Myth and Science Part 11

If in normal hallucinations the vividness of the internal image is in certain physiological conditions projected outwardly, the configuration and accidental form of the external objects contribute to complete the composition in accordance with the nature and design of this internal image. Sometimes the physiological conditions of hallucination are so powerful that it is at once produced by the appearance of an object which has some a.n.a.logy with the mental image. Whatever may be the genesis and primitive character of the idea of s.p.a.ce, and its psychical and physiological relations to actual s.p.a.ce--a question which has been the theme of so much discussion in our time--it is certain that first habit and then hereditary influence cause us to have the sensation and apprehension of a psychical s.p.a.ce, which may be termed artificial and congenital, and upon which the various impressions of the senses are spontaneously projected. Of this there is an evident proof in the fact that if we look at the sun or any bright object, such as the windows of a room in the day time, and then close our eyes, so as to make the vision of external s.p.a.ce impossible, the image of the sun, sometimes of a different colour, or of the window, is projected into the darkness at some distance from us, and moves about this psychical s.p.a.ce. This phenomenon also occurs in the subjective sensations of hearing, since the sounds do not appear to be close to the ear, but at a distance. We are not here called upon to discuss the causes which generate the appearance of this psychical s.p.a.ce, but the fact is indisputable; so that conversely it becomes intelligible how the internal image may be projected in the same way, or may at least appear to be externally projected in hallucinations. This surprising phenomenon is only a modification of the ordinary exercise of the psychical and physiological faculties in the projection of images; of which, after the idea of s.p.a.ce has been formed by primitive experience, habit and education are the chief factors.

Hallucinations, in the cases observed above, are due to an external impulse; and this is especially the case in madness and other nervous disorders; since a critical observation and clear discernment of things is wanting, some object of vision, a voice, phrases, or sounds are much more apt to act as a stimulus to a vast field of visual hallucinations, or to a long succession of sentences and speeches. It is not, therefore, wonderful that in an ecstasy, for instance, in which all the faculties are concentrated on very few ideas and images, or perhaps on one only, every external sign, whether obvious to sight or hearing, combined with the mnemonic effort already explained, is modified to correspond with these vivid and exalted images; thus const.i.tuting the wonderful phenomenon of ecstasy. In such a case the ecstatic phenomenon in persons subject to these nervous affections is often invested with fresh wonders by the additional sensations of light and subjective colours; this is not uncommon even in persons of a sane mind and body, but undoubtedly it is more frequently the case in those whose mental and physical conditions are abnormal. It is not rare to hear an ecstatic person recount divine visions, suffused with extraordinary light and glory.

In order to contribute to the researches of others into the nature of this phenomenon, I must be permitted--not from vanity, but from a desire that my own imperfections may serve the cause of science however slightly--to relate some facts, personal to myself, which bear upon the question, facts of very general experience. From my childhood I have had, both by day and night, various subjective sensations of light which I was, as a person of perfectly sane mind, able to observe dispa.s.sionately. After reading for a long while, or when fatigued by sleeplessness, mental excitement, or some temporary gastric derangement, I see clear flames circling before my eyes. These are in a small, oblong form, arranged at brief intervals in concentric curves, and composing a moving garland projected upon s.p.a.ce, tinged with a yellowish light, shading into vivid blue. Sometimes this figure is changed for stars, twinkling in a vast and remote s.p.a.ce, as in a firmament. In addition to this phenomenon, I have about twenty times in the course of my life experienced other subjective and more extraordinary sensations of light, not unknown to others. This phenomenon occurs when I am in a normal condition of health, and always begins with a confusion of sight, so that I am unable to see objects and the faces of people distinctly; after which everything within the range of vision becomes mobile and tremulous. This state continues for ten minutes, and then clear and distinct vision returns. Next a lucid circle, zig-zagged in acute angles, appears close to the eyes, now on the right, now on the left.

It moves in a somewhat serpentine course, and is broken in the centre of the lower half. It withdraws from the eye into subjective s.p.a.ce, and the shining band of which it is composed gradually loses its sharp angles, and becomes wider and undulated, while still in motion.

Another remarkable sensation follows. The shining band, which has dilated until it is withdrawn from the eyes, whether closed or open, to an apparent distance of several yards, becomes tinted with all the colours of the rainbow, standing out in such vivid splendour on the dark background that I have never seen them equalled in nature. Indeed the beauty of this phenomena is amazing. The band, inlaid with various colours, now occupies the whole s.p.a.ce, maintaining an equal distance from the closed eyes, and moving continually with a rhythmic undulation, while it constantly becomes more vivid. The moving circle continues to dilate until it slowly fades, and at last completely disappears. From its beginning to the end, the vision occupies from twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Throughout the phenomenon I continue to be perfectly collected and free in mind, so that I can observe it in all its details with perfect calmness, and can also impart my observations to the persons with whom I happen to be. Only when the subjective sensation has ceased, I feel an obscure pain in the brow of the eye in which the phenomenon occurred.

This is readily explained by the well-known interlacing of the nerves, and the action of the hemispheres.

