for instance, in a series of articles on the Influence of Music, in
"The Atlantic Monthly," comes to the conclusion that "a fine
appreciation of even the noblest music is not an indication of mental
elevation, or of moral purity, or of delicacy of feeling, or even
(except in music) of refinement of taste." "The greatest, keenest
pleasure of my life," he adds, "is one that may be shared equally with
me by a dunce, a vulgarian, or a villain;" and he ends by asserting,
dogmatically, that a taste for music has no more to do with our minds
or morals than with our complexions or stature. Dr. Hanslick, the
eminent critic and professor of musical history in the University of
Vienna, goes even farther. "There can be no doubt," he says, "that
music had a much more direct effect on the ancient nations than it has
on us." To-day, "the feelings of the layman are affected most, those
of an educated artist least, by music." "The moral influence of tones
increases in proportion as the culture of mind and character
decreases. The smaller the resistance offered by culture, the more
does this power strike home. It is well known that _it is on savages
that music exerts its greatest influence_."

Let us briefly test these sceptical paradoxes in the light of mediæval
history and modern biography. Is it only among the ancient and
primitive people, and among the musically uneducated, that the divine
art exerts an emotional influence? St. Jerome evidently did not think
so. He believed, at any rate, that music can exert a _demoralizing_
influence, and he taught that Christian maidens should know nothing of
the lyre and the flute. The eminent divine was guided in this matter
by the same process of illogical reasoning of which, later, the
Puritans were guilty when they banished music from the churches. In
view of the fact that music was used to heighten the charms of wanton
Roman festivities or Pagan rites, St. Jerome condemned the art itself,