248 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 349 



when they appeared, a newworld of music burst upon the delighted 

 ears of civilized man. Beaten instruments, reed instruments, wind 

 instruments, and stringed instruments give power and variety, and 

 the capacity for musical production is marvellously increased. Men 

 can sing solos, sing in chorus, and sing in parts within the compass 

 of the human voice ; but with instruments they can play in unison 

 with like instruments, and in harmony with unlike instruments, and 

 with a compass far exceeding that of the voice. Then music is 

 enriched by increasing the compass, it is enriched by increasing 

 the volume, but more than all it is enriched by increasing the va- 

 riety of its kinds. At this stage music is sweet, music is grand — 

 but music must become sublime. 



Instruments of music are but instruments of melody until science 

 comes, when it is learned that sound is a mode of motion, and 

 that low sounds are slow vibrations, and high sounds quick vibra- 

 tions. Then the knowledge comes by which man invents instru- 

 ments of harmony, — co-existent harmony and sequent harmony. 

 Thus science is the last great agency in the evolution of music, for 

 it produces instruments by which symphonies become possible, and 

 music has reached the sublime. 



As the blue egg becomes a robin, as the seed becomes a 5;?- 

 quota, as the sands of the rill become an island, so " ring-around- 

 a-rosy " becomes a symphony. 



Primarily feelings arise from biotic pains and pleasures. It is 

 one of the wonderful transformations of nature that the pain of a 

 blow should slowly, through the years of human culture, develop 

 into the sorrow for sin i that the pleasure of a feast should evolve 

 by the metamorphosis of minute changes into the love of justice. 

 How feeHngs develop into emotions, and emotions into sentiments, 

 and sentiments into jesthetics, is a long and beautiful story which 

 cannot here be told. But the world is full of transformations. 

 The metamorphoses of evolution have been the mysteries of time. 

 In the solution of these mysteries, men have been engaged through 

 untold years, — peering through their purblind primitive ignorance 

 for more light, reasoning with guesses, philosophizing with myths, 

 and believing in errors, but gaining a little truth here and a little 

 there, until by minute increments science has been developed. The 

 evolution of science is itself the mystery of mysteries, the meta- 

 morphosis of metamorphoses, for the germ of science is mythol- 

 ogy. 



With the development of intellect, the emotional nature of man 

 by which he loves and hates has been evolved, and the aesthetic 

 pleasures have arisen under the law of mental association. By 

 association with the joys of life, music has been endowed with its 

 power of producing emotion. This association must be explained. 



I have now spoken of the growth of music as a combination of 

 sounds in succession and in harmony, as it is made by the human 

 voice, and have alluded to the origin of the instruments by which 

 parlor, orchestral, and temple music is produced ; but nothing has 

 been said of the means by which music is endowed with its power 

 to produce emotion. I have told of the body of music, but have 

 said nothing of its soul. Music is freighted with joy and sadness, 

 with hope and fear, with courage and cowardice, with glory and 

 shame: it is freighted with all emotion ; and how does the form 

 of sound become informed with feeling .' 



When primitive man — poor, naked, houseless, savage man — 

 lived in the Eden walled by ice, and was scattered' throughout the 

 garden of the world, his capacities for pleasure were yet little de- 

 veloped. Still he joyed much in his rude way. When the wind 

 blew cold, he warmed himself by the camp-fire ; and when the 

 night was dark, he illumined his home with fire-light ; and about 

 the fire he danced, and in the dance he had resource of joy. When 

 the fisherman came home laden with a bounteous catch, he made 

 merry by the fire-light dance ; when the hunter brought in many 

 pheasants or many antelopes, then, with kith and kin, he made 

 merry by the fire-light dance ; when the rich nuts fell from the 

 trees in bounty, he made merry by the fire-light dance ; when the 

 wind blew chill, he drove the cold away by the camp-fire dance, 

 and when the night was about him he rejoiced in dancing. So the 

 nights of that region where the stars of the Great Bear are over- 

 head, and the nights of that region where the stars of Orion are 

 overhead, and the nights of that region where the Southern Cross 



is overhead, in all the habitable lands of the round earth — the 

 nights were spent in dancing, and the rhythm of the dance 

 and chant became the language of these rude savage emotions. 



