26 PEOGRESS : ITS LAW AND CAUSE. 



multiplied, we may presume that music came to have an 

 existence apart from words. And both of them were be- 

 ginning to assume other forms besides the religious. 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 ver- 

 sified by themselves to music of their own composition : 

 thus uniting the now separate offices of poet, composer, vo- 

 caUst, and instrumentalist. But, without further illustra- 

 tion, the common origin and gradual differentiation 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 dif- 

 ferentiations 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, 

 percussive — sticks, calabashes, tom-toms — and were used 

 simply to mark the time of the dance ; and in this constant 

 repetition of the same sound, we see music in its most 

 homogeneous form. 



The Egyptians had a lyre with three strings. The 

 early lyre of the Greeks had four, constituting their tetra- 

 chord. In course of some centuries lyres of seven and 

 eight strings were employed. And, by the expiration of 

 athousand years, they had advanced to their " great system *' 

 of the double octave. Through all which changes there of 

 course arose a greater heterogeneity of melody. Simulta^- 

 neously there came into use the different modes — Dorian, 



