l" about them, pleasant or the reverse, just as buildings acquire an
aura and an atmosphere, sacred or convivial, or even unholy.

[Note 7: Dowling. "The Aquarian Gospel."]

The musician, then, may obey Nature's universal behest, and change his
form from the physical of to-day to the more tenuous of a finer realm.
He may die: but his music lives on. He perhaps has played his part in
the world symphony and, his present work finished, he lays his
instrument aside. This body of ours is the instrument of the spirit: no
wedding feast without a wedding garment, and no part or lot in the
physical world without a body. The tuning of the body to delicate
response and high endeavour enables the spirit to express its melody the
better, and therefore it is incumbent upon the musician to cultivate a
high standard of physical health. This does not mean the maximum of
nourishment, combined with stimulants to compel a jaded appetite: on the
contrary, artistic efficiency demands super-cleanliness and a tolerably
rigid self-denial. Girth is no measure of artistic ability. But the
body, sound or otherwise, is the instrument through which we play life's
little tune, just as the pianist plays through his pianoforte. But when
we have closed the pianoforte nobody supposes that we have extinguished
the artist, or annihilated the music: we have merely put an end to its
expression for the time. So when our instrument of the body grows old,
worn-out, or decrepit, so that it can no longer answer to the dictates
of the spirit within, we cast it aside, as an instrument whose keys are
broken, or whose strings are for ever mute. Then the musician goes upon
his far journey.

But long though the journey seem, it is a change of state rather than of
place: as if from being cased in solid ice he now were buoyant in limpid
water. His music and his melodies which were so great a part of him now
constitute his real self, besides being for ever inscribed upon the roll
of eternal remembrance. So the great musicians still live on, and when
we claim that such-and-such an interpreter gives us the spirit of Bach,
we may be saying more truly than we realise. There is no limit to the
range of thought save the intrinsic nature of the thought itself. All
thoughts seek their own, by the law of sympathy: like to like, fine to
fine, and gross to gross. "Not all of us give due credit to the
anomalous nature of love, reaching as high as heaven, sinking as low as
hell, uni