In considering such dances the question must be met whether they, like the courtship arts of birds, are referable to instinctive tendencies. It may be inferred from the introductory part of this section that I am somewhat sceptical as to that. I do, indeed, doubt whether human dancing should be attributed exclusively to courtship, and I think we can hardly emphasize too much the fact that while man possesses the full complement of instincts, they are subordinated in his case in favour of intellectual adaptations. Of birds we know with comparative certainty that they must learn and practise their courtship arts practically without teachers; but no one will affirm that individual man without tradition or example would turn to ornament and dancing on the awakening of sexual impulse. Only a general disposition toward self-display is instinctive, the how and when being left to invention and tradition. Perhaps some particularly significant movements are specializations of this disposition, as, for instance, the hip movement, which is accentuated in the waltz and which has influenced plastic art since the time of Praxiteles. There must be much more thorough investigation of the subject before we can affirm even the possibilities respecting it. Of the other arts, that of lyric poetry is about the only one which we need to consider in relation to courtship, and this more especially in its connection with music. Among primitive races dancing invariably accompanies the recital of such poetry. The troubadour is the product of a higher social condition. The lyric, too, played an important part as an instrument of courtship in Mohammedan civilization during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as is apparent from the Thousand and One Nights Tales. “The ear often loves before the eye,” to quote from one of them which deals with the winning power of beautiful verse. In the story of Hajat Alnufus and Ardschir the amorous prince, who is disguised as a merchant, seeks to awaken the love of the proud princess by means of passionate verse, and the description is fine of how a tender interest is aroused in the coy and high-spirited beauty toward the persistent wooer, though it develops, it is true, into genuine love only under his gaze. “O Hajat Alnufus,” runs one of these love poems, “make happy with thy presence a lover whom absence is undoing. My life was surrounded with joy and bliss, but now the nights find me raving and mad with love. Must I always sigh and moan, always be cast down and hopeless? All night long sleep shuns me, and I gaze wearily at the stars. Oh, have pity on a dismayed and suffering lover whose heart is sad and his eyes weary with watching!” In the story of Hasan of Bassrah we have a feminine counterpart of this which deserves to be numbered among the finest pearls of Oriental lyrical poetry. Hasan’s lady is so rejoiced to see him after a long separation that she breaks