e in his theoretical knowledge, say,
as was and is said of Chopin, "He is weak in sonata form!"

There are two ways of looking at music: first, as impassioned
speech, the nearest psychologically-complete utterance of
emotion known to man; second, as the dance, comprising as it
does all that appeals to our nature. And there is much that is
lovely in this idea of nature--for do not the seasons dance,
and is it not in that ancient measure we have already spoken of,
the trochaic? Long Winter comes with heavy foot, and Spring is
the light-footed. Again, Summer is long, and Autumn short and
cheery; and so our phrase begins again and again. We all know
with what periodicity everything in nature dances, and how the
smallest flower is a marvel of recurring rhymes and rhythms,
with perfume for a melody. How Shakespeare's Beatrice charms us
when she says, "There a star danced, and under that was I born."

And yet man is not part of Nature. Even in the depths of the
primeval forest, that poor savage, whom we found listening
fearfully to the sound of his drum, knew better. Mankind lives
in isolation, and Nature is a thing for him to conquer. For
Nature is a thing that exists, while man _thinks_. Nature is
that which passively lives while man actively wills. It is the
strain of Nature in man that gave him the dance, and it is his
godlike fight against Nature that gave him impassioned speech;
beauty of form and motion on one side, all that is divine in man
on the other; on one side materialism, on the other idealism.

We have traced the origin of the drum, pipe, and the voice in
music. It still remains for us to speak of the lyre and the
lute, the ancestors of our modern stringed instruments. The
relative antiquity of the lyre and the lute as compared with
the harp has been much discussed, the main contention against
the lyre being that it is a more artificial instrument than
the harp; the harp was played with the fingers alone, while the
lyre was played with a plectrum (a small piece of metal, wood,
or ivory). Perhaps it would be safer to take the lute as the
earliest form of the stringed instrument, for, from the very
first, we find two species of instruments with strings, one
played with the fingers, the prototype of our modern harps,
banjos, guitars, etc., the other played with the plectrum,
the ancestor of all our modern stringed instruments played by
means of bows and hammers, such as violins, pianos, etc.

However this m