And to form a correct estimate of the value of our musical activities we should need also to consider the quality of the music we hear; and this, in relation to the sums we have been doing, might make complete havoc of our figures, because it would change their basic significance. For if it is bad music, the more we hear of it the worse off we are. If a city spends thirty thousand dollars a year on bad public-school music, it is a loser to the extent of some sixty thousand dollars. If your child is painfully acquiring a mechanical dexterity (or acquiring a painful mechanical dexterity) in pianoforte playing and is learning almost nothing about music, you lose twice what you pay and your child pays twice for her suffering. What is called “being musical” cannot be passed on to some one else or to something else; you cannot be musical vicariously--through another person, through so many thousand dollars, through civic pride, through any other of the many means we employ. Being musical does not necessarily lie in performing music; it is rather a _state_ of being which every individual who can hear is entitled by nature to attain to in a greater or less degree. Such are the musical conditions confronting us, and such are the possibilities open to us. My purpose is, therefore, to suggest ways of improving this situation, and of realizing these possibilities; and, as a necessary basis for any such suggestions, to consider first the nature of music itself. Is it merely a titillation of the ear? Are Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert merely purveyors of sweetmeats? Does music consist in an astonishing dexterity in performance? Is it, as Whitman says, “what awakes in you when you are reminded by the instruments”? Or has it a life of its own, self-contained, self-expressive, and complete? These questions need to be asked--and answered--before we can formulate any method of improving our musical situation. They are not asked. We blindly follow conventional practices; we make little effort to fathom the many delightful problems which every hearing of music presents to us; we submit to being baffled every time we hear an orchestra play; we take no forward step on the road to understanding. Beethoven was a heart, a mind, a will, and an imagination; we, in listening, absorb his emotion and hardly anything else. His grotesque outbursts make us uncomfortable, as would a solecism of behavior. His strange, bizarre, uncouth, and extraordinary themes, every one of which fits perfectly into his plan, leave us wondering what he intends. His sentiment, which is always _relative_ to his humor or his roughness, we understand only by itself.