, BELIEFS
subjective and illusory. But it should be remembered that,
to those who have never actually had it, any direct intuition
must seem subjective and illusory. It is impossible for the
deaf to form any idea of the nature or significance of music.
Nor is physical disability the only obstacle in the way of
musical understanding. An Indian, for example, finds
European orchestral music intolerably noisy, complicated,
over-intellectual, inhuman. It seems incredible to him that
anyone should be able to perceive beauty and meaning,
to recognize an expression of the deepest and subtlest
emotions, in this elaborate cacophony. And yet, if he has
patience and listens to enough of it, he will come at last
to realize, not only theoretically, but also by direct,
immediate intuition, that this music possesses all the
qualities which Europeans claim for it. Of the significant
and pleasurable experiences of life only the simplest are
open indiscriminately to all. The rest cannot be had
except by those who have undergone a suitable training.
One must be trained even to enjoy the pleasures of alcohol
and tobacco; first whiskies seem revolting, first pipes turn
even the strongest of boyish stomachs. Similarly, first
Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first Bach fugues,
a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But
training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences.
In due course, contact with an obscurely beautiful poem,
an elaborate piece of counterpoint or of mathematical
reasoning, causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and
significance. It is the same in the moral world. A man
who has trained himself in goodness comes to have certain
direct intuitions about character, about the relations between
human beings, about his own position in the world—
intuitions that are quite different from the intuitions of the
average sensual man. Knowledge is always a function of
being. What we perceive and understand depends upon
what we are; and what we are depends partly on circum-
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