There is a musical gladness every day in our ears, our actual delight in which it might have been a heaven to our great-grandfathers to have anticipated in the last century.
Now it is plain that this alleged music is not everywhere.

Where, then, is it?
And will it, when we have found it, be found to merit all the praise that is bestowed upon it?
Sociology, as we have seen, may show us how to secure to each performer his voice or his instrument; but it will not show us how to make either the voice or the instrument a good one; nor will it decide whether the orchestra shall perform Beethoven or Offenbach, or whether the chorus shall sing a penitential psalm or a drinking song.

When we have discovered what the world's highest gladness can consist of, we will again come to the question of how far such gladness can be a general end of action.
FOOTNOTES: [9] Vide _Nineteenth Century_, October, 1877.
[10] '_As Mr.Spencer points out, society does not resemble those organisms which are so highly centralised that the unity of the whole is the important thing, and every part must die if separated from the rest; but rather those that will bear separation and reunion; because, although there is a certain union and organisation of the parts in regard to one another, yet the far more important fact is the life of the parts separately.

The true health of society depends upon the communes, the villages and townships, infinitely more than on the form and pageantry of an imperial government.

If in them there is band-work, union for a common effort, converse in the working out of a common thought, there the Republic is._'-- Professor Clifford, _Nineteenth Century_, October, 1877..