230 DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION 



twanging string. The power of the note was intensified 

 by holding a gourd against the bow to serve as a reso- 

 nance-chamber. When the musician of early times 

 enlarged this chamber, moved it to the end of the 

 bow, and multiplied the strings, he constructed the 

 cithara of antiquity, the ancestor of a host of modern 

 types, from the harp to the bass-viol and mandolin. 



The dance and the drama find their beginnings in 

 the simple reenactment of an actual series of events. 

 Among Polynesians of to-day the dances still retain the 

 rhythmic beat of the war-tread measure, and many of 

 the motions of the arms are more or less conventional- 

 ized imitations of the act of striking with a club, or 

 hurling a spear, and other acts. To such elements 

 many other things have been added, but the fact re- 

 mains that our own formal dances, as well as the sun- 

 dance of the Indian and the mad whirl of the Dervish, 

 are modern products which have truly evolved. 



When we turn to science and philosophy and other 

 intellectual attainments of modern civilized peoples, it 

 is easier to see how evolution has been accomplished, 

 because we possess a wealth of written literature which 

 explains the way that human ideas have changed from 

 century to century. In these cases there can be no 

 question that such evidences provide accurate instru- 

 ments for estimating the mental abilities of the writers 

 who produced them. We shall take up the higher 

 conceptions of mankind at a later juncture, so at this 

 point we need only to note that even these mental 

 possessions, like household culture and even the phys- 



