It is the mind that
feels. If you believe that the body feels you must be prepared to
explain where in the process of digestion and assimilation the beefsteak
and potato you ate for dinner become conscious, because to feel they
must be conscious. We know that the fluids and solids composing the body
have no sensation when they are taken into the body, nor do they ever
become sentient. Therefore the body of itself has no initiative, no
action, no control. All of these are the functions of mind, hence the
incongruity of attempting to solve a problem which is altogether
psychological, which demands qualities of mind, habits of mind, mental
concepts of a particular kind and quality, by a process of manipulation
of the organ through which mind expresses itself, making the training of
the mind a secondary matter; and then absurdly calling it scientific.

In every form of activity two things are involved: first, the idea:
second, its expression. It must be apparent then, that the quality of
the thing expressed will be governed by the quality of the idea. Or, to
put it in another way: In the activity of art two things are
involved--subject-matter and technic. The subject-matter, the substance
of art, is mental. Technic is gaining such control of the medium that
the subject-matter, or idea, may be fully and perfectly expressed. Ideas
are the only substantial things in the universe, and that there is a
difference in the quality of ideas need not be argued. Two men of the
same avoirdupois may be walking side by side on the street, but one of
them may be a genius and the other a hod carrier.

I have dwelt at some length on this because I wish to show where the
training of a singer must begin, and that when we understand the real
nature of the problem its solution becomes simple.

INDIRECT CONTROL

What is meant by indirect control? It means, in short, the automatic
response of the mechanism to the idea. By way of illustration. If I
should ask my pupil to make her vocal cords vibrate at the rate of 435
times per second she could not do it because she would have no mental
concept of how it should sound: but if I strike the A above middle C and
ask her to sing it her vocal cords respond automatically at that rate of
vibration. It is the concept of pitch which forms the vocal instrument,
gives it the exact amount of tension necessary to vibrate at the rate of
the pitch desired, but the action is automatic, not the result of direct