Practical vocal teachers generally recognize the importance of both these elements of Voice Culture. Only in one way do they fall short of fully realizing the value of ear training and of practice guided by the ear;--they do not see that these two topics sum up the whole material of vocal training. Unfortunately, the search after some imaginary means of direct vocal management destroys, in all modern methods, most of the value of the real elements of voice culture. A few citations from standard writers on the voice will show the estimation in which ear-training is held. To begin with, the old Italian masters were fully alive to the necessity of cultivating the sense of hearing, as witness Tosi: "One who has not a good ear should not undertake either to instruct or to sing." This writer also says in the chapter headed "Observations for a student": "Let him hear as much as he can the most celebrated singers, and likewise the most excellent instrumental performers; because from the attention in hearing them one reaps more advantage than from any instruction whatsoever." Another early writer on the voice, the celebrated Adolph Bernhard Marx, speaks of the advantage derived from the attentive listening to voices: "An important influence is exerted by the frequent attentive hearing of good voices. Through this an idea of good tone is strengthened, which gains an influence on the use and also on the training of the organs, not perhaps immediate, but clearly seen in its results." (_Die Kunst des Gesanges_, Berlin, 1826.) Among modern writers only a few need be mentioned. D. Frangcon-Davies remarks: "The training of the ear is one half of the training of the voice." (_The Singing of the Future._) Clara Kathleen Rogers is even more emphatic in her statement: "Not to exercise our sense of hearing is to rob it gradually of the habit of acting at all; whereas, if we keep it in exercise, it will daily grow readier, finer, more acute, more analytical, and the ear will serve as an ever more effective medium of reaction on the will." The following remark of the same writer points unmistakably to an understanding of the evil results of the attempt to sing mechanically: "If the singer's attention is directed to any part of the vocal instrument, or even to its motor, the breath, his sense of sound, and his perception of either the beautiful or the bad elements in sound, will grow fainter and fainter." (_The Physiology of Singing._) As for the purpose of cultivating the sense of hearing, this is also pointed out by several prominent vocal theorists. One of the latest exponents of the traditional method of instruction was Stephen de la Madelaine, who remarks: "The first need of the voice is to be guided in its exercise by an ear capable of appreciating naturally its least deviation." (_Theorie complete du Chant_, Paris, 1852.)