THE RIVALRY OF THE HIGHER SENSES. 769 



these silent but fascinating appeals to the eye. In all these and 

 in many other ways the eye and the hand are called into ceaseless 

 and intelligent use, while the ear and the tongue are idle. 



There are, or at least there were, three good old arts involving 

 the use of the ear and the tongue namely, music, oratory, and 

 conversation. If, as the Greeks believed, the highest good be the 

 harmonious exercise of all our powers, there are no other arts 

 whose loss or deterioration at the present time society could so 

 ill afford. Of these, music is the first in worth and fortunately 

 has suffered least thus far from the decline of the organs upon 

 which it depends. But music, although carried to a high degree 

 of perfection by specialists, has no longer its former place in the 

 home and in the life of the people. Musical instruments are 

 many, and a kind of solitary, eye-and-hand music is common 

 enough. Contrast also the influence of the opera and theatre. 

 The people prefer to go to the latter to see rather than to the 

 former to hear. Notice, too, the tendency to make both the 

 theatre and the opera spectacular to meet the popular demand 

 for something to please the eye, so that we go even to the opera 

 to see rather than to hear. When Richard Wagner substituted 

 the " musical drama " for the opera, it was not merely an innova- 

 tion in music nor a union of all the arts of the stage, but rather a 

 surrender of the language of sound to the language of form. 



In its three most distinctive fields, oratory is suffering a con- 

 siderable deterioration. These are the pulpit, the bar, and the 

 legislative hall. The preacher no longer tells his hearers what 

 he knows, but reads to them what he himself has read from the 

 commentary or the review. The widely bemoaned decadence of 

 the pulpit is not alone due to the decay of theologies, but also to 

 the loss of that on which its vitality depends power to speak 

 and to listen. Listening, too, is a lost art. At church we are 

 often engaged in an intent review of our own mental images ; in 

 conversation we are not so busied apprehending what is said as 

 considering what we shall say. When we wish, therefore, to at- 

 tend to and remember an address or lecture, we find both difficult. 

 In the practice of law oral pleading has been superseded to a con- 

 siderable extent by the type-written brief. In our legislative 

 assemblies the machinery of the caucus and committee-room has 

 taken the place of the direct oral appeal. 



The last of our voice arts is conversation. A recent writer 

 in The New Review, in an article on Talk and Talkers of To-day, 

 calls in question the " commonplace of social criticism " that con- 

 versation is a lost art, and instances Mr. Charles Villiers, Mr. 

 Gladstone, Lord Granville, Mr. Morley, and Lord Salisbury as 

 talkers who may be compared with Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Lord 

 Derby, and Bishop Wilberf orce. But one might well ask whether 



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