Chapter III: The Age of Heroes and Gods (8)

A survey of the various phases of human interest will show that they are all present from the very beginning in the mental organization of man. Moreover, they are throughout so interconnected that an advance in one field of interest will lead to progress in general. Nevertheless, we are unable to escape the further observation that, in the life of the individual, certain capacities develop earlier than others. Precisely the same is true of the life of humanity. The phenomena in which the character of ages and peoples receives its chief expression differ in each of the periods through which the development of mankind passes. The secondary phenomena, in each case, either occur only in their beginnings or, where we are dealing with later stages of culture, are being perfected along lines already established. In this relative sense, we may doubtless say of the three eras following that of primitive man, that totemism is the age of the _satisfaction of wants_, the heroic age, that of _art_, and the succeeding period of the development to humanity, that of _science_. Of course, there were many art productions, some of them admirable, even in the totemic age--we need mention only the artistic cult dances, or the high perfection to which the semi-cultural peoples of the period attained in the decoration of the body and of weapons. It must be admitted also that the heroic age already laid imperishable foundations for science. Nevertheless, the main achievements of the totemic age relate exclusively to the satisfaction of the external needs of life. The modes of procuring and preparing food, and the forms of clothing, adornment, implements, and weapons--all originated in the totemic age, and, however great may have been the advances made by succeeding eras along these several lines, the beginnings had nevertheless been made. A manner of dress suitable to the climate had been developed. The preparation of food by means of fire, the manufacture of the fundamental and permanent implements and weapons--the hammer, the axe, the saw, the chisel, the knife--and, finally, the differentiation between weapons of close and of long range, had all been introduced. Moreover--and this is perhaps most significant of all--art itself was governed absolutely by the motive of satisfying needs. Articles of adornment, tattooing, the dance, song, and music, were first of all means of magic, and as such they served the most urgent needs, such as man by himself was unable to satisfy. These needs were protection against sickness and success in the chase and in war. Only gradually, through a most remarkable heterogeny of ends, were many of these agencies of magic transformed into _pure means of adornment_. Such transformations, of course, occurred also in the heroic age. But by this time the necessities of life had in part changed and, of the new interests, those connected with cult and with political organization gained an increasing importance. Æsthetic value came to be more and more appreciated as an independent feature of objects. As a result, articles were produced of a nature such as to minister both to the needs of life and to æsthetic enjoyment. But, again, this occurs pre-eminently within the field of spiritual needs, particularly in connection with deity cult, on the one hand, and in the glorification of human heroes, on the other. The construction of the temple, the plastic reproduction of the human form and its idealization into the divine image, and, finally, the forms of literature--the epic, the hymn, and the beginnings of the religious drama, with their accompanying music--all of these spring from the spiritual needs of this age, among which needs cult is the foremost. With these various activities, art begins an independent development, gaining a value of its own, and conquering fields that had previously been untouched by æsthetic influences. This conquest of new fields by the higher forms of art is indicative also of an increasing appreciation of the æsthetic, and, along with this, of a spiritualization of life as a whole, such as results, in a particular measure, from art, and only partly, and at a much later period, from science. The first subjects of this art are heroes and gods--that is, those figures which the imagination creates at the threshold of the heroic age, under the influence of the new conditions of life. Gradually art then concerns itself with the human personality and with the objects of man's environment. In correspondence with a change which transpired in the totemic age, in which means of magic were transformed into articles of adornment, the objects of nature and culture are now more and more stripped of their mythological significance and elevated into pure objects of æsthetic appreciation. Thus, the heroic age includes the two most important epochs in the entire history of art. These are the origin of a true religious art, and the attainment of an æsthetic independence which allows art to extend its influence to all departments of human life. Religious art made its appearance with the beginning of the heroic age; æsthetic independence represents a later achievement. This explains why the totemic age seems to us a vanished world, no less with regard to its art than in other respects. It can arouse our æsthetic interest only if we attribute the final product of this period--namely, decoration freed from its original magical significance--to the motives that really underlie artistic activity. The art with which we are still familiar and whose motives we can all still appreciate, begins only with the heroic age. The tattooing of the man of nature and the amulet about his neck are to us adornments of low æsthetic value. A Greek temple, however, may even to-day arouse the mood of worship, and the battles of the Homeric heroes and the tragedy of a Prometheus overtaken by the wrath of the gods may still impress us as real. However remote the age may be which these products of art represent, the general spirit which animated it has not vanished. The greatest turning-point in the spiritual history of man consists in the stupendous achievement which inaugurates the heroic age. I refer to the creation of the ideal man, the hero, and of the god in whom heroic characteristics are magnified into the superhuman and demoniacal. Here lies the beginning of a real history of art; everything earlier is prehistoric, however important it may be for a psychological understanding of art--an importance greater than is generally supposed, since it is only these earliest phenomena that can disclose the conditions underlying the first manifestations of the artistic imagination. Since we may assume that the facts of the history of art are generally familiar, it may here suffice to consider these originating factors and their relation to the general character of the heroic age.

