Note 1090 — Chapter VII · THE EARLIEST DIFFERENTIATIONS OF POETRY

As in dances of the Greeks, now felt to be a lost art. On this matter of gesture and signs, see an excellent book by Sittl, Die Gebärden der Griechen und Römer, Leipzig, 1890; his accounts of the attempt “die Völker durch die Zeichensprache zu verbrüdern,” with reference to Leibnitz and others; of orgiastic ecstasies; and, of course, the study of Greek gesture in art and poetry, are all instructive. For primitive relations, Darwin’s book On the Expressions of Emotions, etc., 1872, is still main authority. Gestures, like sounds, are either instinctive or called out by the will; and any study of progress in the dramatic art must concern itself with these fundamental elements of acting.