678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



least capable of accompanying the song, and, as a final achieve- 

 ment, of taking the place of the voice in the execution of any 

 given air. History witnessed the latter part of this musical evo- 

 lution in Greece, where music finally separated itself from vocal 

 song, of which it had for a long time been only an accessory. 



As of necessity, poetry proper has strictly followed the trans- 

 formations of this aesthetics. For a long time the subjects 

 represented in the choral dances of the clan had an entirely im- 

 personal character. These subjects were mythological, warlike, 

 funereal, and nuptial scenes, in which the rhythmical words had 

 necessarily to express ideas and feeling in harmony with the scene 

 played. It is not necessary to say that these feelings and ideas 

 were extremely simple ; but in substance and form they were of a 

 nature to interest the whole of the little social groups. 



The duration of the primitive age of the communal clan must 

 have been enormous, and it has marked its impression on the 

 larger and more and more individualist societies that came out 

 from it, but which did not free themselves in a day from the 

 hereditarily transmissible tastes and tendencies the legacy of a 

 long ancestral education. 



Nevertheless, literary aesthetics has suffered modifications with 

 the progress of social evolution ; for it has had to express feelings 

 and ideas more and more complex and varied. With the progress 

 of differentiation, or of social inequality, arose numerous conflicts 

 between the strong and the weak, the patrician and the plebeian, 

 the rich and the poor. 



These vexations, these violences, suffered by some and exer- 

 cised by others, excited numerous new feelings, and often more 

 personal, than the ancient choirs could express and re-echo to 

 their hearers. The property thus became more and more individ- 

 ual, and there resulted from it a gradually increasing restriction 

 of the social relations which the communal clan had only loosely 

 regulated. The restricted promiscuousness of the early ages was 

 replaced almost everywhere by a marriage, sometimes polygamic, 

 sometimes monogamic, but legal, and making of women things 

 possessed. The ancient liberty of love was abolished, but the 

 genetic instinct is in its nature exacting and rebellious. When 

 we attempt to chain it we excite passionate desires, intense feel- 

 ings, that subjugate the whole mental life. The genetic fetters 

 resulting from the new social organization will therefore arouse 

 in the human brain new impressions and ideas of shades different 

 according to the individuals. But all these psychical elements, at 

 once new and intense, sought expression and reflection in a litera- 

 ture made in their image. Hence resulted the gradual blooming 

 out of a new lyric poetry, which gradually tended to substitute 

 itself for the choral lyric of the earlier ages. 