The first and most striking characteristic of the new era is the development of _architecture_. This is a new art, not to be found in the preceding age, or at most only in very meagre beginnings. The gabled and the conical hut, as well as the tent and the wind-break from which they developed, are not artistic creations, but are products of the most urgent needs of life. The impulse to erect a building for any higher purpose than this, manifested itself first of all when, here and there, the need of the living was attributed also to the dead. For the shelter of the dead, soul and ancestor cults demanded the erection of more permanent structures. Hence there appeared the burial chamber, built of solid stone. Its walls, designed to afford protection from without, were likewise constructed of stone, and constantly became more massive. This stimulated a sense of the sublime and eternal, which reacted on the construction of the monuments and gave them a character far transcending the need that called them into being. The development of the gigantic Egyptian pyramids out of the simple walled tomb, the mastaba, tells us this significant story in pictures that impress the imagination more vividly than words. But the cult of the dead, which this history records, was itself intimately connected with deity cult. The preservation of the mummy involved every possible protection of the corpse from the destructive agencies of time. This fact reveals a concern relating to incalculable ages, and thus gives evidence of an idea of a beyond into which the deceased is supposed to enter. Besides the house of the dead, therefore, there is the house belonging to the deity, and this is even more directly and universally characteristic of the age. This edifice, into which man may enter and come into the presence of the deity, stimulates the incomparably deeper impulse to build a structure worthy of the deity for whom it is erected. Thus, then, we have the _temple_, designed at the outset for the protection of the sacrificial altar, which had originally been erected in the open, upon consecrated ground. Since it is located at the seat of government, at the place where the citizens assemble for the conduct of political affairs and for purposes of trade, the temple is indicative also of the city and of the State. Secular interests likewise begin to assert themselves. Hence there appears a second mark of the city, the _castle_, which is the seat of the ruler and of the governing power, and is generally also the final defence, when hostile attacks threaten the city and State. Closely connected with the castle, in all regions in which the ruler lays claim to being a terrestrial deity--as he did, for example, in the ancient realms of the Orient--is the _royal palace_. In harmony with the twofold position of the ruler, his dwelling is architecturally intermediate between the castle and the temple. Thus, it is the temple, the castle, and the palace, whose development not only awakens the æsthetic sense for architectural forms, but also gives impetus to the other arts, especially to sculpture and to ornamentation. The latter had previously found material for its expression in the utensils of daily use. Enriched through its connection with architectural forms, it now recurs to the miniature work of utensils and implements, where it more and more serves a purely æsthetic need. Of the works of architecture belonging to the early part of this period, it is the temple which proves the greatest æsthetic stimulus. This is due not only to its more exalted purpose, but also to the impetus derived from the fact of the multiplicity of gods. The castle represents the unity of the State. Hence the State contains but one such structure, erected, whenever possible, upon a hill overlooking the city. The temple, from early times on, is the exclusive possession of a single deity. The idea of harbouring several deities in a single structure could arise only later, as a result of special cult conditions and of the increasing size of the sacred edifices. Even then, however, the need for unity in the cult generally caused each temple to be dedicated to a specific deity, the chief god of the temple. Hand in hand with this went a striving for richness and diversity in architecture. The temple, therefore, expresses in a pre-eminent degree not only the character of the religious cult, but also the mental individuality of the people to whom the gods and their cult owe their origin.

