n
himself. But whether he expresses this spirit well or ill, a man does in
fact join with all creation below him in manifesting this innate
spirituality without which there can be no life.

Thus everything stands for something else that is deeper, there is an
outer form and an inner soul or spirit. Spenser thus expresses it:--

"For of the soule the bodie forme doth take,
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make."

It is only when we grasp this elementary truth that life becomes in the
least plain and intelligible, and the result of grasping it is that we
cease to be deceived by the apparent values of things, and are able to
appraise them more at their true and spiritual worth. We are then
enabled to pass from circumstances (which are results) to the realm of
causes: the balance is transferred from the seen to the unseen, and the
point of view approximates more to the eternal than the transient. A
greater poise and certainty follow as a matter of course, since the
mental outlook is centred in the true rather than the seeming.

All life then is the expression of spirit, and our varied activities are
but the modes of this expression. To this, Music is no exception. Very
naturally also, the better the machinery or the technique of expression,
the more of the spirit can get through. We can play more
sympathetically, more fluently, and with finer effect on a beautiful
"grand" than on a jangly upright instrument: the one is a better vehicle
of expression than the other. So also we can secure more fluent
expression with a fountain pen than with one that continually interrupts
the free flow of ideas by demanding to be dipped in the inkpot. We have
two typewriters of the same manufacture, but one is an early model and
the other a modern machine: there is a vast difference in the ease of
expressing thought, in the favour of the later instrument with all its
special conveniences. In general terms the object of all improvement of
technical means is the better expression of the spirit. Musically, to
practise scales and exercises with the object of getting one's fingers
loose is like eating for the sake of developing a fluent jaw action--the
vision of the end has been lost in the means. We must ever keep in view
the fact that life itself, and especially Art and Music, can only fulfil
a proper purpose when resulting in the ever-increasing and better
expression of the underlying spirit, or as Elgar puts it--"more of
Truth