than any other people on
the globe. It is the outcome of psychological traits which are rooted
in significant conditions of our educational and social life. Yet as
soon as these connections are recognized and these reasons for waste
are understood, it ought not to be difficult fundamentally to change
all this and to make the savings of the nation everywhere really
sources of national income.

IX

SOCIETY AND THE DANCE

The story of the dance is the history of human civilization, of its
progress and regress. To be sure, as the human mind remains ultimately
the same, mankind has often unintentionally returned again to the old
forms. The pirouette, which the artists of the ballet invented a
hundred years ago, and which was applauded as the wonder of its time,
as we now know, was danced by old Egyptians. Not seldom the same outer
forms referred to very different mental motives. We learn that many
people danced half naked as an expression of humility. Who would claim
that the lack of costume in the ballet of to-day is a symbol of
humility, too? Moreover, the right perspective can hardly be gained as
long as we take the narrow view and think only of those few forms of
dance which we saw yesterday in the ballroom and the day before
yesterday on the stage of the theatre. The dance has not meant to
mankind only social pleasure and artistic spectacle, it originally
accompanied the social life and surrounded the individual in every
important function.

Dancing certainly began as a religious cult. It was the form in which
every increase of emotion expressed itself, grief as well as joy, awe
as much as enthusiasm. The primitive peoples danced and in many places
still dance when the seasons change or when the fields are to be
cultivated, when they start on the hunt or go to war, when health is
asked for the sick, and when the gods are to be called upon. The
Iroquois Indians have thirty-two chief types of dances, and even among
civilized nations, for instance the Bohemians, a hundred and
thirty-six dances may be discriminated. Moreover, at first, the dance
is really one with the song; music and dancing were only slowly torn
asunder. And if we look over the whole world of dance, it almost
appears as if what is left to us is after all merely a poor remnant.
Yet in these very days much seems to suggest that the dance is to come
to its own again. At least, he who obs