Closely connected with temple construction is _sculpture_, for, in it, the importance which the human personality receives in this age finds its most direct expression. Sculpture, moreover, clearly exhibits the gradual advance from the generic to the individual, from a value originally placed on man as such to absorption in the particular characteristics of the individual. The early, 'generic' figure is generally a representation of the divine personality who has inspired the artist to create an image for the sacred shrine. Art does not aim at the outset to copy man himself; it transfers his characteristics to the deity, and only thus, and after laborious efforts, does it attain its mastery over the human form. True, the gods are conceived as human from the very beginning. So long, however, as the sacrificial stone and the altar stand in the open field, this humanization leads but to inartistic images, similar to fetishes. While these images indicate the presence of the gods at the sacred places, they are not intended as likenesses of the deities themselves. In their external appearance, therefore, the fetishes of early deity cult still impress one as survivals of the totemic age, even though the gods are no longer represented after the fashion of demons, namely, as subhuman, possessing animal or grotesque human forms. The conditions obtaining in life generally were repeated in the realm of art. For the transference of purely human characteristics to the image took place in the case of the hero--or, what amounts to the same thing in the great Oriental civilizations of antiquity, in that of the ruler--earlier than in the case of the deity. The ruler is glorified by means of drawings which represent processions of the hunt and of war, and which are executed on the walls of his palaces. Similarly, the religious impulse expresses itself in the erection of an anthropomorphic image of the deity. This image is placed either in the temple, which is regarded as the dwelling-place of the deity, or in some commanding part of the city which reverences the god as its protector. Here, however, we come upon a noteworthy proof of the fusion of the hero with the demon as described above. From Babylonian and Egyptian monuments we learn that the ruler and his retinue were already represented in human form at a period when deity cult still retained hybrid forms of men and animals, sometimes of the nature of animal demons with human faces, or again as human figures with animal heads. Thus, art strikingly confirms the view that the gods arose from a fusion of the hero personality with the demon. When these external characteristics, due to the past history of gods and their connection with demon beliefs, came to be superseded, the divine image at first reproduced only the typical features of man. In addition to overtowering size, external marks, such as dress, weapons, and sacred animals, were the only evidences of deity. The first step in the transition from the generic figure to the gradual individualization of personality occurs in connection with the facial expression. It is surprising to note the uniformity with which, in all the civilizations of the Old World, the images of the gods, as well as those of the heroes and rulers, acquire an expression of kindliness and gentleness. This trait, however, is again of a generic nature. The stiff, expressionless form has indeed disappeared, but the expression that supervenes is uniform. Though we have referred to this transition as universal, this is true at most as regards the fact that, on the one hand, the expression of complete indifference gives way to one manifesting emotion, and that, on the other, this emotion, though pronounced, again exhibits uniformity. In the quality of this feeling, differences in the character of peoples may come to light, just as they do in myth and religion, with which sculpture in its first stages is closely connected. In the two great cultural regions of the New World, Mexico and Peru, there is a similar transition. The cults of these peoples, however, emphasize the fear-inspiring character of the gods. Hence, in their art, the terrifying grimace of the earliest divine images becomes moderated into an expression of gloomy, melancholy seriousness--a change such as the art of the Old World approximates only in occasional productions that fall rather within the province of the demoniacal, such as the image of the Egyptian sphinx or the gorgon's head of the Greeks. Thus, the transition from features that are entirely expressionless to such as are generic, and then to those that characterize the individual personality, occurs in connection with a change in the quality of the emotions. To illustrate the relative uniformity of this development we might likewise refer to the early Renaissance. Here again it was necessary to seek a path to the concrete wealth of personality that had been lost. Art reached this goal by way of the pathetic expression of humble submission. As soon as plastic art departs from the typical form, we find not only that a change occurs in the expressions of the face, but also that the entire body becomes more lifelike. Along with this, the themes of plastic art pass from the gods, rulers, and heroes to the lower levels of everyday life. Even here art at first continues to be fascinated by the great and conspicuous, though it later gains more and more interest in the _significant_. This striving for reality in its wealth of individual phenomena is characteristic not only of sculpture, however, but also of painting. Disregarding the bodily form in favour of the portrait, painting first acquires new means of characterization in colour and shading; then, passing from man to his natural environment, it wins from nature the secrets of perspective, and thus gains a far greater mastery over the depths of space than was possible to sculpture. _Landscape painting_, moreover, unlocks for art that rich world of emotions and moods which man may create from the impressions of nature, and which attain to purity of expression in proportion as man himself disappears from the artistic reproduction of his environment. Thus, the final product of pictorial art, together with such paintings as those of still life and the interior, all of which are psychologically related inasmuch as they express moods, represent the most subjective stage of art, for they dispense with the subject himself whose emotions they portray. All the more, therefore, are these emotions read into nature, whose processes and activities now constitute the content of personal experience. Once it attains to this development, however, landscape art is already far beyond the borders of the heroic age. Indeed, the Renaissance itself advanced no farther than to the threshold of this most subjective form of pictorial art. This art represents the hero--however broad a conception of him we may form--as in all respects a human individual. Thus, art again returns to the being whose ideal enhancement originally gave rise to the hero.