Supposing that such phenomena occur, as they more readily do, in persons predisposed to nervous affections, although not insane, in times and in a society agitated by religious excitement, or in persons habitually contemplative and occupied with spiritual images and thoughts; if in moments of ecstatic emotion they should perceive, in addition to the images proper to such conditions, these circling flames, which is very likely to be the case, or the iridescent aureole we have described, they would certainly accept and glorify the heavenly vision revealed to them.

The revolution of the bright stars or iridescent band, preceded by the obscurity of vision which accompanies the ordinary ecstatic hallucination, would certainly be ascribed to the saints or angels, and would thus become more supernatural and consonant with the believer's idea of heaven; and these very subjective sensations might often produce the ecstatic vision, so ready to appear in the morbid conditions which lead to hallucination.

According to the process previously described, by which the phenomenon of natural hallucinations is produced by an external stimulus, these luminous phenomena would revive the memory of angelic and saintly forms, of which men were so profoundly conscious in times of religious excitement, and would be regarded as their external signs, while they would at the same time stimulate the appearance of such angelic visions. Ultimately this would lead to the vast drama of celestial hallucinations described for us in the accounts of many ecstatic visions. They do not only occur in modern religions, but in those of the old heathen, and in the rude and unformed beliefs of savages. The ethnography of the most savage peoples of our time teaches us that the origin of very many myths is to be found in normal and abnormal hallucinations, and in the luminous visions which conform to their mental conditions. Persons subject to nervous affections, from simple epilepsy to madness and idiocy, were and still are supposed to be inspired, and endowed with the power of prophesying and working miracles; they are also venerated for relating the strange visions presented to them in the crisis of their disorder. Africa, barbarous Asia, America, Oceania, and the ignorant and superst.i.tious people in Europe itself, abound with such facts; they have occurred and are likely to recur in civilized peoples of all times, including our own, as we know only too well.

We have thus reduced the primitive origin of myth, of dreams, of all illusions, of normal and abnormal hallucinations, to one unique fact and genesis, to a fundamental principle; that is, to the primitive and innate entification of the phenomenon, to whatever sensation it may be referred. This fact is not exclusively human in its simple expression and genesis, since it occurs in the lower animals; evidently in those which are nearest to man, and by the necessary logic of induction in all others, according to their sensations and modes of perception. In the vast historic drama of opinions, beliefs, religions, mythical and mytho-scientific theories which are developed in all peoples; and again, in the infinite variety of dreams, illusions, mystic and nervous hallucinations, all depend on the primitive and unique fact which is also common to the animal kingdom, and identical with it; in man this is also the condition of science and knowledge. I think that this conclusion is not unworthy of the consideration of wise men and honest critics, and that it will contribute to establish the definitive unity of the general science of psychology, considered in the vast animal kingdom as a whole, and in connection with the great theory of evolution.

This primitive act of perception, the radical cause and genesis of all mythical representations, and the physical and intellectual condition of science itself, is also one of the factors and the aesthetic germ of all the arts. The constraining power which generates the intentional subjectivity of the phenomenon, and the entification of images, ideas, and numerous normal and abnormal appearances, also unconsciously impels man to project the image into a design, a sculpture, or a monument.

Since an idea or emotion naturally tends, as we have seen, to take an external form in speech, gesture, or some other outward fact; so also it tends to manifest itself materially and by means of various arts, and to take the permanent form of some object. It is embodied in this way, as it was embodied in fetishes in the way described in the foregoing chapters. Owing to this innate cause, and by the instinct of imitation which results from it, children as well as savages always attempt some rude sketch of natural objects, or of the fanciful images to which they have given rise. Drawings of animals and some other objects are found among the lowest savages, such as the Tasmanians and Australians. Nor is this fact peculiar to the lower historic races, and to those which are still in existence, but it is also to be found in the dwellings and remains of prehistoric man; carvings on stone of very ancient date have been found, coeval with extinct and fossil animals, prior to the age of our flora and fauna and to the present conformation of land and water.

There are many clear proofs of the extreme antiquity of the primitive impulse to imitative arts. A stag's meta-tarsal bone, on which there was a carving of two ruminants, was found in the cave of Savigny: in a cave at Eyzies there was a fragmentary carving of two animals on two slabs of schist; at La Madelaine there were found two so-called staves of office, on which were representations of a horse, of reindeer, cattle, and other animals; two outlines of men, one of a fore-arm, and one of a naked man in a stooping position, with a short staff on his shoulder; there is also the outline of a mammoth on a sheet of ivory; a statuette of a thin woman without arms, found by M. Vibraye at Laugerie-Ba.s.se, and known by the name of the immodest Venus; a drawing representing a man, or so-called hunter, armed with a bow, and pursuing a male auroch, going with its head down and of a fierce aspect; the man is perfectly naked, and wears a pointed beard. Other designs of the chase and of animals afford a clear proof of the remote period at which the primitive instinct towards the imitative arts existed.

