NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOL. VIII 



icebergs forever sail, to be defeated and overwhelmed by the 

 hot winds of the tropics. The lands with happy valleys and 

 majestic mountains rise from the sea, built by the waves and 

 fashioned by fire and storm. Over all rests the ambient air, 

 moving gently in breezes, rushing madly in winds, and hurling 

 its storms against the hills and mountains of the sea and the 

 hills and mountains of the land. . . . Looking above the 

 earth, the worlds of the universe are presented to view, and 

 their wonders fill the soul. So music has come to be the lan- 

 guage of the emotions kindled by the glories of the universe/' 

 But this part of the address confessedly advances too rapidly. 

 The higher phases of modern music are European, and Eu- 

 rope, with its civilized peoples, is a part of the world in which 

 Powell was not at home, as he was in the Great West with its 

 savages. It is doubtless true that "as the blue egg becomes a 

 robin, ... so 'ring-around-a-rosy' becomes a sym- 

 phony," but the last stages of this evolutionary becoming need 

 another author for their analysis. 



INDUCTIVE STUDIES 



In contrast to this rhapsodic address, with its imagined ex- 

 amples, its redundant and sometimes extravagant phrasing, 

 and its synthetic treatment, it is desirable to make reference 

 to Powell's inductive work, which is couched in much simpler 

 style. An early example of this kind, already mentioned, is 

 found in an article on "Wyandot government : a short study of 

 tribal society" (First Ann. Rept. Bureau Ethnology, 1881, pp. 

 59-69) ; this is a purely objective study of the subdivision of a 

 group of Indians into gentes and phratries, of their method of 

 choosing councillor and chiefs, and of the functions of their 

 civil and military government. It is practically free from in- 

 ferences and theories of origin, except in a page or two of 

 general remarks clearly separated from the pages of more in- 

 ductive treatment. Much of Powell's fundamental work seems 

 to have been of this safe kind, but its statement was usually 

 elided in his synthetic addresses. 



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