The changes which the forms of æsthetic expression undergo within the field of formative art, are paralleled, on the whole, by those of the _musical_ arts. By this term, as above remarked, we wish to designate all those arts which depend from the outset upon the _external_ factors of tone and rhythm ultimately employed most freely in music (cf. p. 262). In the preceding age, only _one_ of these arts, the _dance_, really reached any considerable development. Of the two elements of the musical arts, rhythm was as yet predominant. The dance received but little melodic support from the voice; noise instruments had the ascendancy over musical instruments. The further development of these arts leads to continued progress, particularly with respect to the melodic forms of expression. These begin with the language of speech, and gradually pass on to the pure clang formations produced solely by manufactured instruments. Corresponding with this external change is an inner change of motives, influenced, of course, by the varying materials which enter into the creations of the musical arts. From the very beginning, the character of this material is involved in constant change, as is also language, which is the basis of all these arts, and whose rhythmical-melodic forms cannot be arrested at any moment of its living development. The attempt to render permanent some of the movements of this flowing process, by means of literary records or definite symbols, is but an inadequate substitute for the enduring power with which the mute creations of sculpture and of architecture withstand the destructive influences of time. Just because of this plasticity of their working material, however, the musical arts are enabled all the more faithfully to portray the thoughts and feelings that move the artist and his age. Particularly where these thoughts and feelings are directly reproduced in language, the work, even though coming down from a long-departed past, has an incomparably greater power to transport us to its world than is ever possible to plastic art. How much more vividly do we not experience the life of the Homeric heroes while reading the Iliad than when viewing the Mycenian art of that period!

Of all the products of the verbal arts, it is the epic that most faithfully mirrors the character of the heroic age as a whole. The human hero here stands in the forefront of action. His battles and fortunes and a laudatory description of his qualities constitute the main themes of the poem. In the background, appears the world of gods. It receives no attention apart from its relation to the action. The gods, it is true, take a hand in the destinies of the heroes--they quarrel about them, or, when the need is greatest, descend to the earth and, though unrecognized, assist them in battles. As for the rest, however, their life lies outside the sphere of the epic narrative; it appears to be an even and undisturbed course of existence into which change enters only in so far as there is a participation in the affairs of the terrestrial world. Such is the epic at the zenith of its development and as it receives expression in the Homeric poems. Though such poetry be traced back to its beginnings, the gods will not be found to play any greater rôle, as we should be led to expect were the theory of many mythologists true that the hero saga developed out of the deity saga and, correspondingly, the heroic epic out of the deity epic. In confirmation of our assertion, we might point to the Russian and Servian romances, and also to the songs of the Kara-Kirghiz and to the Finnish Kalewala, though the Kalewala has not come down to us in quite its original form. The Norse Edda, which has been at the basis of certain misconceptions regarding this question, should not here be drawn into consideration, though, were it examined, it would substantiate, if anything, the opposite of what is supposed. It dates from a later period, which no longer believed, as we may assume that the Homeric rhapsodists did, in the gods and heroes of which it sang. The Norse skalds dealt, in their songs, with a departed world, whose memory they endeavoured to renew; they drew their material from märchen-myths and from folk-sagas. If, now, we turn to that poetry of the Slavic and Turkish tribes which is really preparatory to epic poetry, we find certain radical differences. Here also, of course, there are imaginary beings who either take a hand in the battles and destinies of the heroes or, through the magic over which the human hero as yet still frequently disposes, come to identify themselves with heroes. These beings, however, are not gods, but demons. They possess no personal traits whatsoever. Such traits are lacking also to the hero in proportion as he makes use of magical powers rather than of an enhanced measure of human ability. Thus, it is the _world of demons_, not that of gods, which forms the background of the early epic. As regards the hero himself, it is apparent from his characteristics that he is on the border-line between the hero of märchen and the epic hero. This development of the epic again mirrors the development of the hero saga described above. But, since epic poetry gives permanence to the unstable characters of the folk-saga, and thus, in turn, reacts upon the saga itself, its development is all the more capable of presenting a clear picture of that fusion of demon with human hero which gave rise to the god. It is by