744 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



where these arts, independently developed, were first brought to- 

 gether for this purpose. We shall find, on the contrary, that 

 every form of the drama was derived from some simpler form in 

 which all the arts were constituents, until we arrive at the 

 mimetic dance as the prototype of the whole series of dramatic 

 phases. We are by no means justified in supposing that, at some 

 time in the past, near or remote, a sculptor, without predecessors 

 or examples, inspired by the impulse of a divine genius, modeled 

 for himself a perfect human form in clay, and then with chisel 

 and hammer proceeded to disengage a copy of this form from the 

 solid marble. As little can we suppose that a great painter, with- 

 out antecedents or training, arose in the midst of an inartistic gen- 

 eration, stretched his canvas, mixed for the first time his pig- 

 ments, and executed a landscape or an ideal head. This is not in 

 analogy with other lines of human development. As every great 

 orator was once a speechless infant, finding language ready for 

 his tongue and comprehension in his hearers, so every great artist 

 has found a language of artistic expression waiting for his genius 

 to improve and lovers of art ready to enjoy his creations. And 

 thus we see that as the mechanic arts do not blush to confess 

 that every wheel in every watch and every factory owes its 

 parentage to the discovery that a fallen tree-trunk will roll under 

 pressure, which probably first revealed the principle of the wheel, 

 so the fine arts need not be ashamed of their descent from the 

 mimetic dance. Let no idealistic devotee of art, therefore, be 

 shocked or offended if we say that all the fine arts were at first 

 incidental contributions to the dramatic festival, and afterward 

 were analyzed out of this common medium of their development 

 as independent forms of culture. 



In all dramatization music has had a large place, either as the 

 recurrent drum-tap, the percussion of cymbals, the twanging of 

 stringed instruments like the tetrachord of the Greeks, or the 

 blowing of pipes and horns. Between the intervals of dancing it 

 is common in primitive ceremonies for some person to sing a few 

 words alternated with a uniform chorus — and such, it has been 

 suggested, might be the origin of the Greek strophe and antistro- 

 phe, " which are thought to represent the two movements of the 

 universe from east to west, and west to east, the choir performing 

 their dances around the altar of their gods from right to left and 

 left to right." Thus was developed a lyric which gradually ex- 

 panded into a poetic story. This, in time, developed into the 

 recital of the rhapsodists who sang at the public festivals, which 

 were largely dramatic in their character, and these fragments of 

 heroic verse united and amplified become at last great epics like 

 the Iliad and the Odyssey. 



The relation of architecture to the festival is very easy to 



