302 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



must have been considerable progress in the speci- 

 fication of language, and special songs must have 

 been disintegrated from common speech, which was 

 at first an inchoate song. Possibly some rude in- 

 struments were invented for amusement or some 

 other purpose before this specification had taken 

 place. At any rate the use of various instruments 

 for accompaniment was preceded by gesticulation, or 

 the spontaneous striking of some object which coin- 

 cided with animated speech, or which accompanied it 

 in sonorous cadences. 



The rhythm which stimulated primitive men to 

 speak in song, also impelled them to accompany it 

 with gestures and movements of the body, and this 

 was the origin of the dance, which, when the body 

 moved in correspondence with cadenced utterances, 

 was at first merely the accompaniment of song. Tra- 

 dition, modern ethnography, and the primitive habits 

 of children bear witness to this fact. In addition to 

 the rhythmic motion of all parts of the body, there 

 is the practice of spontaneously beating time with the 

 hands and feet, which were doubtless the first in- 

 struments used by man as a musical accompaniment. 

 Hence, owing to the facility of construction, there 

 arose percussion instruments, which were at first 

 made of stone or pieces of wood. So that singing, 

 dancing, accompaniment with the limbs or with some 

 rudely fashioned object arose almost simultaneously, 

 as soon as the process of specification had established 



