378 ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PARIS. 



have founded witliin two years past, under the presidency of M. Leguaj', the 

 Parisian Socicfij of Arcliceology and History. In this younger association, which 

 so many ties connect with our own, arch8eoh)gical facts are set forth in all their 

 details and are discussed for their own sake, while among- ourselves the archaeo- 

 logical demonstration is, so to speak, but the preliminary of the anthropological 

 facts which result therefrom; and hence it frequently happens that the same 

 researches, without involving useless repetition, present themselves at the same 

 time in both societies under dffferent points of view. This example serves, bet- 

 ter than any other, tc evince the nature of the relations of interdependence [soli- 

 daritc) which exist between anthropology and the sciences grouped around it. 

 It asks from those sciences indications ratlier than didactic developments, and 

 therefore can afford to exclude none of the branches of human knowledge which 

 are capable of furnishing any ideas on the history or the families of mankind. 



Under this head I may point to the importance of the researches of M. Fetis, 

 of Brussels, on the origin of musical systems, and their distribution among the 

 different populations, ancient or modern, civilized or barbarian. This venerable 

 savant has devoted a long life to a study which, previously, had barely attracted 

 the attention of a few virtuosi, but which has become in his hands a real science. 

 Accustomed from our infanc}^ to certain musical impressions, we have been led 

 to believe that our classical gamut is the sole form of harmony, that the division 

 of the octave into five tones and two demi-tones is an institution of nature, and 

 that every modulation whose elements do not enter exactly into this division is 

 false, discordant, contrary to the pre-established order of things. This, how- 

 ever, is but an illusion developed by habit. It suffices to hear or to analyze the 

 strains of the nightingale or linnet to perceive that they cannot be expressed on 

 the keys of our pianos, and to be convinced that the purest harmony may exist 

 outside of our musical system. As for this system, we find it everywhere among 

 the nations which have adopted our own form of civilization. The multitude of 

 strangers drawn to the Universal Exhibition at Paris, after having presented 

 during the day the phenomenon of a complete confusion of tongues, constitute 

 but a single people wher. they congregate at night in the saloon of the opera. 

 Amid the diversity of their idioms, the music establishes between them common 

 sensations, and^ so to say, a common language ; but if the same auditory found 

 itself transported of a sudden into the presence of one of the Chinese orchestras 

 with which our colleague, M. Armand, has lately entertained us, it would sup- 

 pose that it was "listening to a charivari and would stop its ears, much to the 

 scandal of the indigenous spectators, who, for that matter, no more comprehend 

 our musical sj'stem than we theirs. 



Just as linguistics enables us to establish among the groups of mankind dis- 

 tinctions and approximations, the significance of which may admit of discussion, 

 but whose reality is rigorously demonstrable, so the study of musical systems 

 and of their actual distril>ution may furnish valuable indications, if not on the 

 filiation of races, at least on the communications which must have existed between 

 them at epochs more or less remote. For this reason alone, the comprehensive 

 researches of M. Fetis would be worthy of your favorable attestation. The docu- 

 ments which he has collected on the music of nearly all modern nations have 

 led him to establish a certain number of great and well-determined groups. But 

 this conception, however interesting it may 1)0, did not satisfy him. He per- 

 ceived that it was necessary to seek in the study of the jiast the explanation of 

 the present state of things, and has undertaken a labor which may be compared 

 to that of the linguists who, resuscitating dead languages and even reconstruct- 

 ing primitive ones of which no recollection is retained, have succeeded in casting 

 no obscure light upon prehistoric eras. Not content with recombining all writ- 

 ten indications on the music of the ancients, M. Fetis has brought into play the 

 instruments discovered by the archaeologists. The flutes, the fragments of the 

 lyre foiuid in the monuments of Egypt or sculptured on Assyrian bas-reliefs, 