virtue of his human characteristics that the hero of the early epic is distinguished from the demons whose world as yet always forms his scene of action. These human characteristics are then more and more transferred to the demons. Throughout all these changes of environment, the hero remains the central figure of epic poetry, and continues to develop purely human characteristics. Hence it is that, at a later period, the gods again completely disappear from the action, and the destinies of human heroes come to be the exclusive concern of the epic. At this stage, it is no longer external factors that determine the destiny of the hero, as they did when demons and, later, gods were supreme; inner motives, whose source lies within the hero himself, are of paramount importance. When this occurs, however, epic poetry, has already passed beyond the boundaries of the heroic age.

At one time it was held that the Homeric epic, so far from marking the climax of a development in which the world of heroes was brought into relation with that of the gods, really inaugurated epic poetry. During this period, the rhythmic-melodic form of Homer was regarded as the beginning of all narrative. Indeed, at times it has been thought to represent the beginning of language. Following the view of Jacob Grimm, it was maintained that poetry was the earliest form of speech, and that prose came through a process of deterioration analogous to that by which prehistoric deity and hero sagas passed into the märchen. This theory, of course, is just as untenable for the history of language and poetry as it is for that of the saga. The original narrative is the märchen-myth that passes artlessly from mouth to mouth. The transition to a form which is at first loosely constructed and then more strictly metrical, is clearly bound up with the transition from the hero of the märchen to the hero of the saga. Coincident with this, gods also gradually gain a place in epic poetry. This development is accompanied by _two_ important external changes. The first of these involves the transformation of the everyday prose, in which the märchen-myth had been expressed, into rhythmic-melodic forms. These are reinforced by a simple musical accompaniment that gives to the diction itself the character of a recitative melody. The second change consists in the fact that separate narratives are joined into a series, the basis of connection being, in part, the heroes who participate in the action and, in part, the content of the action itself. Thus, a romance-cycle arises, which, when supplemented by connecting narratives, finally develops into a great epic. As might be supposed, it is primarily the first and the last stage of this development that are accessible to direct observation--the romances of the early epic, preserved in folk-poetry, and the perfected poems, such as the Homeric epics and the _Niebelungenlied_. As regards the formation of these epics out of their separate elements, we can do no more than to frame hypotheses on the basis of somewhat uncertain inferences relating to differences in style and composition. There can be no doubt, however, that the more important step as regards the form of the epic, namely, the development of rhythmic-melodic expression, was directly bound up with its very first stage, namely, with the appearance of the earliest form of the heroic narrative--a form resembling the romance.

But how may we account for this origin? Does the narrative of itself rise to song because of the more exalted character of its content? Or, is the rhythmic-melodic form imposed upon it from other previously existing types of poetry? Such poetry exists. The simple songs of primitive man we have already come to know; besides these, there are the cult-song, whose conjurations and petitions were addressed to demons prior to the advent of gods and heroes, and, finally, the work-song. This at once indicates that we must postulate a transference from the lyric type of song, taken in its broadest sense, to the narrative. Nevertheless, the first of the above-mentioned factors must not be disregarded. The heroic hero, of course, arouses far greater admiration and enthusiasm than did the märchen-hero. Here, as in the case of the song, the intensification of mental excitement causes its verbal expression to assume rhythmic forms, precisely as the dominance of festive and joyous emotion in the dance transforms the external movements of the body into rhythmical pantomime. Doubtless, therefore, it was primarily from the cult-song, and under the influence of a related poetic ecstasy, that a sustained rhythmical form was carried over to the portrayal of the hero personality and his deeds. And so, as is clearly shown by the romance-like beginnings of epic composition, the metrical form of the epic first follows current song-forms, and then gradually adapts these to the specific needs of the narrative. Now, the earliest characteristic of the song, and that which at a primitive stage constitutes almost its only difference from ordinary speech, is the refrain. In the epic, the rhythm becomes smoother. The refrain disappears entirely, or occurs at most in the case of regularly recurring connective phrases or of stereotyped expressions relating to the attributes of the gods and heroes. These aid the rhapsodist in maintaining an uninterrupted, rhythmic flow of speech, and also continue to be used as means for intensifying the rhythmic impression.

