What has above been said will be considered a fair statement of the importance given to music by modern thinkers. And accordingly, when we find all Greek educators and theorists[43] asserting a completely different kind of importance in music, we find ourselves in presence of what is strictly an historical problem. It is not enough for the Greeks to admit that martial music has strong effects on soldiers going to battle, or that doleful music turns the mind to sadness in a solemn requiem for the dead. They went so far beyond this as to assert that by constantly playing martial music people would become martial, that by constantly playing and singing passionate and voluptuous music people became passionate and voluptuous. Consequently, the proper selection of instruments of music and of words became a subject of serious importance. The flute was cultivated at Athens till Alcibiades spurned it for distorting his handsome face, and caused it to go out of fashion at Athens. But this aversion to the Bœotian instrument was supported by the theorists on the ground that it had no moral tendency, that it was too exciting, and vague in the emotions it excited; also, that it prevented the player from singing words to his music. But when we would infer from this that it is really the text, and not the actual music, which has the mental effect--when we are disposed to add that in our own time instrumental music is a higher and more intellectual kind of music, which has no moral effects save good ones, and that it is the libretto of the opera or the sentiment of the song which does harm--the answer from the Greek point of view is conclusive against us. Though much stress was laid upon the noble words which were sung, the music was known to have the principal effect. Plato, in a celebrated passage, even inveighs bitterly against the gross immorality and luxuriousness of all mere instrumental music, which allowed of so much ornament, so much exaggeration of expression, so much complexity of emotion, as to be wholly unsuited to his ideal state. It is, indeed, perfectly true that the intellectual effort in understanding instrumental music, at least some instrumental music, is far greater than is required for appreciating, or imagining one appreciates, a simple song. To understand a string quartet of Mendelssohn, or, still more, a symphony of Beethoven, is an intellectual task far exceeding the abilities of nine tenths of the audiences who hear them.[44] But, apart from all such intellectual strain, there is a strong though indefinable passion about this very music which has the deepest effects on minds really tuned to appreciate it.