But disease and wounds and pain and death were the heritage of 

 this early man. Whence these evils came he knew not ; why they 

 came he could not tell. How they were to be driven away was the 

 enigma of all savage thought. Through an illogical philosophy, 

 the origin of which is a long and strange story, he came to believe 

 that diseases were living beings ; that toothache is the pain wrought 

 by the gnawing mythic worms ; that the cough is caused by mythic 

 insects ; that headache is caused by invisible mythic ants ; and 

 that all diseases and all pains are produced by these mythic 

 agencies. And he tried to drive them away by shrill shrieks, by 

 mad howling, and by horrid imprecation. Then he sought to gain 

 the aid of the friendly spirits of the world, — the good mythic be- 

 ings. To him the rhythm of the dance and the chant was the 

 language of joy. So he sought to woo these friendly spirits by 

 using this language of joy ; and, when wearied with his own efforts 

 at driving away the maleficent spirits, he turned to the dance and 

 the chant, and with them called for the beneficent spirits. In this 

 manner the sylvan man came gradually to believe in the direct 

 efficacy of dance and music as a medicinal agency. Dance and 

 music are the quinine and calomel of the savage, — the " water- 

 cure," the " faith-cure," the " blue-glass cure," the " mind-cure," 

 the " Christian-science cure," the " youth-restoring elixir," the 

 panacea for all human ills. 



When the poor diseased people recovered, the joy of recovery 

 became associated with music. The welcome to health and com- 

 panionship which the poor invalid received was given in dance and 

 music. 



Sometimes storms came and destroyed their rude houses ; some- 

 times drought came and destroyed their harvests ; sometimes fierce 

 winds came and congealed their life-fluids ; sometimes mad light- 

 ning came, and, shivering the trees, ended their lives. And so by 

 flood and wind and lightning, and many other agencies, they be- 

 lieved themselves to be persecuted by the spirits of the animal gods 

 who must be appeased ; and what would please the god so much 

 as music and dancing ? And so they danced to their gods, and 

 beat their drums to their gods, and played their whistles to their 

 gods, and blew their horns to their gods, until the winds stilled, 

 and the storms abated, and the lightnings went out, and the thun- 

 ders hushed, and the floods ran away to the sea ; and then they re- 

 joiced with feasting and dancing and music. 



Before the sylvan man had learned to plant fields, and build 

 storehouses, and provide for future days, he believed that every 

 thing was the gift of his animal gods. The earliest provision that 

 mankind made for the future was to lay up a store of their good 

 win. And how could he gain their good will but by dancing and 

 music ? So at new moons and at new seasons he held festivals in 

 honor of his gods, and gave them dancing and music. 



When, in a later culture, man gathered the fruits of the forest 

 and mead as a store for the winter day, and planted fields and 

 gathered grains, he made thanksgiving to his gods in dancing and 

 music. 



The rallying cry to war was dancing and music. There is an 

 instrument used by savages in many lands that consists of a simple 

 tablet of wood, a hand's breadth in length and a finger's breadth 

 in width, to which a short string is attached iy one end, while the 

 other is [fixed to a stick like a cane. The performer, holding the 

 stick in his hand, whips the tablet of wood through the air in such 

 a manner that it makes a sound, sometimes quick but low, like the 

 whiz of a bullet on the battle-field ; sometimes shrill and loud, hke 

 the shriek of a cannon-ball thrown into a bombarded city. With 

 these instruments a group of naked savage warriors, intent on 

 plunder, rapine, and the midnight murder of men, women, and chil- 

 dren, gather about the camp-fire in the weird dance, and leap and 

 howl and whip their bull-roarers, until they work themselves into a 

 state of fury. 



It was in this manner that the music was freighted with emotion 

 by the sylvan man when it was only rhythm, and when it was- 

 chained to the dance. 



Some music expressed in rhythm and melody has had a long liffr 

 among all the barbaric and civilized peoples of the world. Min- 



