This final section, while of necessity dealing with the author of this book, will not engage in a polemic against the ideas outlined on the preceding pages. The bases and motives of these ideas have constituted part also of this author’s experience, and he has tested them, as the Germans say, _am eigenen Leib_, and has tried to present them in such a manner as to demonstrate that they were inevitable phases of American culture. But there is more. If we nourish the hope of surmounting the dangerous crisis through which western culture is presently passing, we must make clear distinctions, and if we wish to surmount the particular, so to speak, accessory crisis of American musical maturity, we must not lose sight of the difference between ideas of an aesthetic or sociological nature on the one hand, and, on the other, the individual works of art which supposedly embody them. The valid works and personalities are infinitely more complex than the ideas which constitute merely one of many components. At the same time, ideas influence not only the conscious efforts of composers, not only the criteria and the judgments of critics, but they influence, in the United States far more than in Europe, education and the general tenor of music life. Repeated mention has been made of a predilection, in the American mode of thought, for abstraction. This tendency derives from the necessity of building, fast, a foundation where a strong, complex influence of ancient tradition is lacking. Other peoples are inclined toward abstraction, too, but in comparison at least with Europe, here the ascendancy of certain concepts, ideas, and personalities is, at least on the surface, nearly uncontested. Equally striking is the finality, at times not as real as it may seem, with which the same concept, idea or personality can be superseded. These processes may be observed in many aspects of American life; and the concern with which they are viewed by those following the currents of opinion, is well known. However, countercurrents exist, frequently lost from view even when they are strongest. With the full glare of publicity concentrated on whatever is momentarily in the ascendance, countercurrents easily grow in quasi-silence and emerge at the appointed moment with a strength disconcerting to those not acquainted with the processes of American life (which often seems to run from one extreme to the other): therefore it is good to remain aware of the strength, real or potential, of opposition.