prove
his point. Savages are more _demonstrative_ in their expression of
_all_ their emotions than we are; but this does not indicate that
their emotions are _deeper_. On the contrary, as the poet has told us,
it is the shallow brooks and the shallow passions that murmur; "the
deep are dumb." It is a rule of etiquette in civilized society to
repress any extravagant demonstration of feeling by gestures; and this
is the reason why we are apparently less affected by music than
savages. Yet, how difficult it is even to-day to repress the muscular
impulses imparted by gay music, is seen in the irresistible desire to
dance which seizes us when we hear a Strauss waltz played with the
true Viennese swing; and in the provoking habit which some people have
of beating time with their feet. Would anyone assert that a man who
thus loudly beats time with his boots is more deeply affected by the
music than you or I who keep quiet? Fiddlesticks! He shows just the
contrary. If he had as delicate and intense an appreciation of the
music as you have, he would know that the noise made by his boots
utterly mars the purity of the musical sound, and jars on refined ears
like the filing of a saw. If demonstrativeness is to be taken as a
test of feeling, then the ignorant audiences who stamp and roar over
the vulgar horse-play in a variety show have deeper feelings than the
educated reader who, in his room, enjoys the exquisite works of humor
of the great writers without any other expression than a smile.

Granted, then, that music has as much power to move our feelings as
ever, if not more, and bearing in mind that feeling is the chief
spring of action, does it not follow that music affects our _moral_
conduct, making us more refined and considerate in our dealings with
other people? Not necessarily and obviously, it seems, for there are
authorities who, while conceding the emotional sway of music, deny
that it has any positive moral value. The eminent critic, Prof.
Ehrlich, takes this sceptical attitude, in his "History of Musical
AEsthetics." If music, and art in general, has power to soften the
hearts of men, how is it, he asks, that the citizens of Leipsic did
not come to the rescue of the last daughter of the great Bach, but
allowed her to live in abject poverty? And how is that, in Florence
and Rome, some of the greatest patrons of art were princes who were
extremely unscrupulous in their manner of getting rid of their
enemies? Other in