It is peculiar to man to portray things and animals, and to erect monuments out of a superst.i.tious feeling, or to glorify an individual or the nation; the bower-birds and some cognate species may perhaps be regarded as an exception, since they show a certain sense of beauty, and an extrinsic satisfaction in gay colours, which indeed appears in many animals. But art in the true sense and in its essential principle are the act and product of man alone, of which I have demonstrated the cause and comparative reasons in another work, so that it is unnecessary to repeat them here. Some rare cases indicate an artistic construction which is not an essential part of animal functions, and the sense of form and colour occurs in some species. But this only shows that there exist in the animal kingdom the roots of every art and sentiment peculiar to man, subsequently perfected by him in an exclusive and reflex manner, and this confirms the general truths of heredity and evolution.

When primitive man draws or carves objects, he does not merely obey the innate impulse to give an external form to the image already in his mind, but while satisfying the aesthetic sentiment which actuates him, he is conscious of some mysterious power and superst.i.tious influence. This sentiment is not only apparent in our own children, but among nearly all savages, of which many instances might be given; some of them are even afraid to look at a portrait, and shrink from it as from a living person.

As time went on, a belief in spirits was developed from causes already mentioned, the rude theory of incarnation followed as its corollary, and this sentiment was naturally confirmed by incised and sculptured images; for since they supposed a spirit to be present in every object whatever, this was much more the case with incised or sculptured figures of men and animals. In these figures the amulet, talisman, or _gris-gris_ of savages especially consisted; portraits, however rude, of animals, monsters, of the human form as a whole or in parts, as in the universal phallic superst.i.tions. The belief in spirits, resulting from the personification of shadows, or of the image of a man's own soul which was supposed to return from the tomb, had a mythical influence on the mode and ceremonies of sepulture, on the position of corpses, on the orientation of tombs, and their form. In fact, the mythical ideas of spirits, and the fanciful place they took in the primitive idea of the world, produced the custom of burying corpses in an upright, stooping, or sitting position, and their situation with reference to the four cardinal points. In America the cross which was placed in very early times above the tombs is rightly supposed by Brinton to have been a symbol of the four zones of the earth, relatively to the tomb itself and to the human remains enclosed in it. One Australian tribe buries its dead with their faces to the east; the Fijians are buried with the head and feet to the west, and many of the North American Indians follow the same custom. Others in South America double up the corpse, turning the face to the east. The Peruvians place their mummies in a sitting position, looking to the west; the natives of Jesso also turn the head to the west. The modern Siamese never sleep with their faces turned to the west, because this is the att.i.tude in which they place their dead before burning them on the funeral pile. Finally, the Greeks and all other peoples, both civilized and barbarous, including ourselves, had and continue to have special customs in burying their dead.

All the primitive artistic representations of the human form, the orientation of tombs and temples and their peculiar form, were prompted by these spiritualist and superst.i.tious ideas; they expressed a symbolism derived from mythical ideas of the const.i.tution of the world, of its organism, elements, and cosmic legends. This a.s.sertion might be verified by all funereal, religious, and civil monuments, among all peoples of the earth, in their most rudimentary form down to those of our times, and above all in India, China, Central Asia, in Africa, and particularly in Egypt, in America, in Europe, beginning with the Greeks and pa.s.sing through the Latins down to the Christianity of our day; nor need we exclude the Oceanic races, and those of the two frigid zones.

Doubtless the purest aesthetic sentiment was gratified in the productions of the plastic arts and of design in general when civilization was at its highest perfection, among people peculiarly alive to this sentiment.

At the same time, for the great majority of peoples in early and subsequent ages down to our own time, there was and is the consciousness of a _numen_, in the proper meaning of the word, within the statue or effigy, and these were unconsciously entified by the same law which leads to the entification of natural phenomena; the august presence of the G.o.ds and an artificial symbol of the living organism of the world were contained in the material form. While this sentiment took a higher development in art, and was gradually emanc.i.p.ated from its mythical bonds, it never altogether disappeared in artistic creations; and there are still many who would, like some uncultured peoples of early and modern times, cover up their images when they are about to commit some action which might be displeasing to these idols of the G.o.ds or saints.

If we were to gauge the sentiments which really animate a man of the people, even when he; looks at the statue of a great man, we should find that in addition to his aesthetic satisfaction, he unconsciously imagines that the spirit of the dead man is infused into the image and is able to enjoy the admiration of the observers.

The-worship of images in all times and places is essentially founded on this belief in the incarnation of spirits and the _numen_ of fetishes.

There is indeed no real difference between the superst.i.tious adoration of a savage, addressed to his fetish, and the worship of images in many religions of modern civilization. Although people of culture, and the scholastic theory of religions, may distinguish indirect and respectful veneration from direct worship, yet it cannot be denied that the majority of the faithful directly adore the image. The general belief in relics, consisting of bones, hair, clothes, etc., is plainly an evolution of the amulets and _gris-gris_ of savages. This fetishtic and idolatrous sentiment has by a gradual and necessary development been infused even into speech and writing, for written forms have been hung on plants as fetishes and idols, or placed in the temples as the symbol of perpetual prayer, and the Buddhists even erect prayer-mills. We have a.n.a.logous instances among ourselves, when texts of Scripture or the words of some saint are rolled up into a kind of amulet and worn round the neck. The same sentiment is shown in the costly offering of lamps kept constantly burning before images as the means of obtaining help and favour; and in the visits made to a given number of churches, thus transforming number into a mysterious, entified, and efficacious power, in the same way that every ancient people, whether barbarous or civilized, mythically venerated certain numbers; the Peruvians, for instance, and some other American peoples regarded the number "four" as sacred.

