They are of opinion also, that the learning of this art does not tend to
promote the most important object of education, the improvement of the
mind. When a person is taught the use of letters, he is put into the way
of acquiring natural, historical, religious, and other branches of
knowledge, and of course of improving his intellectual and moral
character. But music has no pretensions, in the opinion of the Quakers,
to the production of such an end. Polybius, indeed relates, that he
could give no solid reason, why one tribe of the Arcadians should have
been so civilized, and the others so barbarous, but that the former were
fond, and the latter were ignorant of music. But the Quakers would
argue, that if music had any effect in the civilization, this effect
would be seen in the manners, and not in the morals of mankind. Musical
Italians are esteemed a soft and effeminate, but they are generally
reputed a depraved people. Music, in short, though it breathes soft
influences, cannot yet breathe morality into the mind. It may do to
soften savages, but a christian community, in the opinion of the
Quakers, can admit of no better civilization, than that which the spirit
of the supreme being, and an observance of the pure precepts of
christianity, can produce.
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