CHAPTER VIII.
MUSIC AND LONGEVITY.
"Were it not for music, we might, in these days, say the beautiful is dead." D'Israeli.
"I verily think, and I am not ashamed to say that, next to Divinity, no art is comparable to music." Luther.
VIII.
MUSIC AND LONGEVITY.
Perhaps no one chooses to question the statement that length of human life is greater in our generation than it was in the last, and much greater than it was one or two centuries ago, in the face of statistics which the medical profession puts forth. Question of such statement implies a hidden motive in the medical profession. Possibly that profession might have a motive in leading people to believe that life lasts longer. If there is such motive it is for the good of men. It also recognises the influence of mind over matter as a preserving force. Doctors are anxious more than can be imagined to do all they can for the benefit of mankind. No class of men (or of women, since we have women in the profession) strives harder to do good. Their very code of ethics is based on self-sacrifice. The inventions, the discoveries, the devices which that profession now uses are such as bewilder and astonish one who only now and then has a chance to see their work. But a generation ago, and the sick man was loaded with charge after charge of drugs. It was only the generation before, that the sick man was bled in great quantities for every ailment. That was a change from generation to generation. But a little while ago a new school of medicine sprung up in which drugs were almost wholly discarded. Attenuation to the thousandth or even the five-thousandth part, was used, and when drugs are so attenuated, there is not much left to them. Such success has attended the homeopathist that he must be recognised. Who shall say but that another step may be taken or has been taken, in dropping the use of drugs and medicines entirely?
All these schools and schemes have borne their part in prolonging human life, or more properly speaking, prolonging life in the human body.
It is but recently that the influence of music in the cure of disease has been given professional thought. Its influence has been known for a long time but has not been properly placed and appreciated. This discussion may be the one thing to bring it before the world.
Metaphysics—That is a word which we hear from mouth to mouth, nowadays. What does it mean? Briefly "the scientific knowledge of mental phenomena." We have almost come to think that it is something mythical, or even relating to the supernatural. But it is "scientific knowledge." Even our magazines which talk upon "Psychical Research" drift off into spiritualism and hallucinations. The writers do not keep to the text. Metaphysics is a science—and that science which deals with the most real and tangible. It deals with phenomena. It deals with mind itself. Now, mind is tangible and real. It is that part of us which came from the Creator—was from the beginning—has no end—and is in these bodies of ours for a time only. Which from this definition, is more tangible? Mind or body? There is no longevity to mind. From eternity it came—to eternity it goes. No measure can be applied to it. Body, that which we see and handle and in which we believe mind to reside, is quite another thing. It begins—it lasts for a time, ever struggling against forces which tend to destroy it—and drops at last into Mother Earth or the elements. That which we try to prolong is the existence in living condition, of the body. The keeper of that body is the mind, and whatever is done successfully to that body is done through the mind. Medical treatment is well enough in its place, and I am not to quarrel with the man who wants to use that, but mental treatment, (and I do not choose to be classed with the various isms now before the public which have grasped one corner of the subject and are tugging away at that) is the one thing by which and through which the body is to be affected. By that is human life to be prolonged.