We unconsciously carry on the same traditions, preserving some of their forms, although the meaning of the symbol is lost.  Tombs in the open air which enclosed a spirit, and round which the shades roamed, were the first sacred buildings, from which by an easy and intelligible evolution of ideas, temples, with a similar orientation, and other works of architecture, both religious and civil, were derived.  If we follow, step by step, the development of the tomb into the temple, the palace, and the triumphal arch, we shall see how the outward form and the human and cosmic myth were reciprocally enlarged.  Ethnography, archaeology, and the history of all peoples indicate their gradual evolution, so that it is only necessary to allude to it; proofs abound for any intelligent reader.  Even in modern architecture the arrangement of parts, the general form, the ornaments and symbols relating to mythical ideas, still persist, although we are no longer conscious of their meaning; just as human speech now makes use of a simple phonetic sign as if it were an algebraic notation, in which the philologist can trace the primitive and concrete image whence it proceeded.  The arts also, like other human products, follow the general evolution of myth in their historic course; the primitive fetish is afterwards perfected by more explicit spiritual beliefs, and is combined with cosmic myths; these are slowly transformed into symbolic representations, which dissolve in their turn, and give place to the expression of the truth and to forms which more fully satisfy the natural sense of beauty and its adaptation to special ends.

The arts of singing and of instrumental music have the same origin and evolution as the others.  Vico, Strabo, and others have asserted that primitive men spoke in song, and there is great truth in the remark.  Since gesture and pantomime help out the meaning of imperfect speech, which was at first poor in the number of words and their relative forms, and this is still the case among many peoples, so song, vocal modulation, and the rhythmic expression of speech seem to stimulate emotion.  In truth, the mental and physiological effort which tends by vocal enunciation to present the image or emotion in an external form, is on the one hand not yet fully disintegrated, and on the other the greater or less intensity of feeling involved in primitive languages a corresponding vocal modulation to supplement it, just as it required gesture and pantomime.  Thus speech, gesture, and song, in the larger sense of the word, had their origin together.  This is also true of many of the languages of modern savages, and of those of more civilized peoples, such as the Chinese, which have not quite attained inflection; in this case the frequent repetition of the same monosyllable conveys a different meaning, not only from its relative position, but from the modulation and tone in which it is uttered.  The same thing may be observed in children who are just beginning to talk.