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 classic 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.
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