Man is master of his own fate. He is neither controlled by circumstances nor environment. He can be as great as his highest ideal, but only through conformity to the laws which regulate all life. He must learn to feel the real rhythm of being; he must express that rhythm through melody; he must so adjust his mind to both his inner and outer life that he uses harmony in a perfect way. If he is doing this, then he is fulfilling the laws of life and reaping the true reward of his own right actions. When man lives in this way, he not only experiences greater health and happiness, but he is bringing an influence to bear upon the lives of others that will make for untold good. The world to-day is asking for light, for more light, and if anyone can show a way of living that will bring greater health and happiness to it, that is of more importance than many theories that do not deal with the life of man in a practical way. The ideal and the practical must go hand in hand. Theories may be wonderful and beautiful, but if they are lacking in practical good, then the dwelling on such theories is only a waste of time. The need of the world to-day is for something that will bring to it more of joy and peace, more of health and happiness, and anyone who can suggest that which will help to do this, is a real benefactor in the highest and best sense of the word. In giving to the world my suggestions for the use of music and colour I am convinced that all real betterment of mankind must come first through inner feeling and idealistic thought, then through the unfolding of these two qualities there will ensue fuller and freer expression in man's outer world and life; for life and its full development is a much deeper thing than its outer environment, a much higher thing than food, drink, and raiment; for while the latter are necessary, it is still more essential that man should seek to develop his whole nature, his soul, his mind, and his body, so that the whole man may be quickened and renewed from centre to circumference. If I can suggest in this book that which will help toward such an end, then I shall be fully satisfied. I firmly believe, however, that a time will come when the world's ills, whether of a mental or a physical nature, shall not only be helped, but actually healed through the scientific use of music and colour; and it is to that particular end that I wish to direct the minds of those desirous of investigating the subject in a thorough way, as well as to awaken the interest of the nonprofessional reader. I am fully aware of the fact that, in a desultory way, music has been and is being used in institutions in different parts of the country with varying results. It is my sincere desire, however, to see the whole question taken up in a thoroughly scientific way, and every phase of the subject not only investigated, but the results tabulated, to the end that a real system of scientific therapeutics may be established that shall meet the needs and requirements of every form of disease, whether it be disease of mind or of body. Furthermore, if such a system were once inaugurated, it would pre-exclude the quack or the superficial practitioner; because if music and colour become an exact science of healing, then before one might hope to practise it, it would be necessary to be scientifically trained. The practitioner would of necessity have been obliged to make a thorough study of music and colour, and their effects upon the varying temperaments of people, and be able to diagnose the nature of the trouble, and prescribe the needed remedy. A system of music and colour therapeutics, too, would without doubt do as much good to the doctor as to his patients, for at the present time the medical doctor is so absorbed in his material remedies, that the whole trend of his work shapes his mind toward a materialistic view of life. This tends, in turn, to destroy intuition and real imagination, and makes the man as material as his remedies. It is not my wish to be in any way antagonistic to medical doctors. I should not be carrying out the principles I try to inculcate in this book if I were. My thought, therefore, is not directed against the men who practise the present systems of healing, but rather against the systems themselves. The world has had many systems of healing with material remedies in its time, and all have been tried and found wanting. The systems of the future will have to take this one fact into consideration, that man is a living soul possessed of a body, and that the body's needs can best be supplied by the healing properties of the soul. Everything necessary to health, strength, and happiness is resident in man's life, and when he uses the power in his possession to control to the full the forces of his own life, he will be successful, not only in overcoming disease with health, but in everything that he undertakes. He will grow in wisdom and stature, and eventually will become a law unto himself, having dominion and power over all things. CHAPTER V COLOUR VALUES "And what if trade sow cities Like shells along the shore, And thatch with towns the prairie broad They are but sailing foambells And take their shape and Sun-colour -EMERSON. "There are things whose strong reality -BYRON. GOING back to a remote past, we not only find many great philosophers who believed in the efficacy of music for the healing of the sick, but also find recorded many notable cases of such healing. And these cures are not confined to any particular clime or country, but seem to have taken place all through the ages, first in one country and then in another. There are so many well-authenticated cases of cures that apparently there can be no valid reason offered either to deny or disprove such claims for music. Of the use of colour, however, in connection with music as a therapeutic agent, there is apparently no record, and perhaps there may have been a good reason for this, for it is very doubtful if the people of the past saw or appreciated colour as we do in the present. The development of colour seeing is just as much an inner development, and perhaps even more so, than the hearing of musical sounds; and it is singular, to say the least, that, if people of ancient times knew colours and felt them as much as we do, there should be so little record of it in the writings of the past. Our books of the present refer to colour over and over again, in one way or another, but you will find few such references in the Middle Ages, or even in those of a later date, and even those references mention comparatively few colours. It may be argued that the great old masters of painting were in possession of and used even finer colours than those in use by our modern painters. In one way, that is true. They had a knowledge of more enduring colour than we possess at the present time, but it must be quite evident to the student that they used far less variety of colour than our own painters do at the present time. So far as I know, then, colour has never been associated with music for therapeutic purposes. Within recent years, a number of writers of books have dwelt on the value of colours for the healing of the sick; but I have never heard of mental or physical ills being cured solely through the use of colour. In this chapter I offer suggestions as to how colour may be combined with music in such a way as to get the greatest good from both. I have often known the sick to take decided dislikes to objects of different colours in the rooms they occupied, and in some cases the dislike was so great that the distasteful object had to be removed. If, in the treatment of the sick with music, harmonious music is necessary so that the appeal to the ear may have the effect of awakening the inner emotions, then it must also be necessary, in order to engender a harmonious condition of thought |