DREAMS AND ILLUSIONS. 313 



As the civilization of the historic races advanced, 

 poetry, singing, and musical instruments became 

 more perfect, and were classified as reflex arts. 

 Among the more intellectual classes the earlier 

 fetishtic ideas connected with them almost dis- 

 appeared, while in the case of the common people, 

 the fetish was idealized, but not therefore lost ; it 

 persisted, and still persists, under other forms. 

 Polytheism, modified to suit the place, time, and 

 race, and yet essentially the same, offers us a more 

 ideal form of the arts, each of which was personified 

 as a god, and taken together they formed a heavenly 

 company, which generated and presided over the arts. 

 The greatest poets and philosophers of antiquity 

 retained a sincere belief in the inspiration of every 

 creation of art ; and this was only a more noble and 

 intellectual form of the first rude and indefinite con- 

 ception by which the arts were embodied in a material 

 shape. 



Of all the Aryan peoples, Greece represented her 

 Olympus in the most glorious mythical form, set 

 forth by all the arts of description. From the poly- 

 theistic point of view, nothing can be sesthetically 

 more perfect than the myths of Apollo and the 

 Muses, which personify harmony in general, and 

 whatever is peculiar to the arts. Such conceptions, 

 by which the arts of speech, song, vocal and instru- 

 mental music were embodied in myths, did not dis- 

 appear as time went on, but were perpetuated in 



