If we attempt to consider this question seriously we shall soon find that we are confronted with fundamental problems of æsthetics. First of all we must rid ourselves of the habit of regarding music as something printed on paper which can be played on the pianoforte. Modern civilization easily leads us to take it for granted that whatever has been written down or printed is clearly fixed and recorded for all time. But the real music is not that which is written down: it is the sounds which are made by those who perform it. A physician cannot cure his patient merely by giving him prescriptions to read. The written notes, even those of our own day, require imaginative interpretation; they require, too, an interpretation based on tradition and experience. Complicated as it is, our contemporary notation is very inadequate, although we of to-day are thoroughly accustomed to the practice of conveying information by written signs. It is only natural that in centuries when very few people were able to read or write words at all the notation of music should have presented still greater difficulty. We can see from early documents such as the ecclesiastical manuscripts of the tenth century that if music was written down it was not in order that complete strangers should be able to read it clearly and accurately at sight, but merely to serve as a reminder to the singer of what he had already committed to memory by ear. The records of the other arts are solid material facts, things of wood, metal or stone which are always before our eyes. The music that was contemporary with them has disappeared into silence, but that does not necessarily prove that it was not worth preserving. Yet we may well ask ourselves another question: is any art worth preserving? From the historian’s point of view everything is worth preserving as a historical document; but if we judge works of art from a purely æsthetic standpoint can we honestly say that the art of the past has any value for us?