savages.
However true, all this does not give us the right to grow indignant when
Europeans say they do not like our music, as long as their ears are not
accustomed to it, and their minds cannot understand its spirit.... To a
certain extent we can explain to you its technical character, and give
you a right idea of it as a science. But nobody can create in you, in
a moment, what the Aryans used to call Rakti; the capacity of the human
soul to receive and be moved by the combinations of the various sounds
of nature. This capacity is the alpha and omega of our musical system,
but you do not possess it, as we do not possess the possibility to fall
into raptures over Bellini."

"But why should it be so? What are these mysterious virtues of your
music, that can be understood only by yourselves? Our skins are of
different colors, but our organic mechanism is the same. In other
words, the physiological combination of bones, blood, nerves, veins and
muscles, which forms a Hindu, has as many parts, combined exactly
after the same model as the living mechanism known under the name of an
American, Englishman, or any other European. They come into the world
from the same workshop of nature; they have the same beginning and the
same end. From a physiological point of view we are duplicates of each
other."

"Physiologically yes. And it would be as true psychologically, if
education did not interfere, which, after all is said and done, could
not but influence the mental and the moral direction taken by a human
being. Sometimes it extinguishes the divine spark; at other times it
only increases it, transforming it into a lighthouse which becomes man's
lodestar for life."

"No doubt this is so. But the influence it has over the physiology of
the ear cannot be so overpowering after all."

"Quite the contrary. Only remember what a strong influence climatic
conditions, food and everyday surroundings have on the complexion,
vitality, capacity for reproduction, and so on, and you will see that
you are mistaken. Apply this same law of gradual modification to the
purely psychic element in man, and the results will be the same. Change
the education and you will change the capacities of a human being....
For instance, you believe in the powers of gymnastics, you believe that
special exercise can almost transform the human body. We go one step
higher. The experience of centuries shows that gymnastics exist for the
soul as well as for the body