I recognize but one power in education, and that is mind. When God created my body, He ordained that my soul should rule it. When He made the mouth, larynx, muscles of respiration, etc., He ordained that the soul should rule them. My soul, master; they, servants. The servant knows his rightful master’s commands, but the stranger he will not obey. The infinite God rules all worlds, and all parts of all worlds. As God is the master of the illimitable universe, so He has placed within man’s body, which is man’s little universe, a natural master—the soul. All its agents must be commanded and employed by the master within.
For many years there has been an attempt to reduce vocal culture to the conscious manipulation of the vocal organs. This was once my method of teaching; but I have changed entirely and most radically. I believe and have taught for many years that certain mental states produce definite effects upon the vocal organs. Our object in this college is to induce such states of mind as shall produce the desired effects in vocal expression. The mental states operate directly through the cranial nerves upon the vocal organs, and instantaneously change their activity.
In my early teaching I made an attempt to cultivate the voice by dealing directly with the vocal organs themselves, but later I discovered that certain states of mind caused all the vocal organs to act in right relations to each other for the production of different tones. I also found that certain states of mind affect and control all the muscles which aid in voice production. To ascertain what states of mind produce certain effects, and how to induce these states of mind, was my field of study for a number of years. 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. The methods by which we induce certain states of mind in a pupil are definite and technical. If I were writing for a teachers’ manual, I would tell the teacher how to induce in the pupil the proper states of mind; but my present purpose is simply to show that certain states of mind will produce definite effects in the voice.