246 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 349 



is the spontaneous outburst of the human soul in response to the 

 music of the physical and animal world. The sighing of the 

 winds, the murmur of the rills, the roaring of the cataracts, the 

 dash of the waves on the shore, the singing of the forests, the 

 melodies of birds, — all these and many more have been considered 

 as the teachers of music to man. The objective study of music 

 among the lower tribes of mankind and among the various peoples 

 of the world in different stages of culture, and of the history of 

 music itself as developed by our own race, leads to a different con- 

 clusion. 



Kids gambol among the rocks as if filled with joy ; colts run 

 about the pastures as if mad with ecstasy ; cooing babes pommel 

 vacuity and kick at void with hands and feet as pink and soft as 

 petals of the rose, and seem delighted with the gift of new-born 

 life ; lads and lasses play in the park with shouts and laughter, as 

 if existence was forever a May-day of sport. 



There is pleasure in activity. The laboratory of life evolves a 

 surplus of motion the expenditure of which gives rise to joyous 

 emotions expressed in rollicking, boisterous play. 



In youth and health and vigor there is in the exercise of the 

 muscles and the motions of the limbs a joy which may be heigh- 

 tened as many become associated in the same activities, — brothers, 

 sisters, cousins, sweethearts, wives, husbands, and parents. Let 

 them unite in sportive activities, and the very ecstasy of motion is 

 produced. When such physical activities are systemized, the 

 dance is organized. When a group of pleasure-seekers organize 

 their activities in such a manner that the motion of every one is in 

 harmony with the motion of every other one, the merry dance is an 

 art and a social institution, and every one's joy is multiplied by 

 every other one's joy. Then rhythm of motion becomes rhythm of 

 emotion. 



Man early learned that it was easier to control movements of 

 dance by sound than by sight, and so he marked the rhythm of the 

 dance by sounds of the voice or by sounds of the drum. 



Blue-eyed children play with the brown-eyed, and brown-eyed 

 children play with the black-eyed, and they all join hands and play 

 " ring-around-a-rosy ; " and out of this childish sport, by minute 

 increments, musical rhythm becomes. 



The first dancers were the men who lived in the forests, around 

 the sheltered bays of the sea, on shores where quiet lakes mirrored 

 the wild bird's flight, or on banks where the fishes sported in the 

 wavelets of the brook. 



The Eden of these sylvan men was large. It was walled with 

 ice, so that men could not wander away to the north pole or to the 

 south pole ; but between these frozen regions the temperate and 

 torrid lands were open. Before they learned to fashion stone 

 knives, before they learned to use stone tomahawks, before they 

 learned to use bone awls, before they learned to wear shell beads, 

 before they learned to build shelters of boughs and bark and stone, 

 — while yet naked animals, — men were found in every quarter of 

 the globe. There were men on every shore, and there were men 

 on the banks of every river. Sylvan men and women, boys and 

 girls of the forest, dusky babes of the wood, were scattered through- 

 out the whole habitable earth before the rudest human arts were 

 invented, probably before organized languages were formed, and 

 probably before institutions were organized. How do we know 

 this is true ? Is it the story of a romancer who finds the origin of 

 the glacial drift in the lashing of a comet's tail .' No, this conclu- 

 sion is reached through the labors of an army of patient, earnest, 

 keen-visioned investigators. They have found the birthplace of 

 art not alone in one land, but in all lands. The vestiges of the 

 crudest arts are found everywhere, and men began the career of 

 artisans everywhere. It is found that men were already distributed 

 throughout the world when they first began to use the simplest 

 tools. Something more of interest is found. It is discovered that 

 the time when the first art-culture began was long ago, — very long 

 ago; not long when compared with the geologic history of the 

 earth, but very long when compared with the book recorded his- 

 tory of man. Archceologists have found vestiges of the beginnings 

 of human art in geologic formations, and they have found them in 

 all lands. So the " Garden of Eden " was all the world, and the 

 sons of Adam were a host. 

