MUSIC OLDER THAN SPEECH 259 



instincts have been suppressed from the cradle, it 

 will break away and start dancing or whirling about. 

 This lighter music appeals less to adults than to 

 children, because the inherited associations of play 

 are strongest in our early years. 



We may say then that music is essentially a refined 

 and beautiful expression of all emotions common to 

 all men in all stages of life; that because of this 

 origin its appeal is universal, its hold on us so power- 

 ful. Beethoven, speaking of his own music, said that 

 those who listened to it were lifted above this earth 

 into a higher sphere and state. It may be so: I do 

 not know; but I do know that it takes me back; 

 that it wears an expression which startles and holds 

 me, that it is essentially the "Passion of the Past" 

 — not of mine only, my own little emotional experi- 

 ences, but that of the race, the inherited remem- 

 brances or associations of its passionate life, back to 

 a period so remote that it cannot be measured by 

 years. A dreadful past, but at so great a distance 

 that it is like the giant terrifying mountain, the 

 heart-breaking stony wilderness with winter ever- 

 lasting for its crown, seen afar off, softened and 

 glorified with rose and purple colour, at eventide. 



Thus then, to begin at the beginning, we may 

 say that song does not derive from speech, or not 

 wholly from it; nor is it a twin birth with speech, 

 but existed before it in its elemental state, and was 

 a forerunner and prognostic of speech from the time 

 of the marriage of sound with emotion. And this 

 union we know exists in animals as well as in man. 



