This view of sex in art makes for the validity of instrumental music as such, and reënforces the position of Strauss when, in his wholly instrumental tone poems, he would delineate every phase of life, and even certain phases of philosophic thought as Wagner, despite theory, has done in his «Faust Overture.» Owing to the increasing vogue of Strauss, no prophet is necessary to foretell a rank growth of imitators. These, because barren of originality, will succeed in copying the eccentricities rather than the merits of their model. What infliction, what torture to human ears will result from the inevitable Bedlam of noise and fury, the near future must reveal. But let us believe that a modicum of pity and saving common sense, in even the most cruel devotee of such a school, will insure speedy reaction toward saner and more satisfying methods. While ignoring not its old estate, music is moving from its centre in the emotional nature, to a stronghold well within the intellectual life. Failures and wanderings indeed must be, but stagnation never in this onward world. So, looking to desired fulfillment, let us prophesy of music such rise as that of man from his emotional, half-formed self toward an ideal not coldly intellectual, but always warmly and nobly human with what the future foreshadows, namely, the balanced blending of emotion and mind, the ideal of both man and his artistic creations, in fact, the ideal of ideals in whose very anticipation is forgotten the «Super Man» of Nieztsche. * * * * * TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For those words, the variant more frequently used was retained. In some cases there was no predominant variant. The hyphenated variant was chosen in those cases. Obvious punctuation and printing errors have been corrected. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Three Great Epoch-Makers in Music, by Edward Farnsworth