"Here we have a striking example of the way in which an hypothesis is
made to appear untenable by representing it as being something which it
does not profess to be," he says. "I gave an account of the origin of
music, and now I am blamed because my conception of the origin of music
does not include a conception of music as fully developed. If to some
one who said that an oak comes from an acorn it were replied that he had
manifestly never seen an oak, since an acorn contains no trace of all
its complexities of form and structure, the reply would not be thought a
rational one;" but he believes it would be quite as rational as to
suppose he had not realized what a musical composition is because his
theory of the origin of music says nothing about the characteristics of
an overture or a quartet.
Of the music of primeval man we can form an estimate from the music of
still existing uncivilized races. As the vocabulary of their speech is
limited, so the notes of their music are few, but expressive gestures
and modulations of the voice supplement both.
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