ossibilities of
Prayer as little known, with the inheritance of Love still unclaimed and
the ocean of Truth yet unexplored, life is full of an immensity of
purpose."[18]

[Note 18: Kirkham Davis. "Where dwells the Soul Serene."]

CHAPTER VIII

THE SOUL OF SONG

"All the hearts of men were softened
By the pathos of his music:
For he sang of peace and freedom,
Sang of beauty, love, and longing:
Sang of death, and life undying
In the Islands of the Blessed,
In the Kingdom of Ponemah,
In the land of the Hereafter."

_Longfellow_

The power to sing is innate in practically everybody, and the number of
people who are actually incapable of any musical expression through the
voice is really very small. Suggestion plays an important part in this
matter, for there are few children having mothers or nurses who sing to
them who fail to pick up and imitate that singing. The reason is fairly
clear, because every idea in mind tends to pass into action unless
something intervenes to stop it: consequently the child having the idea
of singing in mind, simply from having heard others sing, has the
initial impulse to song. As he gradually acquires the control and
co-ordination of his faculties, song will follow as a matter of course.
On the other hand if the child never hears anyone sing, from where is
the motor impulse to come?

Those good people who boast that they cannot sing have very often, by
the simple denial of their ability, ensured a kind of mental atrophy in
the function. It is quite a usual thing for us to fasten unnecessary
limitations upon ourselves by refusing to believe in our own powers, and
most of us have a large stock of very real inhibitions, which prevent us
from doing things otherwise well within our capacity. If we do not
believe we can do a thing, as a rule we do not try: or if we try, it is
in a half-hearted, beaten-before-we-start kind of fashion. Thus we find
that as a matter of experience things generally do turn out for us
according to our belief. It is in this spirit that a man professes
himself unable to tell the difference between the National Anthem and
"Pop goes the Weasel." There are cases, of course, where the individual
may be able to distinguish the tunes mentally, and yet may be unable to
sing them correctly, or even to vary the tones of the voice according to
the desired pattern: in this case the fault probably lies in a lack of
the power of co-