Mind over matter: The paradox of perfect control in voice culture and animal training

“ It is not within my province to discuss the technical details of voice-training. I will only say that every system of vocal instruction should aim at strengthening the power of the voice, increasing its compass, and purifying its tone, and, above all, at giving the speaker perfect control over it, even in the very whirl-wind of oratorical passion. It would be well if every school in the land had a master of elocution attached to it, and if the art of delivery were taught to every boy as part of the regular course of education. ”

“ The mental pleasure in walking, as such, is in the sense of power over all our moving machinery. But in riding, I have the additional pleasure of governing another will, and my muscles extend to the tips of the animal’s ears and to his four hoofs, instead of stopping at my hands and feet. Now in this extension of my volition and my physical frame into another animal, my tyrannical instincts and my desire for heroic strength are at once gratified. ”

“ The idea of mechanical vocal control is also the starting-point of all analysis of the vocal action. Every investigator of the voice approaches the subject in the belief that an exact determination of the muscular operations of correct singing would lead to an absolutely infallible method of training voices. The problem of tone-production is identical, in the common belief, with the problem of the vocal action. Three sciences, anatomy, [Pg 110] mechanics, and acoustics, are believed to hold somewhere among them the secret of the voice. ”

“ Most of the positive materials of modern methods are thus interpreted in terms of sensations.
True, the accepted theory of Vocal Science does not directly countenance this interpretation. The basic principle of modern Voice Culture is the idea of mechanical vocal management. All instruction is supposed to aim at direct, conscious, and voluntary control of the muscular operations of singing. Teachers always impart to [Pg 84] their pupils this idea of the mechanical control of the voice. The vocal action is always considered from the mechanical side. ”

“ We will suppose the dog to be a setter. He is taken into the garden or into a field, and a strong cord, about eighteen or twenty yards long, is tied to his collar. The sportsman calls the dog to him, looks earnestly at him, gently presses him to the ground, and several times, with a loud, but not an angry voice, says, 'Down!' or 'Down charge!' The dog knows not the meaning of this, and struggles to get up ”

“ The largest economic problem which primitive people on their way upward towards civilization had unconsciously to face was that of obtaining some kind of strength which could be added to the power of their own weak limbs. For all his eminent capacities of body, man is not a strong animal, nor is he so built that he can apply the measure of strength that is in him to good advantage. There are scores if not hundreds of species with which he came in contact in his effort to dominate nature that are stronger, swifter, and better provided with natural weapons. ”

“ All the movements of the tongue, lips, and jaw are directly under voluntary control. Exercises for these parts are therefore given only for acquiring suppleness and agility. The muscular movements of the larynx and soft palate are readily brought under control. Each can simply be raised and lowered. A few minutes' daily practice, extended over three or four weeks, is generally sufficient for the student to acquire satisfactory command of these actions. But to hold the tongue, palate, and larynx in any prescribed [Pg 51] position, while singing a tone, is an extremely troublesome matter. ”

“ Modern teachers are certainly as well acquainted with the mechanical features of tone-production as the old masters were. Yet, judged by their results, modern methods are distinctly inferior to the old Italian method. [Pg 305]
There is absolutely no ground for the belief that the old masters owed their success to a knowledge of vocal physiology. This idea of ascribing scientific knowledge to the early teachers results only from erroneous belief that no other means of training the voice is possible. ”

“ Yet it is so clear in our own minds that our inability to express it is extremely tantalizing. We go on, constantly hoping to find a way to define the mechanical processes so clearly indicated to the ear. We always feel that we are just on the verge of the great discovery. The solution of the problem of tone-production is almost within our grasp, yet it always eludes us.
It was stated in Chapter V of Part I that empirical knowledge of the voice, based on the singer's sensations, is used to supplement and interpret the doctrines of mechanical vocal guidance. ”

“ The dog should be taught to obey the eye and the hand, rather than the voice. A dog that will do so is invaluable, in open grounds, when birds are wild.
Whenever speaking to a dog, whether encouragingly or reprovingly, the sportsman should endeavor to look what he means, and the dog will understand him. The dog will understand the look, if he does not the words. The sportsman should never, with a smile on his countenance, punish a dog ”