Epic poetry thus develops out of the earlier forms of lyric composition, through a process by which the exalted mood of the song is transferred to the portrayal of the hero personality. Finally, however, the epic itself reacts upon the lyric. Here again the cult-song occupies the foreground. When it reaches the stage of the hymn, its most effective content is found in narratives that centre about divine deeds which far transcend human capacities, or about the beneficent activity of the deity toward man. The tendency to incorporate such narratives is particularly marked in the song of praise and thanksgiving, which comes to occupy the dominant place in religious cult for the very reason that the mood which it expresses is at the basis of the common cult. At this point, cult acquires a further feature, the preconditions of which, however, date back to the age of demon cults. Even in the case of demons, aid was sought not merely by means of conjurations but also by means of _actions_ that imitated, in dances and solemn mask processions, the activities of demons. In the great vegetation festivals of New Mexico and Arizona, which are intermediate between demon and deity cults, there were imitative magical rites connected with the subterranean demons of the sprouting grain, with the rain-giving cloud demons above the earth, and also with the bright celestial gods who dwell beyond the clouds. After having originated in this sequence, these elements became united into a cult dance whose combination of motives resulted in the mimetic play, the imitative and pantomimic representation of a series of actions. Thus, the mime itself is the original form of the _drama_, which now takes its place beside the epic as a new form of poetry. What the epic portrays, the drama sets forth in living action. This accounts for the fact that, even in its later independent development, dramatic literature draws its material principally from the epic, or from the saga which circulates in folk-tradition as an epic narrative. Moreover, as may be noticed particularly in the history of the Greek drama, the transition was made but slowly from the individual rhapsodist, who sufficed for the rendering of the epic song, to the additional players necessary for setting forth the narrative in action.

How essentially uniform this transition is, in spite of widely divergent conditions, is illustrated by the origin of the religious plays which grew out of the Christian cult. In reading the gospel, the priest assigned certain passages, originally spoken by participants in the particular event, to sacristans or priests associated in the ceremony, and the chorus of worshippers represented the people present at the event. In spite of, or, we might better say, because of their more recent origin, these Easter, Passion, and Christmas plays represent an early stage of development. In them, we can still follow, step by step, the growth of dramatic art out of church liturgy, and the resultant secularization of the religious play. Heightened emotion results in an impulse to translate the inner experience into action, and thus dramatic expression is given to certain incidents of the sacred narrative that are particularly suited for it. This tendency grows, and finally the entire scene is acted out, the congregational responses of the liturgy passing over into the chorus of the drama. Common to the responses of the congregation and the chorus of the dramatic play, is the fact of an active participation in that which is transpiring. Though this participation is inner and subjective, in the one case, and objective, in the other, the response of the congregation to the priest in the liturgy is nevertheless preparatory to the chorus of the drama. It is inevitable, however, that this change should gradually lead to a break with liturgy. The portrayal of the sacred action is transferred from the church to the street; the clergy are supplanted by secular players from among the people. Even within the sacred walls folk-humour had inserted burlesque episodes--such, for example, as the mimic portrayal of Peter's violence to the servant Malchus, or the running of the Apostles to the grave of Christ. These now gained the upper hand, and finally formed independent mimetic comedies. The serious plays, on their part, also drew material, even at this time, from sources other than sacred history. The newly awakened dramatic impulse received further stimulus from various directions. The old travelling comedy, wandering from market to market with its exhibitions, now of gruesomely serious, now of keenly humorous, action, was a factor in the creation of the modern drama, no less than were the amusing performances of the accompanying puppet-show. Added to these, as a new factor, was the short novel, a prose narrative cultivated with partiality particularly since the Renaissance; there was also its elder sister, the imaginary märchen, as well as the epic of chivalry in its popular prose versions, and, finally, that which more clearly approximates to the religious starting-point, the saint legend--all of these united in giving impetus to the modern drama.

