Of the Utility of Music there can be no question.
Lycurgus, one of the wisest of all ancient legislators, gave great
encouragement to music.
Polybius, one of the most ancient historians ascribes the humanity of
the Arcadians to the influence of this art and the barbarity of their
neighbours the Cynethians to their neglect of it.
Quintilian, the great rhetorician, is very copious in the praise of
music; and extols it as an incentive to valour, as an instrument of
moral and intellectual discipline, as an auxiliary to science, as an
object of attention to the wisest men, and a source of comfort and an
assistant in labour even to the very meanest.
The heroes of ancient Greece were ambitious to excel in music. In armies
music has always been cultivated as a source of pleasure, a principle of
regular motion, and an incentive to valour and enthusiasm.
And there is this in music, that it is suited to please all the
varieties of the human mind. The illiterate and the learned, the
thoughtless and the giddy, the phlegmatic and the sanguine, all confess
themselves to be its votaries. It is a source of the purest mental
enjoyment, and may be obtained by all. It is suited to all classes, and
never ceases to please all.