 As time passed on from that ancient epoch when men had 



landed on every shore, they slowly, very slowly, improved in their 

 arts : for later and still later geologic formations contain vestiges^ 

 of higher and still higher arts, until at last men could make pottery 

 and weave garmentsand cultivate the soil; and from that time on, 

 we have human industry recorded in books. 



Early human history is recorded in the rock-leaved bible of 

 geology ; late human history is recorded in paper-leaved books 

 of libraries. Let us take up the story of music as a human art at 

 the time when the late history commences, for that will serve our 

 purposes. 



All the sylvan people of the world rejoice in dancing. So far as 

 we know, it was the earliest of the sesthetic arts, for we find it 

 highly developed at the very birth of all other fine arts. This is 

 because its foundation is laid in the physical constitution of man : 

 it is the expression of the joy of animal life. These sylvan men 

 danced by firelight, and forever they varied the rhythm of their 

 dances with short steps and long steps, with steps to the right and 

 steps to the left, with steps forward and steps backward : so dances 

 came to be composed of a succession of varied steps, so rounded 

 as to make a complete number in a figure of motion. A figure of 

 motion, a complement of steps, is repeated over and over again, 

 and the voices of the dancers are trained to chant the rhythm to 

 guide their feet in the dance. To mark the varied steps to each 

 complement or theme of motion, the voice is varied : long notes 

 and short notes are used, and then loud notes and soft notes ; and 

 yet there is nothing but rhythm. Then they begin to vary their 

 voices as a guide to the moving feet by changing the vocal pitch, 

 and the simple chant becomes. First, the voice varies only in 

 time; then it varies in time and stress ; then it varies in time and 

 stress and pitch, and the chant is almost a melody. So the music 

 of the lowliest men known to modern investigators is but rhythm. 

 It is the universal music. All music in all times is based on rhythm, 

 but some music has more than rhythm. The music of the savage 

 has been improved. The sylvan man developed the first element 

 of music to a high degree. 



At this stage the chant of unmeaning syllables undergoes change, 

 for the emotions that are kindled by the dance are expressed in 

 words, — first a few simple expressions of emotion, mere interjec- 

 tions, then exclamatory phrases, then exclamatory sentences, and 

 the egg of poetry is laid. 



This embryonic poetry is devoid of rhythm ; for the rhythm yet 

 belongs to the voice, not to the literature. The rhythm does not 

 grow out of the words of the chant, but the rhythm of the chant is 

 imposed on the words. 



The stage of culture of this sylvan man is called " savagery ; " 

 and it is very long ; and during all these centuries, and centuries 

 of centuries, tribes of kindred mfen dance and chant. At the foot 

 of the glaciers they have their homes, and walls of ice echo their 

 chants ; by mountain crags they have their homes, and the rocks 

 echo their chants ; in the valleys they have their homes, and the 

 savannas are filled with their chants ; in tropical forests they have 

 their homes, and "the sounding aisles of the dim woods" ring 

 with their chants. 



When sentences are used to express the emotions kindled by the 

 dance, the leader repeats the words and the people chanf the re- 

 frain ; and more and more he gains a freedom in composition, and 

 he varies his chant with new sentences, iterating and reiterating 

 the emotional theme. In this way poetry becomes, and we have 

 dancing-master poets and dance songs. As the dancing-master 

 poet varies his theme of poetry, so he varies his theme of music, 

 and melody becomes. Poetry and melody are twins born of the 

 dancing chant. Thus it is that "ring-around-a-rosy" becomes a 

 song. 



At first musical rhythm is an auxiliary of the dance : the rhythm 

 of music and the rhythm of motion are partners. When unmean- 

 ing syllables are replaced by emotional words and sentences, music 

 and poetry live together. Sometimes it is dancing and music only ; 

 sometimes it is dancing, music, and poetry altogether ; sometimes 

 it IS music and poetry only. 



So the grandchild of the dance and the child of the chant grows, 

 and is emancipated from, the control of dancing, and becomes an 

 art associated with poetry. Priests sing as they perform religious 

 rites, women sing as they grind at the mill, children sing at their 



