KHYTHMIC MOTION UNDER EXCITEMENT. 223 



ly, slurred intervals are expressive of gentler and less active 

 feelings ; and are so because tbey imply the smaller muscu- 

 lar vivacity due to a lower mental energy. The diflerence 

 of effect resulting from difference of time in music, is also 

 attributable to the same law. Already it has been pointed 

 out that the more frequent changes of pitch which ordina- 

 rily result from passion, are imitated and developed in song \ 

 and here we have to add, that the various rates of such 

 changes, appropriate to the different styles of music, are 

 further traits having the same derivation. The slowest 

 movements, largo and adagio^ are used where such depress- 

 ing emotions as grief, or such unexciting emotions as rev- 

 erence, are to be portrayed ; while the more rapid move 

 ments, andante^ allegro^ presto^ represent successively in- 

 creasing degrees of mental vivacity ; and do this because 

 they imply that muscular activity which flows from this 

 mental vivacity. Even the rhyth'}n^ which forms a remain- 

 ing distinction between song and speech, may not improb- 

 ably have a kindred cause. Why the actions excited by 

 strong feeling should tend to become rhythmical, is not 

 very obvious ; but that they do so there are divers eviden- 

 ces. There is the swaying of the body to and fro under 

 pain or grief, of the leg under imj^atience or agitation. 

 Dancing, too, is a rhythmical action natural to elevated emo- 

 tion. That under excitement speech acquires a certain 

 rhythm, we may occasionally perceive in the highest efforts 

 of an orator. In poetry, which is a form of speech used 

 for the better expression of emotional ideas, we have this 

 rhythmical tendency developed. And when we bear in 

 mind that dancing, poetry, and music are connate — are ori- 

 ginally constituent parts of the same thing, it becomes 

 clear that the measured movement common to them all im- 

 plies a rhythmical action of the whole system, the vocal ap- 

 paratus included ; and that so the rhythm of music is a more 

 subtle and complex result of this relation between mental 

 and muscular excitement. 



