ng for the disappearance of the imitative method by tracing
the development of the mechanical idea.

Imitative Voice Culture was purely empirical in the ordinary meaning of
this word. The old masters did not knowingly base their instruction on
any set of principles. They simply taught as their instincts prompted
them. There can now be no doubt that the old masters were fully
justified in their empiricism. They taught singing as Nature intends it
to be taught. But the old masters were not aware of the scientific
soundness of their position. So soon as the correctness of empirical
teaching was questioned they abandoned it without an attempt at defense.
As a system of Voice Culture, the old method occupied a weak strategic
position. With absolute right on its side, it still had no power of
resistance against hostile influences.

This does not imply that the old masters were ignorant men. On the
contrary, the intellectual standard of the vocal profession seems to
have been fully as high two hundred years ago as to-day. Even famous
composers and musical theorists did not disdain to teach singing. But
this very fact, the generally high culture of the old masters, was an
important factor in the weakness of the old method against attack. The
most intelligent masters were the ones most likely to abandon the
empirical system in favor of supposedly scientific and precise methods
of instruction.

The hostile influence to which the old Italian method succumbed was the
idea of mechanical vocal management. This idea entered almost
imperceptibly into the minds of vocal teachers in the guise of a
scientific theory of Voice Culture. A short historical sketch will bring
this fact out clearly. This necessitates a repetition of some of the
material of Chapter I of Part I; the entire subject will however appear
in a new light now that the true nature of the mechanical idea is
understood.

From the founding of the art of Voice Culture, about 1600, up to 1741,
no vocalist seems to have paid any attention to the anatomy or muscular
movements of the vocal organs. In 1741 a French physician, Ferrein,
presented to the Academy of Sciences a treatise on the anatomy of the
vocal organs, entitled "De la Formation de la Voix de l'Homme." This
treatise was published in the same year, and it seems to have attracted
at once the attention of the most enlightened masters of singing. That
Ferrein was the first to call the attention of vocalists to the
m