ORIGIN OF LITERARY FORMS. 675 



aesthetics by blending into an indissoluble trinity mimicry, music, 

 and poetry, or, in short, song and the scenic dance. In fact, as we 

 have often shown, articulate speech begins by being the least im- 

 portant member of that aesthetic trinity; a simple accessory of 

 the song — that is, of rhythmical, cadenced modulations — it defines 

 their sense, but can not separate itself from them, and often gives 

 place to simple modulated cries, to interjections, and to onomato- 

 poeias. In fact, with different primitive peoples, we have found 

 species of romances without words, traces of an ancient interjec- 

 tional poetry which probably preceded spoken poetry. The inter - 

 jectional refrains, frequent among primitive men and in our popu- 

 lar songs, are evidently survivals of this same aesthetics. 



We have seen that in all the earth the object sought by the 

 primitive peoples in their dances and ballets is less the pleasure 

 of rhythmical motion, to which they are, however, very sensitive, 

 than significant, scenic mimicry, reproducing acts and adventures 

 fitted to excite a lively interest in the little social community of 

 which they form a part. What they want most of all is an ex- 

 pressive spectacle, giving the idea of a hunt, a battle, a cannibal 

 feast, and their incidents ; but such a dramatic ballet supposes the 

 existence of a close association, of that communal clan which we 

 meet in the origin of all societies, and which has everywhere mod- 

 eled primitive aesthetics. These choral dances, these opera-ballets 

 of savages, constitute in all races the collective rejoicings or cere- 

 monials of the clans. We have found them among the Tasma- 

 nians, the Papuans, the Kafirs, the Polynesians, the American In- 

 dians, the Hebrews, the Greeks, and other nations. These scenic 

 diversions always represent events of capital interest for the little 

 social unity; and the nature of the events differs according to 

 the degree of civilization. With the American Indians, they re- 

 fer to the hunt or to war ; with the Chinese, to different incidents 

 in rural life, labor, the harvest, etc. 



These beginnings of literary aesthetics explain to us why, among 

 civilized peoples, music excites many persons to movement, to 

 action ; it is because the two were long associated in the ancient 

 clans. But it addresses itself to very intelligent persons, with 

 whom the necessity for muscular activity yields to that for mental 

 activity, to the feelings, to the thought, when music, instead of 

 exciting the muscular system, awakens the heart or stimulates the 

 mind. It, for example, inspires in a Stendhal the desire to co- 

 operate in the enfranchisement of Greece ; in an Alfieri, plans for 

 tragedy ; and in a John Stuart Mill, philosophical speculations. Iu 

 all these cases, in short, music plays the part of an excitant that 

 determines different reactions according to the various modes of 

 the mental organization. 



The taste for measured, rhythmical musical sounds is, as we 