Now, the similarity of this development to that of the ancient drama is so marked that, even where details are lacking, we may regard the nature of the transitions as identical so far as their general features are concerned. Indeed, we should doubtless be justified in assuming that in whatever other localities a dramatic art was perfected, as, for example, in India, the course of development was essentially the same as that which has been described. True, the development cannot proceed to its termination apart from an advance in cult and poetry such as was attained but rarely. Its sources, however, are always to be found in universal human characteristics which were operative in the very beginnings of art and cult. The two factors upon which the later drama depends may be detected even in the corroboree of the Australians. The corroboree is a cult dance whose central feature is a regulated imitation of the actions of totem animals, accompanied by song and noisy music. This imitation of animals also leads to the insertion of humorous episodes. Indeed, even in the corroboree, these episodes are frequently so numerous as to crowd out completely the cult purpose--an early anticipation of the secularization which everywhere took place in the art that originated in cult. In numerous other details as well, the continuity of development is apparent. Suggestions of the animal dance occur in the satyric plays of the Greeks. This same satyric drama took over the phallus-bearing choral dancers from the vegetation festival. In striking correspondence, as K. Th. Preusz has pointed out, and indicative of analogous customs, are the phallephoric representations found in ancient Mexican cult pictures. The puppet-show, which was perhaps not the least among the factors leading to the secularization of the drama, was not only universally to be found during the Middle Ages, but in India it made its appearance at an early period. It occurs even among peoples of nature, as, for example, among the Esquimos. Among these peoples, the doll and its movements always represent an imitation of man himself and of his pantomimes. But, though the tendencies to dramatic representation and, in part, even the beginnings of the drama, reach back to the early stages of art, the developed drama was the product of a later period, and was dependent for its rise upon almost all the other verbal and mimetic arts. The drama, however, may always be traced back to deity cult. The religious hymn which extols the deeds of the gods is a direct incentive to the translation of these deeds into personal action. The motives for the dramatic elaboration of liturgy were present particularly in those deity cults which combined soul cults with ideas of a beyond, and which centred about the life, the sufferings, and the final salvation of the gods, and the transference of these experiences to the human soul. The development of the mediæval Easter and Passion plays may be traced, step by step, from their origin. It is this development, particularly, that throws clear light upon early Greek and Indian drama, whose beginnings in the mystery cults are rendered obscure by the secrecy of the cults. These latter dramas, in turn, clearly indicate that the original source of dramatic representations is to be found in the very ancient vegetation ceremonies, which, in part, were transmitted to the heroic age from a period as early as that of demon cults. After the dramatic performance has been transferred from the temple to the market-place and the drama has become secularized, the further course of development naturally differs both with the conditions of the age and with the character of the culture. Nevertheless, however, the epic narrative, the mimetic representation, and the older forms of the song may have co-operated in the development of the drama, the latter, like the epic, steadily descends from the lofty realms of the heroes and gods, down to the dwellings of men. In the portrayal of human strivings and sufferings, moreover, the centre of interest shifts from the mysterious course of external events to the secrets of the human soul. But herewith again the drama transcends the boundaries of the heroic age. Its beginnings grow out of early deity cult. In its final stages, dramatic art, with its insight into human life as it is directly lived, becomes the vehicle of the idea of humanity in the entire scope of its meaning, comprehending both the heights and the depths of human life.

