Whether in the east the tetrachord or the pentatone had priority in development cannot be determined, for it may well have been that both were developed independently; I favour the idea that the pentatonic is the rudest in character, and originated with the wilder tribes of the east in a very primitive era, whereas the tetrachord seems by its nature to accord with early pastoral life. I am only concerned with the question of scales from the instrumentalist’s point of view; and I explain the prevalence of the pentatonic scale as growing out of the nature of the _instrument_,—first for the pipe there was one note, then there were two, and so on. Voices and pipes imitated one another, and the perception of the relation we call an octave seems to have been everywhere an instinctive perception. I suppose it will generally be conceded that man is naturally lazy. Well, he will not exert his voice more than is necessary for his immediate purpose; so he takes more easily to the interval of the fourth, for to rise to the fifth means greater effort. Place your fingers on a pipe; the spread is not equal, there is a marked enlargement of space between first and second fingers. If holes are cut to correspond with this finger difference, then the result is contrary to the pipe’s need, for nature for equal tone interval wants the upper holes of the pipe to be nearer together: so the note turns out to be a tone and a half higher instead of the one tone distance. As with our keyboard, a long time passed before the thumb was brought into recognition to do finger work; so in the pipe, the use of the thumb was an after thought. Thus on the under side of the pipe a hole was introduced dividing equally or unequally this wide upper interval, itself forming another wide interval with the second note below; and in effect an overlapping arises in the pentatonic structure whereby the pentatone can be dissected into two tetrachords within the octave. Sometimes the distance of the first hole from the lower end of the pipe is greater, and makes the interval (a neuter third) appear at the beginning or end, according as we reckon the progression. In whatever way it may be, the pipe in the beginning made the scale. There are many varieties of pentatonic construction, and the wide intervals may be in any position. Our best representative is found in the black keys of the pianoforte. We may commence on either F♯ or C♯, and thus vary the relations in progression of the scale. A plaintive character in the music of native melodies is greatly due to the existence in the instrument of those imperfect intervals, the three-quarter tones, and the little leaps of tones that seem to fail to attain their aim, and never satisfy the listening ear of the European. CHAPTER XXI. In Ancient China. THE FAVOURITE OF CONFUCIUS.