It is an important controversy, and one to which I should have been glad to devote more attention. In summing up, however, I don't think I could do better than quote the opening lines of the Rev. J. F. Rowbotham's excellent _History of Music_, in which the same questions, although applied to a different branch of Art, are admirably stated and answered. In this book the author says-- "The twittering of birds, the rustling of leaves, the gurgling of brooks, have provoked the encomiums of poets. Yet none of these has ever so powerfully affected man's mind that he has surmised the existence of something deeper in them than one hearing would suffice to disclose, and has endeavoured by imitating them to familiarize himself with their nature, so that he may repeat the effect at his own will and pleasure in all its various shades. These sounds, with that delicate instinct which has guided him so nicely through this universe of tempting possibilities, he chose deliberately to pass over. He heard them with pleasure maybe. But pleasure must possess some æsthetic value. There must be a secret there to fathom, a mystery to unravel, before we would undertake its serious pursuit. "And there is a kind of sound which exactly possesses these qualities--a sound fraught with seductive mystery--a sound which is Nature's magic, for by it can dumb things speak. "The savage who, for the first time in our world's history, knocked two pieces of wood together, and took pleasure in the sound, had other aims than his own delight. He was patiently examining a mystery; he was peering with his simple eyes into one of Nature's greatest secrets. The something he was examining was rhythmic sound, on which rests the whole art of music."[25] Thus, as you see, there is a goodly array of perfectly sensible people on the other side. Still, the belief that graphic art took its origin in imitation must undoubtedly have done a good deal of damage; for the numbers that hold it and act upon it at the present day are, I am sorry to say, exceedingly great. By identifying the will to imitate with the instinct of self-preservation pure and simple, however, we immediately obtain its order of rank; for having already established that the will to Art is the will to exist in a certain way--that is to say, with power, all that which ministers to existence alone must of necessity fall below the will to Art. In helping us to make this point, Dr. Worringer and Mr. Felix Clay have done good service, while Riegl's contribution to the side opposed to the Art-Evolutionists cannot be estimated too highly.