ESTHETIC IMPULSES 85 



northern latitudes of Europe and America, where 

 some body covering is needed, by far the greater 

 part of the expenditure that is incurred upon 

 dress goes to provide adornment for the body, 

 not protection. Dancing is a passion with many 

 birds : peacocks and cranes dance before their 

 mates, tame parrots will dance to a tune, the 

 movements in both cases resembling, not very 

 distantly, the jerky undulations of the Eastern 

 dancing girl, and the rhythmical spasms which 

 follow " rag time " music in Western ball-rooms. 

 It expresses an appreciation of rhythm which has 

 led to the invention of rhythmical instruments, 

 such as the drum, the tom-tom, and the castanets. 

 Singing is a wonderful and charming talent of 

 bird life : reptiles, the cousins of birds, are capable 

 of its rudiments, and many insects express their 

 joy in the sunlight by uttering sounds, which to 

 us may seem harsh, but are beyond a doubt 

 ecstatic. The Cicala gives up almost half its 

 body to the mechanism of its notes, and may be 

 likened to an animated musical box. Men and 

 women are, perhaps, inferior to birds in natural 

 capacity for singing ; but, finding in the instinct 

 a basis ror the artificial composition ol music and 

 the cultivation of the voice, they have elaborated 

 melodies, harmonies, and methods of execution 

 which appeal most touchingly to human feelings 

 and can work marvellous transformations in 

 human moods. Declamation, or recitation, is 

 allied to singing, and is the origin of poetry, 

 rhetoric, and style in prose. Prostration 1 is asso- 

 ciated with the emotions of wonder, admiration, 

 dread, and self-abnegation. Men share this 



1 Some of the manifestations of the self-abandoning impulse may 

 hardly be distinguished from expressions of pleasure and pain, or 

 of the emotions the manifestations, that is to say, of reflected 

 impulses. But they are generally marked by greater definitiveness 

 of purpose. 



