PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 843* 



into distinguishable sub-classes while acquiring a definite em- 

 bodiment. 



Less early, because implying more developed groups, arose 

 those who as exhibitors of joy, now in the presence of the living 

 ruler and now in the supposed presence of the deceased ruler, 

 were at first simultaneously singers and dancers, and becoming 

 specialized from the people at large, presently became distinct 

 from one another : whence, in course of time, two groups of pro- 

 fessionals, whose official laudations, political or religious, extended 

 in their range and multiplied in their kinds. And then by like 

 steps were separated from one another vocal and instrumental 

 musicians, and eventually composers ; within which classes also 

 there arose subdivisions. 



Ovations, now to the living king and now to the dead king, 

 while taking saltatory and musical forms, took also verbal forms, 

 originally spontaneous and irregular, but presently studied and 

 measured : whence, first, the unrhythmical speech of the orator, 

 which under higher emotional excitement grew into the rhyth- 

 mical speech of the priest-poet, chanting verses verses that finally 

 became established hymns of praise. Meanwhile from accompany- 

 ing rude imitations of the hero's acts, performed now by one and 

 now by several, grew dramatic representations, which little by 

 little elaborated, fell under the regulation of a chief actor, who 

 prefigured the playwright. And out of these germs, all pertaining 

 to worship, came eventually the various professions of poets, 

 actors, dramatists, and the subdivisions of these. 



The great deeds of the hero-god, recited, chanted or sung, and 

 mimetically rendered, naturally came to be supplemented by de- 

 tails, so growing into accounts of his life; and thus the priest- 

 poet gave origin to the biographer, whose narratives, being ex- 

 tended to less sacred personages, became secularized. Stories of 

 the apotheosized chief or king, joined with stories of his compan- 

 ions and amplified by narratives of accompanying transactions, 

 formed the first histories. And from these accounts of the doings 

 of particular men and groups of men, partly true but passing by 

 exaggeration into the mythical, came the wholly mythical, or 

 fiction ; which then and always preserved the biographico-histor- 

 ical character. Add to which that out of the criticisms and reflec- 

 tions scattered through this personal literature an impersonal 

 literature slowly emerged: the whole group of these products 

 having as their deepest root the eulogies of the priest-poet. 



Prompted as were the medicine-men of savages and the priests 

 of early civilized peoples to increase their influence, they were 

 ever stimulated to acquire knowledge of natural actions and the 

 properties of things ; and, being in alleged communication with 

 supernatural beings, they were supposed to acquire such knowl- 



