The great creative scientists of this age have disintegrated those old hard ideas, and it now _appears_ that the Universe is a miracle of rhythm, and that “matter,” just like man, is kept going, is maintained as a co-ordinated whole by some electrical urge or spiritual impulse--at bottom it is perhaps the same thing, although “thing” is a very inappropriate word. The conception of the “will to live” has a profounder meaning for us now, and we realize that if the “will to live” dies in a man the man himself dies. A recent anthropologist, the late Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, F.R.S., in a book on the decay of Melanesia, attributes the dying off of the population in certain islands, unaffected by disease and with an abundance of food, to life having become devoid of meaning to them after contact with an alien and unassimilable civilization. They had lost faith in their old world of ideas without having the power to enter the completely new and strange white man’s world. With the decay of their ancient beliefs they took no pleasure in their ancient religious exercises. Joy and Ritual simultaneously faded. _They lost the desire to live._ Each one of us goes on living only so long as he desires to live, and the desire varies in degree. We have to admit that we use these words “life” and “living” still without knowledge of what they mean, but it is not necessary, nor do I think it possible, to know what they mean. Knowledge is not important, it is life that is important, and we can feel life if we cannot know it. The only way in which we can know life is by creating it, and it will be my duty in a later chapter to discuss this. In the meantime it is clear that the line from Dante which I began by quoting: _Amor che muove il mondo e l’altre stelle_ is no idle phantasy but a literal truth. The world about us _seems_ to be material, but exists in rhythm. It is a living world, and it is kept alive by a spiritual force which we can best describe as love, and I end this chapter with the definition with which I began it. All art is the imagination of love, and music is the imagination of love _in sound_. CHAPTER II IS MUSIC KNOWLEDGE OR LIFE?