366 THE LAW OF EVOLUTION CONTINUED. 



came to have an existence separate from dancing. The abo- 

 riginal Greek poems, religious in subject, were not recited 

 but chanted ; and though at first the chant of the poet was ac- 

 companied by the dance of the chorus, it ultimately grew 

 into independence. Later still, when the poem had been 

 differentiated into epic and lyric — when it became the cus- 

 tom to sing the lyric and recite the epic — poetry proper was 

 born. As during the same period musical instruments were 

 being multiplied, we may presume that music came 

 to have an existence apart from words. And both of 

 them were beginning to assume other forms besides the re- 

 ligious. Facts having like implications might be 

 cited from the histories of later times and peoples; as the 

 practices of our own early minstrels, who sang to the harp 

 heroic narratives versified by themselves to music of their 

 own composition: thus uniting the now separate offices of 

 poet, composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist. But, without 

 further illustration, the common origin and gradual differ- 

 entiation of Dancing, Poetry, and Music will be sufficiently 

 manifest. 



The advance from the homogeneous to the heterogene- 

 ous is displayed not only in the separation of these arts from 

 each other and from religion, but also in the multiplied 

 differentiations which each of them afterwards undergoes. 

 Not to dwell upon the numberless kinds of dancing that 

 have, in course of time, come into use; and not to occupy 

 space in detailing the progress of poetry, as seen in the de- 

 velopment of the various forms of metre, of rhyme, and of 

 general organization; let us confine our attention to music 

 as a type of the group. As argued by Dr Burney, 



and as implied by the customs of still extant barbarous races, 

 the first musical instruments were, without doubt, percus- 

 sive — sticks, calabashes, tom-toms — and were used simply to 

 mark the time of the dance; and in this constant repeti- 

 tion of the same sound, we see music in its most homo- 

 geneous form. The Egyptians had a lyre with three strings. 



