THE ARTS AND RELIGION 277 



be sought in the greater simplicity of the medium 

 of literary expression. So great are the technical 

 difficulties relating to music that the development of 

 the art was greatly delayed by the necessity for 

 mastering these, and to this day it remains the 

 medium in which the fewest artists are able to work 

 with success. Painting also demands highly special 

 technical conditions, which make it relatively easy 

 to meet with measurable success, but extremely 

 difficult or impossible to ideally satisfy, owing to the 

 poor control that even modern artists possess over 

 the lengths of light waves as compared with control 

 over the lengths of sound waves. But literature uses 

 a medium that makes lesser demands on the technical 

 ingenuity of a race than either painting or music, and 

 hence we find many nations that have left respect- 

 able verbal records, but neither musical nor form- 

 color traces. So it has come about that we have in 

 literature far more complete evidences of the causal 

 nexus with the basic instincts through a long period 

 of time. Nevertheless, the literatures of ancient 

 peoples are so incomplete as to give us only an 

 occasional glimpse into their dominant thoughts. 

 But from these glimpses we learn that in literature, 

 as in music and painting, the expression of the 

 somatic instinct precedes and overshadows those 

 based on sex. The oldest Egyptian writings con- 

 sist of appeals to the gods, of directions for achiev- 

 ing salvation, of boasts about personal prowess 

 and conquests. Occasionally, as in the " Egyptian 



