This form of dancing corresponds almost exactly with the Greek _gumnāzo_, which was the simpler and more exclusively physical of the two divisions of the dance, the groundwork for the _orchēsis_, the intellectual and emotional expression of bodily movement. The former provided the technique, which was to be mastered not for its own sake, but as a means of furnishing the body with that eloquence by which it could utter the moods of the spirit. Without this training in the dance, the Greek men and women could never have acquired that exquisite harmony, that easy grace of carriage, such as we see in ancient art. It may even be said to have made Greek art possible, for as J. A. Symonds remarked in his “Studies of the Greek Poets”: “The whole race lived out its sculpture and painting, rehearsed, as it were, the great masterpieces of Phidias and Polygnotus in physical exercise before it learnt to express itself in marble and colour.” The modern revival of the dance will not do the same for the art of our own time until the dance becomes the common property of the people. For the ordinary man and woman dancing provides the simplest, the most natural, the most satisfying means of expression. Self-expression is a faculty the loss of which the modern age is just beginning to be aware of. An earlier age realised it in the arts of the folk--in folk-dance, in folk-song, in folk-lore and in the popular pageants of the Church. For its loss Puritanism is primarily responsible with its vulgar shamefacedness; it was further weakened by the Industrial Revolution, which broke up the old rhythms of social life; and it finally perished when our artistic pleasures became specialised and we chose to become passive, inexpressive spectators of professional artists rather than attempt any artistic expression of our own. Whereas a former age lived out its spirit in a popular music, a popular ballad literature and national dances, the present generation prefers to listen to the wheedling airs of the gramophone, to read a professional journalism and to watch a paid dancer in the music-halls. The tendency everywhere is for a passive enjoyment to usurp the place of an active participation in the arts. But the desire for self-expression is instinctive and irrepressible. In the dance it will find a means of satisfaction--complete, elemental, and one which has the saving quality of beauty.