For years I meditated the writing of such a book as you have now brought out, and I can say without any reserve that you have expressed my views and judgments all along the different lines of thought herein set forth. I shall now refer my friends to this work, for I do not think in our time a better can be written by anyone here or abroad.

There are chapters such as "Colour Tonics," "Cosmic Consciousness," and "Musical Therapeutics," that go to the fundamental basis of the subject, and you have put into concise terms what many would only render more recondite and mysterious. The laws you enunciate are as old as time, but the large vision presented to the mind of the reader, the harmonious arrangement and the lucid definitions make the work authoritative and original. Every chapter deals with some phase of life-rhythm, some aspect of sound waves, some manifestation of colour-tone to which every human being is more or less intimately related.

The book is a key to the rhythm of life. Students of the new therapeutics, artists, musicians, singers and public speakers will study it as a text book.

Very sincerely yours,

FRANCIS GRIERSON.

NEW YORK, March 15, 1915.

PREFACE

FOR many years I have been haunted by an idea that would not remain at rest in my mind, but kept ever and ever recurring; therefore, I have sought in this book to voice the thoughts which have so long been my companions, giving expression to them, as best I can, through the written word.

It is more than a quarter of a century ago that I began to dream dreams of music and colour that should prove a universal panacea for anxious and fearful minds, for sick and diseased bodies; a panacea that should dispel sorrow and doubt, that should bring rest and peace to mind, and health and strength to body. I felt then, as I feel now, that a new spring-time should come to the world when a greater love of music and colour should enter into the life of man. So the text of this book is to bring light out of darkness, to bring health out of disease, and to bring joy out of pain; to proclaim, as it were, a new gospel of health, happiness, and beauty, to help to bring into our lives the new song of life that will surely come when we have prepared the way for its coming.

There is a necessary preparation before one may receive this new gospel. One must first be willing to lay aside biased and prejudiced thought, and earnestly desire truth solely for its own sake. Lord Bacon said, "No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth." In the study of truth we often have to lay aside preconceived thoughts and ideas in order to make the mind receptive to a new or a still greater truth. Many times have I wished that someone would write a book on music and colour for

the healing and beautifying of mind and body, but as yet no one has seen fit to do so. Therefore I can refrain no longer, and simply have to obey the behest of something in my own consciousness that will not let me rest until I begin and finish this book.

I know that I am only a pioneer, or perhaps the voice of one crying in the wilderness; nevertheless, I am absolutely certain that a day will come in the far or near future, I know not which, when music and colour will exert a thousandfold more influence upon human life than they do at present. And if I can have some little part in bringing into the world a recognition of other values in music and colour than those we have heretofore known, I am satisfied.

This book is not intended to show the definite way that one should take, but rather to suggest the possibilities that will reward the earnest seeker who devotes time and thought to carrying on a still more thorough investigation of the subject.

I know that in any new departure one must run the gauntlet of true, as well as superficial criticism, but I am in no way deterred by this, knowing that whatever may be true in the book will survive false criticism, and whatever there may be of dross will sooner or later perish. Thought lives in the mind in order to be expressed, to take form as the written or the spoken word. I leave my written word to the critic and lay reader alike, as an expression of my own thought and feeling, hoping that it will bring some spiritual, mental, or physical uplift that will prove to be for the highest good of all. And if I call out a deeper emotion or a higher aspiration that will make for a greater love of music and colour and their fuller expression in life, I shall rest thoroughly content, feeling that this book will have proved of some benefit to my fellowmen, and so have fulfilled the dearest wish of the author.