336 THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 



the picture into an organic whole; and the success with 

 which unity of effect is educed from variety of components, 

 is a chief test of merit. 



In music, progressive integration is displayed in still 

 more numerous ways. The simple cadence embracing but 

 a few notes, which in the chants of savages is monotonously 

 repeated, becomes, among civilized races, a long series of 

 different musical phrases combined into one whole ; and so 

 complete is the integration, that the melody cannot be 

 broken off in the middle, nor shorn of its final note, without 

 giving us a painful sense of incompleteness. When to the 

 air, a bass, a tenor, and an alto are added; and when to the 

 harmony of different voice-parts there is added an accom- 

 paniment ; we see exemplified integrations of another order, 

 which grow gradually more elaborate. And the process 

 is carried a stage higher when these complex solos, con- 

 certed pieces, choruses, and orchestral effects, are com- 

 bined into the vast ensemble of a musical drama ; of which, 

 be it remembered, the artistic perfection largely consists 

 in the subordination of the particular effects to the total 

 effect. 



Once more the Arts of literary delineation, narrative 

 and dramatic, furnish us with parallel illustrations. The 

 tales of primitive times, like those with which the story- 

 tellers of the East still daily amuse their listeners, are made 

 up of successive occurrences that are not only in themselves 

 unnatural, but have no natural connexion: they are but so 

 many separate adventures put together without necessary 

 sequence. But in a good modern work of imagination, the 

 events are the proper products of the characters working 

 under given conditions; and cannot at will be changed in 

 their order or kind, without injuring or destroying the 

 general effect. Further, the characters themselves, which 

 in early fictions play their respective parts without show- 

 ing how their minds are modified by one another or by the 

 events, are now presented to us as held together by com- 



