DREAMS AND ILLUSIONS. 297 



these became in their turn the causes and genesis of 

 versification and metre. The classic experiments of 

 Helniholtz show that each note may be regarded as a 

 harmonic whole, owing to the complementary sounds 

 which accompany it in its complete development. 

 With reference to our own race, the genesis of the 

 composition of verse and metre are shown by the 

 researches made by Westphal and others into the 

 metrical system of the Vedic Aryans, the Turanians, 

 and the Greeks, since the fact that their metres were 

 the same implies a common origin. The demonstra- 

 tion is complete, if we compare the iambic metre of 

 Archilochus with that of the Vedic hymns. There 

 are in both three series of iambuses the dimeter, the 

 cataleptic trimeter, and the acataleptic.* 



* While these sheets -were passing through the press, I was in- 

 formed of Berg's work on the Enjoyment of Music. (" Die Lust an der 

 Musik." Berlin, 1879.) Berg, who is a realist, inquires what is the 

 source of the pleasure we experience from the regular succession of 

 sounds, which he holds to be the primary essence of music. He finds 

 the cause in some of Darwin's theories and researches. Darwin 

 observes that the epoch of song coincides with that of love in the case 

 of singing animals, birds, insects, and some mammals ; and from this 

 Berg concludes that primitive men, or rather anthropoids, made use 

 of the voice to attract the attention of females. Hence a relation was 

 established between singing and the sentiments of love, rivalry, and 

 pleasure ; this relation was indissolubly fused into the nature by here- 

 dity, and it persisted even after singing ceased to be excited by its 

 primitive cause. Tins applies to the general sense of pleasure in 

 musii. We have next to inquire why the ear prefers certain sounds 

 to others, certain combinations to others, etc. Berg holds that it 

 depends on negative causes, that the ear does not select the most 

 pleasing but the least painful sounds. He relies on Helmholtz's 

 fundamental theory of sounds. It seems to me that although Helm- 

 holta's theory is true, that of Berg is erroneous, since he is quite 



