All life then is the expression of spirit, and our varied activities are but the modes of this expression. To this, Music is no exception. Very naturally also, the better the machinery or the technique of expression, the more of the spirit can get through. We can play more sympathetically, more fluently, and with finer effect on a beautiful "grand" than on a jangly upright instrument: the one is a better vehicle of expression than the other. So also we can secure more fluent expression with a fountain pen than with one that continually interrupts the free flow of ideas by demanding to be dipped in the inkpot. We have two typewriters of the same manufacture, but one is an early model and the other a modern machine: there is a vast difference in the ease of expressing thought, in the favour of the later instrument with all its special conveniences. In general terms the object of all improvement of technical means is the better expression of the spirit. Musically, to practise scales and exercises with the object of getting one's fingers loose is like eating for the sake of developing a fluent jaw action--the vision of the end has been lost in the means. We must ever keep in view the fact that life itself, and especially Art and Music, can only fulfil a proper purpose when resulting in the ever-increasing and better expression of the underlying spirit, or as Elgar puts it--"more of Truth." The law of spirit is Love. The drive of spirit is ever upward towards progress, aspiration, and unity. If we take a drop of quicksilver and separate it into smaller particles, as soon as ever the conditions allow, these smaller globules will amalgamate themselves with the larger body from which they have been temporarily divorced. We can almost imagine we hear them utter a fervent "thank goodness" as they reach that home of heart's desire. So are we, too, as separated and individualised sparks of the divine fire, burning till at length we reach our freedom and can merge ourselves in that Sun of spirit whence, "trailing clouds of glory," we have come. Man, we say, is a gregarious animal, and it is certainly only the man of warped mind who seeks to cut himself off from his fellows: we are all of us spirits, and spirit seeks unity and approach. Love is the one uniting and binding force in the universe, just as its opposite--hatred--is the disintegrating element. Love operates in attraction, as we see it in motherhood, childhood, and the love of man and maid. But it also works on the grand scale in the guise of the law of Gravity which attracts and binds universes together, and regulates and controls the swing of inconceivable immensities. Look again and we may see love working as chemical affinity to attract molecule to molecule, or as cohesion to keep the very particles knit together in kinship.