y be said to have been
practically extinct. Then, in place of the dead ashes of art,
the cold fire of science arose; for we have such men as Euclid
(300 B.C.) and his school applying mathematics to musical
sounds, and a system of cold calculation to an art that had
needed all the warmth of emotional enthusiasm to keep it alive.
Thus music became a science. Had it not been for the little
weeds of folk song which managed with difficulty to survive at
the foot of this arid dust heap, and which were destined to be
transformed and finally to bloom into such lovely flowers in
our times, we might yet have been using the art to illustrate
mathematical calculations.

The teaching of Pythagoras was the first step in this
classification of sounds; and he went further than this, for
he also classified the _emotions_ affected by music. It was
therefore a natural consequence that in his teaching he should
forbid music of an emotional character as injurious. When he
came to Crotona, it was to a city that vied with Agrigentum,
Sybaris, and Tarentum in luxury; its chief magistrate wore
purple garments, a golden crown upon his head, and white
shoes on his feet. It was said of Pythagoras that he had
studied twelve years with the Magi in the temples of Babylon;
had lived among the Druids of Gaul and the Indian Brahmins; had
gone among the priests of Egypt and witnessed their most secret
temple rites. So free from care or passion was his face that
he was thought by the people to be Apollo; he was of majestic
presence, and the most beautiful man they had ever seen. So
the people accepted him as a superior being, and his influence
became supreme over science and art, as well as manners.

He gave the Greeks their first scientific analysis of sound.
The legend runs that, passing a blacksmith's shop and
hearing the different sounds of the hammering, he conceived
the idea that sounds could be measured by some such means
as weight is measured by scales, or distance by the foot
rule. By weighing the different hammers, so the story goes,
he obtained the knowledge of harmonics or overtones, namely,
the fundamental, octave, fifth, third, etc. This legend, which
is stated seriously in many histories of music, is absurd, for,
as we know, the hammers would not have vibrated. The anvils
would have given the sound, but in order to produce the octave,
fifth, etc., they would have had to be of enormous proportions.
On the other hand, the monochord, wit