Closely bound up with the psychological motives underlying the development of the drama is the last of the musical arts--namely, _music_. We may refer to it as the last of these arts for the reason that it attained to independence later than any of the others. As a dependent art, however, accompanying the dance, the song, or the epic recital, it dates back to the age of primitive man. Musical art, also, received its first noteworthy stimulus from cult, as an accompaniment of the cult dance and the cult song. The strong emotions aroused by the cult activity caused a constantly increasing emphasis to be placed on the musical part of the ceremony, leading particularly to the development of melody. The polyphonic song of the many-voiced chorus of the cult members, and the music of the accompanying instruments which gradually assumed the same character, eventually developed into harmonic modulation. This introduced musical effects of a novel sort, such as were not possible for the accompaniment of the reciting rhapsodist and were attained only imperfectly by the common song. Thus, dramatic and musical art both sprang from the same religious root, the liturgic ceremonial, thence to pursue different directions of development. Later they again united in the case of certain particularly emotional parts of the dramatic action, first of all in the choral song, which is thus reminiscent of their common origin in liturgy. With this exception, however, the emancipation of dramatic and of musical art from their common cult origin was succeeded by a long period in which they remained distinct. Hence it is certainly not without significance that the creator of the modern art-synthesis, the music drama, himself felt his achievement to be religious in character. Whether or not this may be affirmed as regards the content of the music drama, it is true so far as the fact of combining the two arts is concerned. But it is no less noteworthy that in this case also the separation of itself engenders the motives for the reunion. When the drama was transferred from the temple to the public market-place and then descended from the sphere of gods and heroes to the reality of everyday life, it lost, first its musical-melodic form, and then its elevated rhythm, thus giving way to prose. The liturgic song that survived in the cult, however, entered into reciprocal relations with the secular forms of the song, and a copious interchange of melodic motives ensued. With the same justification, perhaps, as in the case of the origin of the dramatic play in general, we may interpret the older developments by reference to the interchange between sacred and secular songs that took place in Christendom during the Middle Ages. The endeavour to combine dramatic with lyric and musical enjoyment gave rise to hybrid forms of art, to the musical play and the opera. This prepared the way for the further attempt to transcend these composite forms of art by creating a new unity of drama and music. Thus, the aim was to restore the original synthesis on a higher plane, not limited to particular religious cults but taking into account universal human emotions. Yet the entire development of this later art, as well as that of its component elements, the drama and the song, again carries us far beyond the limits of the heroic age. It extends over into a period in which, on the one hand, man supplants the hero and, on the other, the religious advance to a superpersonal god displaces those deities who suffer from the defects which they have inherited from their human prototypes and their demon ancestors--namely, the personal gods.

Along with the above-mentioned development of musical art there is also a second change, which appears on the surface to be antithetical to the former, but which in reality supplements it. This change consists in the separation of musical expression from the various elements with which it was originally connected, and in its entrance upon a free and independent development. In the recitative of the rhapsodist, in the liturgy of the temple service, in dance and song, the rhythmic-melodic elements are, to a certain extent, limited by the rhythmic-melodic possibilities of language. In part, it is true, they have freed themselves from this limitation--namely, in the instrumental accompaniment--and yet they fail to attain to independence so long as they are but means for intensifying the expression which emotion receives in language and mimicry. From this double bondage to the rhythmic-melodic powers of human expressive movements and to the thought content of language, musical art finally frees itself. While the musical instrument was at first a means designed to assist man in his endeavour to give direct expression to his emotions, man's activity in the case of 'absolute music' becomes limited to the mastery of the instrument itself. This renders available a wealth of new tonal possibilities, and adds an inexhaustible supply of new motifs for the expression of feelings and emotions. Musical art thus becomes purely a language of emotions. Free from connection with specific ideas, it in no wise restricts the experiences which the hearer may enjoy. It affects these experiences only in so far as the musical production is itself a portrayal of pure emotions. Inasmuch as music is not bound by concepts or ideas, its effect upon the hearer will be the purer and the more intense according as he is the more receptive to the particular emotions in question. In the form of the instrumental composition, therefore, music is the most subjective of the musical arts, as are landscape-painting and its related forms, though not in so pronounced a degree, of the plastic arts. Like these arts, and even more so, music is the expression of purely subjective feelings. Hence, it, as well as they, far transcends the boundaries of the heroic age, whose fundamental characteristic is attachment to the objective world. In the heroic age, the individual may indeed transfuse the outer world with his emotions, but he is never able to isolate his emotions from objects. Consequently, though art places its media at his disposal, he is unable to utilize them in giving expression, in its independence, to the inner life of personality.