In addition to the cherished remembrance always inspired by portraits of those we love, a breathing of life, as if the dead or absent person were communicating with us in spirit, is perhaps unconsciously infused into the picture while we look at it. These are transient states of consciousness, of which we are scarcely aware, although they do not escape the notice of careful observers. Any dishonour or insult offered to images, whether sacred or profane, deeply moves both the learned and unlearned, both barbarous and civilized peoples, not merely as a base and sacrilegious act against the person represented, but from an instinctive and spontaneous feeling that he is actually present in the image. Any one who a.n.a.lyzes the matter will find it impossible to separate these two sentiments, and many disgraceful and sanguinary scenes which have led to the gallows or the stake have actually resulted from the identification of the image with the thing represented.

Even when a man of high culture and refined taste for beauty stands before the canvas or sculpture of some great ancient or modern artist, his spiritual and aesthetic enjoyment of these wonderful works is, as he will find from the observation of his inmost emotions, combined with the animation and personification of what he sees; he is so far carried away by the beauty and truth of the representation that the pa.s.sions represented affect him as if they were those of real persons. This relative perfection of a work of art, either in the way the objects stand out, in the varied diffusion of light and shade, in the movement and expression of figures, in the effect of the whole in its details and background, is all heightened and confirmed by the underlying entification of images. The process we have before described by which a confused group of objects appear to us as a human form or phantasm is also effected in this case in a more subtle way and with less effort of memory; it is all ultimately due to the primitive fact of animal perception. Our imagination can supply the resemblance, the limbs, colour, and design in a picture in which a face, figure, or landscape are slightly sketched, or in a roughly chiselled statue. We often hear the complaint that a work of art is too highly finished, and it wearies and displeases us because it leaves nothing for the imagination to supply. The remark reveals the fact, of which we are all implicitly conscious, that we are ourselves in part the artificers of every external phenomenon.

We need not stop to prove a truth well-known to all, that architecture and all kinds of monuments lend themselves to a symbolism derived from ancient and primitive popular ideas. This was the case in India, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Judaea, Greece, Ancient and Christian Rome, and in the ancient remains found in savage countries and in America. The freemasons of the Middle Ages united the earliest and most varied traditions with the symbols of Christianity. We unconsciously carry on the same traditions, preserving some of their forms, although the meaning of the symbol is lost. Tombs in the open air which enclosed a spirit, and round which the shades roamed, were the first sacred buildings, from which by an easy and intelligible evolution of ideas, temples, with a similar orientation, and other works of architecture, both religious and civil, were derived. If we follow, step by step, the development of the tomb into the temple, the palace, and the triumphal arch, we shall see how the outward form and the human and cosmic myth were reciprocally enlarged. Ethnography, archaeology, and the history of all peoples indicate their gradual evolution, so that it is only necessary to allude to it; proofs abound for any intelligent reader.

Even in modern architecture the arrangement of parts, the general form, the ornaments and symbols relating to mythical ideas, still persist, although we are no longer conscious of their meaning; just as human speech now makes use of a simple phonetic sign as if it were an algebraic notation, in which the philologist can trace the primitive and concrete image whence it proceeded. The arts also, like other human products, follow the general evolution of myth in their historic course; the primitive fetish is afterwards perfected by more explicit spiritual beliefs, and is combined with cosmic myths; these are slowly transformed into symbolic representations, which dissolve in their turn, and give place to the expression of the truth and to forms which more fully satisfy the natural sense of beauty and its adaptation to special ends.

The arts of singing and of instrumental music have the same origin and evolution as the others. Vico, Strabo, and others have a.s.serted that primitive men spoke in song, and there is great truth in the remark.

Since gesture and pantomime help out the meaning of imperfect speech, which was at first poor in the number of words and their relative forms, and this is still the case among many peoples, so song, vocal modulation, and the rhythmic expression of speech seem to stimulate emotion. In truth, the mental and physiological effort which tends by vocal enunciation to present the image or emotion in an external form, is on the one hand not yet fully disintegrated, and on the other the greater or less intensity of feeling involved in primitive languages a corresponding vocal modulation to supplement it, just as it required gesture and pantomime. Thus speech, gesture, and song, in the larger sense of the word, had their origin together. This is also true of many of the languages of modern savages, and of those of more civilized peoples, such as the Chinese, which have not quite attained inflection; in this case the frequent repet.i.tion of the same monosyllable conveys a different meaning, not only from its relative position, but from the modulation and tone in which it is uttered. The same thing may be observed in children who are just beginning to talk.

