able, by studying the
things, to tell what kind of a person it was who thought them; or, in
other words, who made them. It is true, we can. We can tell all the
person's thought, so far as his art and principal work are concerned.
Nearly all his life is displayed in the works he makes. We can tell
the nature of the man, the amount of study he has done, but best of
all we can tell his meaning. The face tells all its past history to
one who knows how to look.[25] His intentions are everywhere as plain
as can be in what he does.

Thus you see there is more in a person's work than what we see at the
first glance. There are reflections in it as plain as those in a
mountain lake. And as the mountain lake reflects only what is _above_
it, so the work of the musician, of the artist, of any one in fact,
reflects those thoughts which forever hover above the others. Thoughts
of good, thoughts of evil, thoughts of generosity, thoughts of selfish
vanity, these, _and every other kind_, are so strongly reflected in
the work we do that they are often more plainly seen than the work
itself. And with the works of a great artist before us we may find out
not only what he did and what he knew, but what he felt _and even what
he did not want to say_.

We now know what music-thinking is. Also, we see why the young
musician needs to learn to think music. Really, he is not a musician
until he can think correctly in tone. And further than this, when we
have some understanding of music-thought we not only think about what
we play and hear, but we begin to inquire what story it tells and what
meaning it should convey. We begin to seek in music for the thought
and intention of the composer, and, little by little, even before we
know it, we begin to seek out what kind of mind and heart the composer
had. We begin really to study his character from the works he has left
us.

We have now taken the first really intelligent step toward knowing for
ourselves something about common and classic music. Later on, as our
ability increases, this will be of great value to us. We begin to see,
bit by bit, what the author intended. That is the real test of it all.
We do not want to find mere jingle in music, we want music that says
something. Even a very young child knows that "eenty meenty meiny moe"
is not real sense, though it is a pleasant string of sounds to say in
a game.

Thus we learn to look into what we hear and into what we see and try
to find how