ORIGIN OF LITERARY FORMS. 677 



poetic form suffices to give any idea a great authority. " Among 

 the Indians," says an old missionary, " a verse, even when quoted 

 inappropriately, gives a great weight to reasoning, and if it con- 

 tains a comparison that seems to illustrate some circumstances of 

 the subject under discussion the very best reasoning can not have 

 equal force with the comparison." * In the same way Arabian 

 orators fancy they obtain great force for their speeches by lard- 

 ing them with citations in verse ; and the Greek writers believed 

 it necessary to give the poetic form to every elevated subject, even 

 to their philosophical systems. 



During the primitive period of literary evolution abstract 

 literature does not come in question ; moreover, poetry in words 

 is never separated from song, and rarely from mimicry ; and this 

 becomes dancing when the motions are controlled by a musical 

 rhythm. Frequently, also, in these archaic festivals the words 

 sung are only an accessory. 



The characteristic traits of the clan, the first social unity, are 

 now well known to us. The primitive clan is a small group, in 

 which the individual exists only as an integrant part of the whole, 

 where consequently all individual acts are subordinated to the 

 interests and needs of the social body, where no one is abandoned 

 but no one is free, where property is more or less common, and 

 where sexual unions are subject to regulations that seem to us 

 strange and even immoral, for they have usually a character of 

 restricted, regulated promiscuity. These narrow associations have 

 been real psychical laboratories to the human race, in which 

 languages, indispensable for mutual understanding and the con- 

 centration of efforts, and myths have been created, besides com- 

 mon feelings, and particularly altruistic feelings, without which 

 no society could endure. 



In the communal clan there is little place for person and for 

 literature, and literary aesthetics necessarily takes the shape of a 

 collective spectacle — of those choral dances, those opera-ballets, 

 in which all the members of the clan are in turn actors and specta- 

 tors, and in which mimicry and song are associated to represent 

 scenes of common interest. 



In these very rudimentary dances instrumental music figures 

 at first only as an accessory, but its function goes on increasing 

 in proportion as it is perfected. At first it is contented with a 

 stick, such as the Australians strike on the ground to mark the 

 measure ; then the stick is replaced by the tom-tom, which fills 

 the same office more perfectly. To the tom-tom are added in suc- 

 cession, first, wind instruments, then stringed instruments, both 

 becoming gradually less primitive and better constructed, and at 



* Lettres 6difiantes, vol. xiii, p. 113. 