Rhythm, or the graduated and alternate action and reaction with which a vibration begins and ends, is a universal law in the manifestation and movements of all natural phenomena; a law which is revealed on a grand scale in all the recurring periods of nature, whether astral, telluric, or meteorological, as well as in the form and manifold phases of organisms and their modes of reproduction. This universal law also applies to the whole mental and organic system of animals and men, whenever they become conscious of their own existence. The same universal rhythm const.i.tutes the fundamental form of sound in the vibration of metallic bars, or of strings, and becomes perceptible to the external senses by means of our organ of hearing, as also by the external and innate necessity slowly developed by our habits of consciousness, which may be termed the external causes of its organic evolution and const.i.tution.

By these organic and cosmic tendencies, and by the intrinsic impulse towards modulation of sound already explained, speech first issued from the human breast in harmonious accents and rhythmic form, and these became in their turn the causes and genesis of versification and metre.

The cla.s.sic experiments of Helmholtz show that each note may be regarded as a harmonic whole, owing to the complementary sounds which accompany it in its complete development. With reference to our own race, the genesis of the composition of verse and metre are shown by the researches made by Westphal and others into the metrical system of the Vedic Aryans, the Turanians, and the Greeks, since the fact that their metres were the same implies a common origin. The demonstration is complete, if we compare the iambic metre of Archilochus with that of the Vedic hymns. There are in both three series of iambuses--the dimeter, the cataleptic trimeter, and the acataleptic.[36]

This observation applies to the physical and physiological conditions of the phenomenon, since primitive men could not speak without rhythmic modulation of words. We are not quite without hope of discovering by induction the origin of wind or stringed instruments which accompanied the songs, after the specification of the modes of speech was so far advanced as to distinguish singing--which had already become an art--from the daily necessity of reciprocal communication in words. In this research we must proceed step by step, aided by minute observation, lest we should accept an hypothesis which does not correspond with the facts.

Not only man, but some animals--among others a species of mouse found in South Africa--naturally uses his limbs to moderate or strengthen the light of vision. This mouse was observed to shade its eyes with its forepaws in order to look at some distant object under a blazing sun, as we should do in like conditions. In man, whose arms and hands are readily adapted to this primitive art, the habit is common, even among the rudest savages. Putting sight out of the question that we may consider hearing, which is our present theme, reflex movements, either casual or habitual, have certainly induced primitive men to place their hands on the mouth, either so as to suppress the sound or to augment it by using both hands as a kind of sh.e.l.l. It is easy to imagine the use of sh.e.l.ls or other hollow objects as a vehicle of sound, either for amus.e.m.e.nt or some other cause, and these rude instruments might serve as the first step to the invention of wind instruments. Reflection on these spontaneous experiments would readily lead to the search for some mode of prolonging or imitating the voice. In these attempts men might be guided by their observation of the whistle and song of birds, whose beaks may have served as a model for the construction of the flute and reed-pipe. Pott traces the word for sound to the root _svar_, and hence, after some natural phonetic changes, we have in Lithuanian _szwilpti_ for the song of birds. Of all natural objects, different kinds of reeds and the hollow stalks of plants are, owing to their hollow and cylindrical form, best adapted for the imitation of a bird's beak and the sonorous transmission of breath. In many languages the word for a flute is the same as that for a reed. In Sanscrit, _vanca_ and _venu_ mean a flute and bamboo; in Persian, _na_ and _nay_ mean a flute and reed; in Greek [Greek: donas], and in Latin _calamus_, have the same double meaning, and many more examples might be given.

Stringed instruments are a more elaborate invention, and may have been suggested by the vibration of a bow-string when it is tw.a.n.ged. The bow is common to all modern savages, and was also found among extinct peoples and those which are now civilized, as well as in prehistoric times. The Sanscrit word for a stringed instrument, _tata_ or _vitata_, is derived from the root _tan_, to stretch. Pictet observes that one name for a lute is _rudri_, from _rud_, to lament, that is, a plaintive instrument; in Persian we have _rod_ for song, music, or a stringed instrument. The etymology of _arcus_ is the same; the root _arc_ not only means to hurl, but to sing or resound. Homer and Rannjana often allude to the sonorousness of the bow and its string. Homer says in speaking of the bow of Pandarus, "_stridit funis, et nervus valde sonuit_." And when Ulysses drew his avenging bow, the cord emitted a clear sound like the voice of a swallow. _Locaka_, another name for a cord, also means one who speaks, from _lc_, _loqui_; and the Persian _rud_, _roda_, a bow-string, also means a song. In the Veda the root _arc'_ is used in speaking of the roaring wind, or of a long echoing sound. Again _tavara_, a bow-string, is from _tan_, to stretch, to sound. The Greek [Greek: tonos] must be referred to the same root, and signifies, a bow-string, a sound, an accent, a tone. Benfey traces the Greek [Greek: lura], in which this root is wanting, through [Greek: ludra], or _rudra_. Kuhn confirms this transformation by the a.n.a.logy between the Vedic G.o.d _Rudra_ and the Greek Apollo, both of whom are armed with a bow. Rudra, like Apollo, is a great physician; the former is called _kapardin_, from his mode of wearing his long hair, and _vanku_ from his tortuous gait as the G.o.d of storms; to the latter the epithets of [Greek: achers echomes] and [Greek: loxias] are applied; the mouse was sacred to Rudro, and Apollo had the surname of Smintheus, from the mouse, [Greek: Smintha], which was his symbol.

