268 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



cesses that underlie the musical utterances of song 

 and those that subserve spoken words. There is, 

 in fact, every imaginable transition between the 

 most prosaic of spoken words uttered without re- 

 gard to pitch or rhythm and the most poetic ver- 

 bal expressions designed expressly for song. Poetry 

 and music are thus most intimately affiliated in 

 their origin, and the resemblance between these arts 

 extends to their contents. It is equally within the 

 sphere of music and of poetry to be the vehicle for 

 feelings based on the instinct of self-preservation, or 

 on the instinct of sex, or on the fusion of both these 

 primitive instincts, and it seems probable that in a 

 rude way both music and poetry did actually subserve 

 the expression of these instincts at a very early period 

 of the race history. That men used vocal music as a 

 means of self-aggrandizement long before they used 

 it to give expression to the subtle and refined phases 

 of human love, seems as obvious as the corresponding 

 truth in respect to painting. We may draw on the 

 Greeks for examples of this inequality in the expres- 

 sion of somatic as compared with sexually based 

 feelings. Plutarch says of them: "And their very 

 songs had a life and spirit in them that inflamed and 

 possessed men's minds with an enthusiasm and ardor 

 for action ; the style of them was plain and without 

 affectation; the subject always serious and moral; 

 most usually it was in praise of such men as had died 

 in defense of their country, or in derision of those 

 that had been cowards. There were also vaunts of 



