Orchestration in its present development would seem to have reached its highest possible attainment of effectiveness and virtuosity. The problem of the future, therefore, deals not so much with material increase of orchestral resource, as with what manner of thought and music the orchestra is destined to portray. What are to be the musical ethics of the twentieth century composers? The most subtle thinkers of the world have generally taken an idealistic view of the social mission of musical art. Eminent psychologists of Germany, France and England, who otherwise represent distinctive and frequently antagonistic schools of philosophy, all agree on this point, as illustrated by a few quotations selected from the writings of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Emile Montegut and Herbert Spencer. Music, according to Hegel, should "fill the heart and bring to consciousness everything developed and undeveloped which human feeling can carry, experience and bring forth, in its innermost and most secret parts; whatever the human heart in its manifold possibilities and moods desires to express or excite; and especially whatever the spirit has in its idea of the Most Essential and High; the glory of the Honored, the Eternal and the True." Schopenhauer declared that music "never expresses phenomena, but solely the inner being, the essence of phenomena, the will itself. It expresses, therefore, not this or that single and particular joy, this or that sorrow, or pain, or horror, or exultation, or hilarity, or repose of mind itself; but, as it were _in abstracto_, the essentials of these without their concomitants, therefore without their motives. Nevertheless, in such quintessence we understand it perfectly. Hence our fancy is so easily excited by it and tries to clothe this invisible spirit world, that speaks to us so immediately and eloquently, with flesh and blood, _i.e._ to embody it in an analogous example." Emile Montegut expresses himself to the effect that this magic sound of what is called music "pierces the material barriers which limit human words; it gives to hearts the means of communicating among themselves; it creates a language of which the most ignorant and the poorest perceive all the power and all the sweetness. Music speaks, and suddenly the hearts which were chilled with consciousness of their own isolation are thrilled with tenderness and radiant with happiness." Herbert Spencer believed that "music ought to take rank at the head of the fine arts because it is the one which adds most to human happiness. Not content with exciting powerfully our better instincts, it awakens sentiments lying dormant in us, of which we had not conceived the possibility, of which we do not understand the sense. This obscure presentment of an unknown happiness, which music awakens in us, this confused dream of an ideal and new life, all this is but a prophecy of something which music itself ought assuredly to accomplish." In contrast to the above enthusiastic utterances, how material and unsatisfying are the dreary speculations of such men as Leibniz! The latter looked upon music as being but the "_exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi_"! The ideal mission of music, therefore, ever has been and surely should continue to be that of uplifting. It should present a moral synonymous for the æsthetic, the pure, the spiritual. It should reveal the highest ideals of the living soul. It should, according to Browning, express truth, not of the mind--knowledge, which is absolute, but of the soul--shifting. Music above all other arts interprets the innermost thoughts of the soul. It is being constantly re-created, whereas all other arts are but the images of what is already created. The imitative arts--sculpture and painting, can no longer be all-satisfying to the self-consciousness of an age influenced by the subjective thought of such men as Goethe and Schiller. Why, therefore, should modern music be reared solely upon a similar realistic basis of imitation instead of upon an idealistic one of representation? The fundamentals of music rest upon an acoustic element dependent upon absolute pitch. Since, however, an isolated tone cannot suggest a definite idea or image, it is necessary, in order that music should mean something, to connect a series of tones so as to produce melody, to combine several tones so as to form chords, and to group these chords so as to obtain contrasts of tonality and modes. This accomplished, there must be added rhythmic life, variety of tone-color, and dynamic contrast. Finally, the whole fabrication must be fitted into a framework of structural form based upon the science of logic. But all this is not enough. There exists an underlying psychological principle that cannot be disregarded.