These wind and stringed instruments were not, in their primitive forms, at once used as an accompaniment to song. Before such use was possible, there must have been considerable progress in the specification of language, and special songs must have been disintegrated from common speech, which was at first an inchoate song. Possibly some rude instruments were invented for amus.e.m.e.nt or some other purpose before this specification had taken place. At any rate the use of various instruments for accompaniment was preceded by gesticulation, or the spontaneous striking of some object which coincided with animated speech, or which accompanied it in sonorous cadences.

The rhythm which stimulated primitive men to speak in song, also impelled them to accompany it with gestures and movements of the body, and this was the origin of the dance, which, when the body moved in correspondence with cadenced utterances, was at first merely the accompaniment of song. Tradition, modern ethnography, and the primitive habits of children bear witness to this fact. In addition to the rhythmic motion of all parts of the body, there is the practice of spontaneously beating time with the hands and feet, which were doubtless the first instruments used by man as a musical accompaniment. Hence, owing to the facility of, construction, there arose percussion instruments, which were at first made of stone or pieces of wood. So that singing, dancing, accompaniment with the limbs or with some rudely fashioned object arose almost simultaneously, as soon as the process of specification had established a distinction between song and ordinary speech. The first simple instruments which we have described only made the song, shout, war-dance, or religious ceremony more effective.

When chanted speech was formulated in a fixed order by means of rhythm and the modulations of the voice, it became verse, and the melody itself, as the simple expression of the song which had been cast into verse, or even into an inarticulate chant, was naturally evolved from it. An artistic education is not needed in order to experience the pleasure of rhythmic order in the succession of sound, for a predisposition of the nervous system will suffice. Savages, children, and even animals are sensible of rhythm, which is the order and symmetry of sensations. The dance, as Beauquier justly observes, is the practical form of rhythmic motion and the gesture of music. The motion impressed by sound on the internal organism tends to manifest itself in external gesture, and in fact, the rhythm of the music is repeated in dancing in the limbs and in the whole body of the dancer. The rhythm, regarded in its material cause, need not be accompanied by any very musical sound.

The percussion instruments were at first only used to mark and intensify the rhythm.

Melody may be termed a fusion of rhythm and sounds of different pitches, united in time, and a.s.suming a regular and symmetrical form; melody, as others also have observed, const.i.tutes the whole of music, since without it harmony itself is vague and indefinite. Notwithstanding the numerous elements which may be discerned in melody, and the labour implied in its a.n.a.lysis, it is the facile and spontaneous creation of man, at any rate in its simplest expression; uneducated people, ignorant of music, are able to invent very tolerable melodies, of which we have instances in popular and national songs, which are generated by the musical fancy of those unconscious of the laws of music. Melody has an independent existence, while harmony serves to accentuate its form, and conduces to its subsequent progress among peoples capable of developing it in all its power.[37]

Music has a powerful influence upon all the senses. It has at all times been supposed to have a healing power, and in the Middle Ages it was believed to cure epilepsy, madness, convulsions, hysteria, and all forms of nervous affections; while in our own time it is usefully employed in cerebral diseases, since it has both a stimulating and soothing effect.

Women, since they are generally more nervous and sensitive than men, are more especially affected by music. Animals as well as man are influenced by it, as it has been shown by exact and numerous experiments. Every one knows that many birds can be taught airs, which they sing with taste and lively satisfaction. The major key, with its regular proportions, its full and gradual sounds, arouses in man a sense of life and joy, while the minor key excites languor and invincible sadness, and animals are affected in the same way.

It is evident that the formation of the scale, the essential foundation of music, varies with, the epoch, climate, habits, and physiological conditions of the different races which have successively adopted the diatonic, the major, and minor scales. The music of the Chinese differs from our own, and while it is equally elaborate, it does not quite please us, and the same may be said of the music of the Indians, of the ancient Egyptians, and others. Undoubtedly our scale is more convenient and conformable to art, setting aside the physiological conditions of race, since the notes separated by regular intervals form a more spiritual and independent, in short a more artistic system.

Such are briefly the characteristics of the genesis of song and of music, the actual conditions which make them possible, and their effect on man and animals. We must now consider the subject from the mythical point of view, as we have done in the case of the other arts. We know that the image and emotions are mythically personified by us, and this fanciful reality is afterwards infused into the words used in its expression. It follows from this that speech is not only spontaneously and unconsciously personified as the material covering of the idea or emotion enclosed in it, but that the same thing occurs in language as a whole, at first vaguely, but afterwards in a definite and reflective manner, in consequence of intellectual development. Among all civilized peoples, whether extinct or still in existence, speech is not only personified in the complex idea or language, but it is deified. It is well known that this is the case in all phases of Eastern Christianity, and that the other Christian churches have since identified the Graeco-Eastern idea of the Logos with the Messianic ideas engrafted upon it. If among the prehistoric peoples which most resemble modern savages, speech was personified by the necessity of the perceptive faculty, a vague power was certainly ascribed to it, and even a simple murmur or whisper was supposed to have a direct and personal influence on things, men, and animals. Magic, which is the primitive expression of fetishtic power, embodied in a man, had its most efficacious form in the utterance of words, cries, whispers, or songs, referring to the malign or to the healing and beneficent arts, and it was employed to arouse or to calm storms, to destroy or improve the harvest, or for like purposes.

