And these schools cannot expect to supply them to us unless they so conduct their teaching as to develop in students a love and understanding of the best. This article, then, expresses my conviction that the average American man or woman is potentially musical. I believe the world of music to be a true democracy. I am convinced that our chief need is to make music ourselves. I believe that under right conditions we should enjoy doing so; I think all art is closely related to the sum of human consciousness. And just as I see great music based on what we are and what we feel, so I see the expert performance of music as being merely our own performance magnified and beautified by extreme skill. I see, in short, a necessary and natural connection between ourselves and both composer and performer. I believe that all the great pictures and sculpture and music lay first in the general consciousness and then became articulate in one man. I believe no statesman, no philosopher, no, not even a Christ, to be conceivable save as he lies first in men’s hearts. What they are _in posse_ he is _in esse_. That we all are more musical than we are thought to be; that we are more musical than we get the chance to be--of this there is no doubt whatever. CHAPTER V THE OPERA I. WHAT IS OPERA? The form of drama with music which we loosely call “opera” is such a curious mixture of many elements--some of them closely related, others nearly irreconcilable--that it is almost impossible to arrive at any definite idea of its artistic value. A great picture or piece of sculpture, a great book or a great symphony represents a perfectly clear evolution of a well-defined art. You do not question the artistic validity of “Pendennis” or of a portrait by Romney; they have their roots in the earlier works of great writers and painters and they tend toward those which follow. The arts they represent grew by a slow process of evolution, absorbing everything that was useful to them and rejecting everything useless, until they finally became consistent and self-contained. The development of opera, on the other hand, has been a continual compromise--with the whims of princes, with the even more wayward whims of singers, and with social conventions.