mething but not letting him know what. It was training the body, not
the mind, and the result was what invariably happens when this plan is
followed.

In the lesson given above no attempt was made to give the student a
correct mental picture of a tone, and yet this is the most important
thing for him to learn, for _he never will sing a pure tone until he has
a definite mental picture of it_. _A tone is something to hear and the
singer himself must hear it before he can sing it._

Not one of the suggestions made to this student could be of any possible
benefit to him at the time. Not even the sensation of feeling the tone
in the head can be relied upon, for physical sensations are altogether
uncertain and unreliable. As I have observed in numberless instances,
there may be a sensation in the head when there are disagreeable
elements in the tone. If the ear of the teacher does not tell him when
the tone is good and when it is bad he is hopeless. If his ear is
reliable, why resort to a physical sensation as a means of deciding? In
the properly produced voice there is a feeling of vibration in the head
cavities, especially in the upper part of the voice, but that alone is
not a guaranty of good tone.

This teaching from the standpoint of sensation and direct control will
never produce a great singer so long as man inhabits a body. It is
working from the wrong end of the proposition. Control of the mechanism
is a very simple matter when the mental concept is formed. It is then
only a question of learning how to relax, how to free the mechanism of
tension, and the response becomes automatic.

Is there no way out of this maze of mechanical uncertainties? There is.
Is voice culture a sort of catch-as-catch-can with the probabilities a
hundred to one against success? It is not. Is singing a lost art? It is
not. Let us get away from fad, fancy and formula and see the thing as it
is. The problem is psychologic rather than physiologic. The fact that
one may learn all that can be known about physiology and still know
nothing whatever about voice training should awaken us to its
uselessness.

Man is a mental entity. When I speak to a student _it is his mind that
hears, not his body_. It is his mind that acts. It is his mind that
originates and controls action. Therefore it is his mind that must be
trained.

Action is not in the body. In fact, the body as matter has no sensation.
Remove mind from the body and it does not feel.