THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



AUGUST, 1895. 

 PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 



IV. ORATOR AND POET, ACTOR AND DRAMATIST. 

 By HERBERT SPENCER. 



THINGS which during evolution become distinct were of course 

 originally mingled: the process of evolution implies this. 

 Already we have seen that in the triumphal reception of the con- 

 queror, originally spontaneous and rude but in course of time be- 

 coming an established ceremonial elaborated into definite forms, 

 there were germs of various arts and the professors of them. 

 With the beginnings of dancing and music just described, were 

 joined the beginnings of oratory, poetry, acting and the drama ; 

 here, for convenience, to be treated of separately. All of them 

 manifestations of exalted emotion, at first miscellaneous and con- 

 fused in their display, they only after many repetitions became 

 regularized and parted out among different persons. 



With the shouts of applause greeting David and Saul, came, 

 from the mouths of some, proclamations of their great deeds ; as, 

 by Miriam, there had been proclamation of Yahveh's victory over 

 the Egyptians. Such proclamations, at first brief and simple, ad- 

 mit of development into long and laudatory speeches ; and, with 

 utterance of these, begins the orator. Then among orators occa- 

 sionally arises one more fluent and emotional than ordinary, whose 

 oration, abounding in picturesque phrases and figures of speech, 

 grows from time to time rhythmical, and hence the poet. The 

 laudations, comparatively simple in presence of the living ruler, 

 and afterward elaborated in the supposed presence of the apoth- 

 eosized ruler, are, in the last case, sometimes accompanied by 

 mimetic representations of his achievements. Among children, 

 everywhere much given to dramatizing the doings of adults, we 



VOL. XL VII. 35 



