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.

Music, again, does not appear to the Quakers to be the foundation of any solid comfort in life.  It may give spirits for the moment as strong liquor does, but when the effect of the liquor is over, the spirits flag, and the mind is again torpid.  It can give no solid encouragement nor hope, nor prospects.  It can afford no anchorage ground, which shall hold the mind in a storm.  The early christians, imprisoned, beaten and persecuted even to death, would have had but poor consolation, if they had not had a better friend than music to have relied upon in the hour of their distress.  And here I think the Quakers would particularly condemn music, if they thought it could be resorted to in the hour of affliction, in as much as it would then have a tendency to divert the mind from its true and only support.

Music, again, does not appear to them to be productive of elevated thoughts, that is, of such thoughts as raise the mind to sublime and spiritual things, abstracted from the inclinations, the temper, and the prejudices of the world.  The most melodious sounds that human instruments can make, are from the earth earthly.  But nothing can rise higher than its own origin.  All true elevation therefore can only come, in the opinion of the Quakers, from the divine source.

The Quakers therefore, seeing no moral utility in music, cannot make it a part of their education.  But there are other considerations, of a different nature, which influence them in the same way.

Music, in the first place, is a sensual gratification.  Even those who run after sacred music, never consider themselves as going to a place of devotion, but where, in full concert, they may hear the performance of the master pieces of the art.  This attention to religious compositions, for the sake of the music, has been noticed by one of our best poets.