What we think is understanding Chinese music when we hear it is merely recognition of that organization of vibration, which we call musical sounds, an organization common to the human ear in all mankind. The major part of popular music consists of stringing these sounds together for the mere pleasure of recognizing them--pleasure in their organization as contrasted with the unorganized mass of mere noise out of which they have been selected; also its use of them in simple combinations expressing simple emotions--sensations of rudimentary organization--which again are common to all mankind. It is because language is not an organization of the merely visual or auditory sensations made by the physical eye and ear with which almost everybody is born (there _are_ colour-blind and tone-deaf people) but a post-natal acquired and complicated mental construction that it is totally unintelligible until learnt. So Chinese music does not mean the same to us as to a Chinaman, nor does European music mean the same to him as to a European, because it is not merely a construction of the ear, but is also in some although in varying degree a construction of the mind. Just as it took a multitude of lives and deaths to evolve the human eye and ear--organs with which all men are now born--so it has taken many generations of that mental development we call culture and tradition to create a language that was more than onomatopoeia, and a music that was more than recognizable and, therefore, agreeable sounds.