The foregoing does not, in any sense, preclude that idea of a symphony which is expressible in terms of rhythm, melody, and harmony. What I have said has been said for the purpose of preventing a conception of it _in these terms only_ (and, of course, in still lower terms). Our physical hearing is a transit to the imagination and we want the physical hearing to serve that purpose. Nothing retards it more than an attempt _at the time_ to intellectualize the process. In other words, listening to a symphony should consist in giving yourself freely to it; in making of yourself a passive medium. Your study of the arrangement of themes, and so forth, should precede or follow the actual experience. And if you have no leisure or opportunity for such study and depend entirely on an occasional concert, you should nevertheless continue to pursue the same inactivity, allowing the music itself to increase your susceptibility little by little. If the mind is employed in an attempt to extricate order from confusion, it usurps for the moment the other functions of listening. And I would go so far as to say that the proper goal of a musical education should be to arrive at such a state of impressionability to pure music as would leave the mind, the feelings, and the imagination free to act subconsciously without active direction, and without struggle. The matter is so obvious. There is the music; here is the person. It awaits him. It was created of him and for him. It is inconceivable without him. It is his spirit coming back to him purified. It is the only thing he cannot sully, and which cannot sully him, for in the very nature of it, it cannot be turned to base uses. What man would be, here he is. In making this beautiful spectacle of life, as Conrad says, he has found its only explanation. So we should avoid marring the actual experience by conscious intent on the technical details.