“ An old and tried dog is placed as the leader, who, in their simple journeys, and when the chase is the object, steadily obeys the voice of the driver sitting in front of the sledge, with a whip long enough to reach the leader. ”

“ And then there are the respective mental traits produced by daily exercise of power, and by daily submission to power. The ideas, and sentiments, and modes of behavior, perpetually repeated, generate on one side an inherited fitness for command, and on the other side an inherited fitness for obedience; with the result that, in course of time, there arises on both sides the belief that the established relations of classes are the natural ones. ”

“ When we tell him to read louder, he braces himself for the effort and kills the quality, which is the finer breath and spirit of oral expression, and gives us a purely physical thing—force. Put your weak-voiced readers on the platform; let them face the class and talk to you, seated in the middle of the room, and you will get all the force you need. On the whole, we have too much force rather than too little. Let the teacher learn that we want quality, not quantity, and our statement of the mental action behind force will be of much benefit in creating the proper conditions. ”

“ This proper relationship cannot be secured by exercising the organs in any strictly mechanical way, but only by forming definite ideal tones in the mind and exercising the voice while these ideal tones are firmly fixed as steady objects of thought. If these mental objects drop from the mind at any time during the vocal practice, no mechanical ingenuity can possibly take their places in rightly affecting the voice. ”

“ At last I was rewarded by discovering what states of mind would induce the desired forms of expression, and also what methods to use to cause the right activities of mind which would, without fail, bring the proper tones of voice in expression. It devolves upon the teacher to know how to induce the states of mind which will produce the required action of the vocal organs, and through this the desired tone. Every day in our work here in the Evolution of Expression, we are obeying the true pedagogy of vocal technique. ”

“ In other words, the drill is one in mental, rather than vocal, technique.
The student must determine the purpose in every case, and then trust his voice to manifest that purpose.
Hence! home, [4] you idle creatures, get you home.
Speak, what trade art thou?
Where is thy leather apron, and thy rule?
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things.
Many a time and oft
Have you climb’d up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops.
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome. ”

“ Let go all parts of the face, mouth and throat, and you will be surprised at the power of the tone, of the breath, and of the breath-control on the upper tone. You will be surprised to find that you will have secured or developed three or four times as much sustaining breath power as you imagined you had. In descending, care must be taken not to droop or depress, but to carry the voice by controlling the movements of the body, and only after the last tone is finished should the body go into a position of repose. ”

“ We are compelled, in spite of scientific knowledge, to direct our attention while practising, to the sensations of the voice, which are the only ones we can become [Pg 95] aware of,—sensations which are confined to the very palpable functions of the organs of breathing, the position of the larynx, of the tongue, and of the palate, and finally, to the sensation of the resonance of the head cavities. The perfect tone results from the combined operations of all these functions, the sensations of which I undertake to explain, and the control of which the ear alone can undertake. ”

“ For the mysterious tie between the thought and the motor centres next comes into play, and, in a way which we cannot even guess at, the obedience of the bodily organs follows as a matter of course.
In all this one sees how the immediate point of application of the volitional effort lies exclusively in the mental world. The whole drama is a mental drama. The whole difficulty is a mental difficulty, a difficulty with an ideal object of our thought. It is, in one word, an idea to which our will applies itself, an idea which if we let it go would slip away, but which we will not let go. ”

“ In his relations with man, attentive to the will of his master, whose language he has learned to understand, partially at least, the dog comprehends whether he must go or come, run or stop. But he attends less to the phonetics of the words than to the intonations of the voice, the direction of the glance, and the gestures. ”

“ No being could experience so complex an emotion until advanced in his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a moderately high level. Nevertheless, we see some distant approach to this state of mind in the deep love of a dog for his master, associated with complete submission, some fear, and perhaps other feelings. The behavior of a dog, when returning to his master after an absence, and, as I may add, of a monkey to his beloved keeper, is widely different from that toward their fellows. ”

“ But, not further to pursue the negative side of this subject, let us now turn to the positive, or to the power which man has shown himself to possess of implanting new instincts in the mental constitution of animals. For the sake of brevity I shall here confine myself to the most conspicuous instance, which is of course furnished by the dog, seeing that the dog has always been selected and trained with more or less express reference to his mental qualities. ”

