On Music and Its Influence (for Good and Bad)

From John Meade Falkner, The Lost Stradivarius, 1895:

"We are at present only on the threshold of such a knowledge of that art as will enable us to use it eventually as the greatest of the humanising and educational agents. Music will prove a ladder to the loftier regions of thought".

"We must remember that the influence of music, though always powerful, is not always for good. We can scarcely doubt that as certain forms of music tend to raise us above the sensuality of the animal, or the more degrading passion of material gain, and to transport us into the ether of higher thought, so other forms are directly calculated to awaken in us luxurious emotions, and to whet those sensual appetites which it is the business of a philosopher not indeed to annihilate or to be ashamed of, but to keep rigidly in check".

I see what he means.

The loftier regions.

Halfway house?