Beginning with the traditions of our race, even prior to its dispersion, there are plain proofs that words and songs were originally employed for exorcisms and magic in various diseases, and for incantations directed against men or things. _Kar_ means to bewitch, as in German we have _einem etwas anthun_, in low Latin _facturare_, in Italian _fattucchiere_, and from _Kar_ we have _carmen_, a song or magic formula. The G.o.ddess _Carmenta_, who was supposed to watch over childbirth, derived her name from _carmen_, the magic formula which was used to aid the delivery. The name was also used for a prophetess, as _Carmenta_, the mother of Evander. Servio tells us that the augurs were termed _carmentes_.[38] The Sanscrit _maya_, meaning magic or illusion and, in the Veda, wisdom, is derived from _man_, to think or know; from _man_ we have _mantra_, magic formula or incantation; in Zend, _manthra_ is an incantation against disease, and hence we have the Erse _manadh_, incantation or juggling, and _mniti_ in Lithuanian. The linguistic researches of Pictet, Pott, Benfey, Kuhn, and others show that in primitive times singing, poetry, hymns, the celebration of rites, and the relation of tales, were identical ideas, expressed in identical forms, and even the name for a nightingale had the same derivation. So also the names of a singer, poet, a wise man, and a magician, came from the same root.

Among all historic and savage peoples it was the general practice to use exorcism by means of magic formulas and incantations, combined with the noise of rude instruments; this was part of the pathology, meteorology, and demonology which dated from the beginning of speech, and the first rude ideas of fetishes and spirits have persisted in various forms down to our days. We have a plain proof of this in a work dedicated to Pius IX. by M. Gaume, in which he sets forth the virtue of holy water against the innumerable powers of evil which, as he declares, still people the cosmic s.p.a.ces, and similar rites may be traced in the liturgies of all modern religions. This belief is directly founded on the fanciful personification and incarnation of a power in speech itself, in song, and in sound. David had similar ideas of dancing and its accessories, and the walls of Jericho are said to have fallen at the sound of the trumpets, as if these contained the spirit of G.o.d. The Patagonians, to quote a single instance from among savages, drive away the evil spirits of diseases with magic songs, accompanied by drums on which demons are painted. To these mythical ideas we must refer the worship of trees, which involves that of birds, so far as they whistle and sing.

The worship of trees and groves is universal: peculiar trees, groves, and woods are worshipped in Tahiti, in the Fiji Islands, and throughout Polynesia; in barbarous Asia, in Europe, America, and the whole of Africa. Cameron, Schweinfurth, Stanley, and other modern travellers in Africa give many instances of this. Schweinfurth describes such a worship among the Niam-Niam, who hold that the forest is inhabited by invisible beings. This worship is naturally combined with that of birds, which become the confidants of the forest, repeat the mysteries of mother earth, and sometimes become interpreters and prophets to man.

Birds, by their power of moving through the air as lords of the aerial s.p.a.ce, by their arts of building, by the beauty of their plumage, their secret haunts in the forests and rocks, by their frequent appearance both by day and night, and by the variety of their songs, must necessarily have excited the fetishtic fancy of primitive men. The worship of birds was therefore universal, in connection with that of trees, meteors, and waters. They were supposed to cause storms; and the eagle, the falcon, the magpie, and some other birds brought the celestial fire on the earth. The worship of birds is also common in America, and in Central America the bird voc is the messenger of Hurakau, the G.o.d of storms. The magic-doctors of the Cri, of the Arikari, and of the Indians of the Antilles, wore the feathers and images of the owl as an emblem of the divine inspiration by which they were animated. Similar beliefs are common in Africa and Polynesia.[39]

It is well known that the Egyptians worshipped the ibis, the hawk, and other birds, and that the Greeks worshipped birds and trees at Dodona, in consequence of a celebrated oracle. In Italy the lapwing and the magpie became Pilumnus and Picus, who led the Sabines into Picenus.

Divination by eagles and other birds was practised at Rome, and German, Slav, and Celtic traditions abound in similar myths.[40] Nor are they wanting in the Bible itself, in which we hear of the trees of knowledge and of life, of some celebrated trees in the times of the patriarchs, of the raven and the dove sent out as messengers. The Old Testament speaks of the worship of groves at Ashtaroth in Canaan, of sacrifices under the green trees, and we know that such worship occurred in the Semitic races of Numidia and elsewhere.

