in the process of execution, since it
is incipient only; it will then have revealed an intention and betrayed
a state of mind. Thus it will have found a function which action itself
can seldom fulfil. When an act is done, indications of what it was to be
are superfluous; but indications of possible acts are in the highest
degree useful and interesting. In this way gesture assumes the role of
language and becomes a means of rational expression. It remains
suggestive and imitable enough to convey an idea, but not enough to
precipitate a full reaction; it feeds that sphere of merely potential
action which we call thought; it becomes a vehicle for intuition.

Under these circumstances, to tread the measures of a sacred dance, to
march with an army, to bear one's share in any universal act, fills the
heart with a voluminous silent emotion. The massive suggestion, the
pressure of the ambient will, is out of all proportion to the present
call for action. Infinite resources and definite premonitions are thus
stored up in the soul; and merely to have moved solemnly together is the
best possible preparation for living afterwards, even if apart, in the
consciousness of a general monition and authority.

[Sidenote: Automatic music.]

Parallel to this is the genesis and destiny of music, an art originally
closely intertwined with the dance. The same explosive forces that
agitate the limbs loosen the voice; hand, foot, and throat mark their
wild rhythm together. Birds probably enjoy the pulsation of their
singing rather than its sound. Even human music is performed long before
it is listened to, and is at first no more an art than sighing. The
original emotions connected with it are felt by participation in the
performance--a participation which can become ideal only because, at
bottom, it is always actual. The need of exercise and self-expression,
the force of contagion and unison, bears the soul along before an
artistic appreciation of music arises; and we may still observe among
civilised races how music asserts itself without any aesthetic intent, as
when the pious sing hymns in common, or the sentimental, at sea, cannot
refrain from whining their whole homely repertory in the moonlight. Here
as elsewhere, instinct and habit are phases of the same inner
disposition. What has once occurred automatically on a given occasion
will be repeated in much the same form when a similar occasion recurs.
Thus impulse, reinforced by its own