momentous question let us now
intelligently address our minds, sacredly pledged, as becomes lovers of
truth, to its determination in the manner most agreeable to our desires;
and if, in pursuance of this laudable design, we have the unhappiness to
bother the bunions decorating the all-pervading feet of the good people
whose deprecations are voiced in _The Dance of Death_ and the clamatory
literature of which that blessed volume was the honored parent, upon
their own corns be it; they should not have obtruded these eminences

when youth and pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

What, therefore, whence, and likewise why, is dancing? From what flower
of nature, fertilized by what pollen of circumstance or necessity, is it
the fruit? Let us go to the root of the matter.

II

THE BEATING OF THE BLOOD

Nature takes a childish delight in tireless repetition. The days repeat
themselves, the tides ebb and flow, the tree sways forth and back. This
world is intent upon recurrences. Not the pendulum of a clock is more
persistent of iteration than are all existing things; periodicity is the
ultimate law and largest explanation of the universe--to do it over
again the one insatiable ambition of all that is. Everything vibrates;
through vibration alone do the senses discern it. We are not provided
with means of cognizance of what is absolutely at rest; impressions come
in waves. Recurrence, recurrence, and again recurrence--that is the sole
phenomenon. With what fealty we submit us to the law which compels the
rhythm and regularity to our movement--that makes us divide up passing
time into brief equal intervals, marking them off by some method of
physical notation, so that our senses may apprehend them! In all we do
we unconsciously mark time like a clock, the leader of an orchestra with
his _baton_ only more perfectly than the smith with his hammer, or the
woman with her needle, because his hand is better assisted by his ear,
less embarrassed with _impedimenta_. The pedestrian impelling his legs
and the idler twiddling his thumbs are endeavoring, each in his
unconscious way, to beat time to some inaudible music; and the graceless
lout, sitting cross-legged in a horse-car, manages the affair with his
toe.

The more intently we labor, the more intensely do we become absorbed in
labor's dumb song, until with body and mind engaged in the ecstacy of
repetition, we resent an inte