“ We have said that psychical reflex emotions do not depend solely on the exterior excitation that disturbs the organism, but largely upon the elaboration of that excitation by the intelligence. The whistling of the bullet that makes the soldier dodge, the roaring of the lion which makes the dog tremble, the smell of the elephant which terrifies the horse, are in themselves indifferent excitations. They have power over the emotions only when they fall upon an intelligent organism which comprehends, with more or less of knowledge, what they mean. ”

“ "Mind is the wielder of muscles. The force of a hammer blow depends on the energy applied; the power expressed by a man's bodily instrument depends on his aggressive will and courage. The body is literally manufactured and sustained by mind. Through pressure of instincts from past lives, strengths or weaknesses percolate gradually into human consciousness. They express as habits, which in turn ossify into a desirable or an undesirable body. Outward frailty has mental origin; in a vicious circle, the habit-bound body thwarts the mind. ”

“ Every thought, emotion or mental state has its corresponding rate and mode of vibration. And by an effort of the will of the person, or of other persons, these mental states may be reproduced, just as a musical tone may be reproduced by causing an instrument to vibrate at a certain rate—just as color may be reproduced in the same way. By a knowledge of the Principle of Vibration, as applied to Mental Phenomena, one may polarize his mind at any degree he wishes, thus gaining a perfect control over his mental states, moods, etc. ”

“ May we not call it mental energy? Is not mental energy the factor in mankind by which he is differentiated from the beast? Does not man only accumulate experience, and is there any limit to the power of mind over matter?
If these points are well taken, mental energy is the fourth and paramount factor in providing for material existence, and the science of political economy, which deals with land, labor and capital, becomes a purely metaphysical science when we admit the force of mental energy into the combination. ”

“ The teacher now knows that emotion affects the quality of tone. Let him then use this knowledge as he has learned to use his knowledge of the other criteria. We recognize instinctively the qualities that express sorrow, tenderness, joy, and the other states of feeling. When the proper quality does not appear it is because the child has no feeling, or the wrong feeling, generally the former. There is but one way to correct the expression, i. e., by stimulating the imagination."
"IV. FORCE. Force manifests the degree of mental energy. When we speak in a loud voice, there is much energy ”

“ Sensation, thought, action—this is the natural sequence of each completed mental process. As volition passes over into action, so does science into art, knowledge into power, wisdom into virtue.
It is thus evident that, with an animal as with an army, locomotion demands direction. The sensorium is built up as a director of motion. Natural selection causes the survival of those whose senses are adequate for the safe control of movement. The animal which conducts its life processes in insecurity perishes. The existence of an organism is the test of its adequacy. ”

“ So far as this statement affects our ideas about actually existent mental power, it is of little importance; for it is not more useful to announce that a man with a good brain will possess good mental powers than to say that a muscular man will be capable of considerable exertion. But as it is of extreme importance to know of the relation which exists between muscular exercise and the growth or development of bodily strength, so it is highly important for us to remember that the development of mental power depends largely on the exercise of the mind. ”

“ A comprehension of mental development as a process of adaptation to social conditions, which are continually remoulding the mind, and are again remoulded by it, will conduce to a salutary consciousness of the remoter effects produced by institutions upon character, and will check the grave mischiefs which ignorant legislation now causes. Lastly, a right theory of mental evolution as exhibited by humanity at large, giving a key, as it does, to the evolution of the individual mind, must help to rationalize our perverse methods of education, and so to raise intellectual power and moral nature. ”

“ If one may judge from various articles which have been published lately, the greatest stress seems to be laid on the supposed entire absence in animals of the power of abstraction, or of forming general concepts. But when a dog sees another dog at a distance, it is often clear that he perceives that it is a dog in the abstract; for when he gets nearer his whole manner suddenly changes, if the other dog be a friend. A recent writer remarks, that in all such cases it is a pure assumption to assert that the mental act is not essentially of the same nature in the animal as in man. ”

“ It is notorious how greatly the mental disposition, tastes, habits, consensual movements, loquacity or silence, and tone of voice have varied and been inherited in our domesticated animals. The dog offers the most striking instance of changed mental attributes, and these differences cannot be accounted for by descent from distinct wild types. ”