Note 1007 — Chapter VII · THE EARLIEST DIFFERENTIATIONS OF POETRY

Wallace is thinking of music and song in the nobler sense when he denies them to primitive races; and Wallaschek’s answer is conclusive, for it is based on evidence that all goes one way, Primitive Music, pp. 277 f. Another absurd reaction against romantic ideas is to deny lyric propensity to primitive folk and substitute an acute sense of “business.” So Norden, work quoted, I. 156, says the prayer of early man was anything but a “lyrical outpouring”; it was “a contract with deity, give and take.” But emotional fear and emotional thanks precede any such shrewd rationalism as this, if psychology is to be regarded, let alone ethnological evidence.