The simultaneous elaboration of myths relating to trees and birds as objects of worship, as beneficent or malign powers, and as the transmitters of oracles, necessarily confirmed and extended the personifications of speech and song, and were fused through many sources into a whole, which represented a supernatural agent, endowed with the power of a mediator, of a good or evil spirit or idol. This ultimately led to a universal conception of the efficacy of sound, considered as the manifestation of occult powers. In this mythically spiritual atmosphere, all peoples formerly lived and in great part still continue to live.

As the innate impulse led to the entification of speech and of the singing of men and animals, so it also led to the mythical personification of dancing and instrumental music, in which nearly all peoples have recognized a demoniac and deliberate power. For this reason, dancing and the noise of rude instruments generally accompanied solemn religious and civil ceremonies, and any remarkable cosmic, astral, or meteorological fact; and in polytheistic times the deities of poetry, dancing, and music served to accentuate and cla.s.sify ideas.

The instrument became a fetish, and was invested with a mysterious power resembling that which was supposed to exist in all utterances of the animal world. Indeed, instruments were, and still are among savages, regarded as sacred and as an integral part of public worship, so that each had its definite function and office. This need not surprise us, since for such men every object is a fetish, which contains a soul. The Karens, a tribe in Burmah, believe that their arms, knives, utensils, etc., have all a _kelap_ or soul, which is termed a _wong_ by the negroes of West Africa. The same belief is found in a more explicit form among the Algonquins, the Fijians, and the aforesaid Karens, whose beliefs are characteristic of all peoples which have reached this stage of mythical conceptions. The different objects belonging to a dead man, and his instruments, arms, and utensils, are laid in his tomb, or burnt with his body, and this is owing to the belief that the souls of these objects follow their possessor into another life. The same custom unfortunately extends to persons, and there are instances of this evil practice among relatively civilized nations; the ma.s.sacre which takes place at the death of a king of Dahomey is well known, and is revolting from the number of victims and from the mode of their sacrifice. It is therefore easy to imagine the way in which musical instruments and the sounds produced by them were personified, since these manifestations seemed to approximate more closely to those of animals.

Fetishtic beliefs concerning magic songs or sounds were, as we have seen, confirmed by the influence naturally exerted on men and animals in their normal or abnormal state by rhythmic and musical sounds, however rude and unformed they may be. Theophrastus tells us that blowing a flute over the affected limb was supposed to cure gout; the Romans recited _carmina_ to drive away disease and demons: the old Slav word for physician, _vraci_, comes from a root which means to murmur; in Servian, _vrac_ is a physician, and _balii_, an enchanter or physician.

The use of incantations as a remedy prevailed among the Greeks in Homer's time. The Atarva-Veda retains the old formula of imprecation against disease, and the Zendavesta divides physicians into three cla.s.ses, those which cure with the knife, with herbs, and with magic formulas. Kuhn believes that the Latin word _mederi_ refers to these proceedings, comparing with it the Sanscrit _meth_, _medh_, to oppose or curse. Pictet traces the meaning of exorciser in another Sanscrit word for a physician: _Bhisag_ from _sag_, _sang_, tojurbo gate.

As the civilization of the historic races advanced, poetry, singing, and musical instruments became more perfect, and were cla.s.sified as reflex arts. Among the more intellectual cla.s.ses the earlier fetishtic ideas connected with them almost disappeared, while in the case of the common people, the fetish was idealized, but not therefore lost; it persisted, and still persists, under other forms. Polytheism, modified to suit the place, time, and race, and yet essentially the same, offers us a more ideal form of the arts, each of which was personified as a G.o.d, and taken together they formed a heavenly company, which generated and presided over the arts. The greatest poets and philosophers of antiquity retained a sincere belief in the inspiration of every creation of art; and this was only a more n.o.ble and intellectual form of the first rude and indefinite conception by which the arts were embodied in a material shape.

Of all the Aryan peoples, Greece represented her Olympus in the most glorious mythical form, set forth by all the arts of description. From the polytheistic point of view, nothing can be aesthetically more perfect than the myths of Apollo and the Muses, which personify harmony in general, and whatever is peculiar to the arts. Such conceptions, by which the arts of speech, song, vocal and instrumental music were embodied in myths, did not disappear as time went on, but were perpetuated in another form. Music, which was always becoming more elaborate, continued to be the highest inspiration, a divine power, an external and harmonious manifestation of celestial beings, of eternal life, and the order of the world. This conception was shadowed forth in the Pythagorean theory of the mythical harmony of the spheres: that school regarded the world as a musical system, an harmonious dance of planets.

The fetishtic and mythical origin common to all the arts is clearly shown by the fact that at a period relatively advanced, but still very remote, they were formulated in the temple, a symbolic representation of their deities, to be found even among the most primitive peoples. The evolution of the arts towards a more rational conception, divested of mythical and religious influence, took the form of releasing each art from bondage to the temple, and enabling it to a.s.sume a more distinct, free, and secular personality, an evolution which was however somewhat difficult and slow in the case of vocal and instrumental music. Although in our own time it has achieved a field for itself, yet in oratorios and ecclesiastical music the old conception remains.