _are_ fine enough. We can reproduce any statue ever made by any artist." "But that is only copying," I said. "How do you create?" "The process is a little more elaborate, but the principles are exactly the same. Even the classical sculptors had models, had they not? Well, our sculptors also use models; they pose them in thousands of different positions until they have the attitude they want; they have instruments to enable them to fix them in position, and the rest is merely accurate measurement." "I should never have imagined that sculpture had been carried to such a point," I remarked. "Is there much of it in Meccania?" "Not a great deal of the finer work. Accurate measurement is a slow and costly business even with our improved instruments." "Tell me," I said,--"you see I am very ignorant of Art as understood in Meccania,--has Literature been pursued by the same scientific methods?" "It depends upon what you mean by Literature," replied Madame Blobber. "Broadly speaking," I said, "I mean the art of expressing ideas in language that satisfies one's sense of beauty." "All our professional writers go through a period of training in the particular department they cultivate. For example, our writers of history are very carefully trained, writers of scientific treatises also." "But what of your novelists and poets?" I asked.