Such are briefly the characteristics of the genesis of song and of music, the actual conditions which make them possible, and their effect on man and animals.  We must now consider the subject from the mythical point of view, as we have done in the case of the other arts.  We know that the image and emotions are mythically personified by us, and this fanciful reality is afterwards infused into the words used in its expression.  It follows from this that speech is not only spontaneously and unconsciously personified as the material covering of the idea or emotion enclosed in it, but that the same thing occurs in language as a whole, at first vaguely, but afterwards in a definite and reflective manner, in consequence of intellectual development.  Among all civilized peoples, whether extinct or still in existence, speech is not only personified in the complex idea or language, but it is deified.  It is well known that this is the case in all phases of Eastern Christianity, and that the other Christian churches have since identified the Graeco-Eastern idea of the Logos with the Messianic ideas engrafted upon it.  If among the prehistoric peoples which most resemble modern savages, speech was personified by the necessity of the perceptive faculty, a vague power was certainly ascribed to it, and even a simple murmur or whisper was supposed to have a direct and personal influence on things, men, and animals.  Magic, which is the primitive expression of fetishtic power, embodied in a man, had its most efficacious form in the utterance of words, cries, whispers, or songs, referring to the malign or to the healing and beneficent arts, and it was employed to arouse or to calm storms, to destroy or improve the harvest, or for like purposes.

Beginning with the traditions of our race, even prior to its dispersion, there are plain proofs that words and songs were originally employed for exorcisms and magic in various diseases, and for incantations directed against men or things. Kar means to bewitch, as in German we have einem etwas anthun, in low Latin facturare, in Italian fattucchiere, and from Kar we have carmen, a song or magic formula.  The goddess Carmenta, who was supposed to watch over childbirth, derived her name from carmen, the magic formula which was used to aid the delivery.  The name was also used for a prophetess, as Carmenta, the mother of Evander.  Servio tells us that the augurs were termed carmentes.[38] The Sanscrit maya, meaning magic or illusion and, in the Veda, wisdom, is derived from man, to think or know; from man we have mantra, magic formula or incantation; in Zend, manthra is an incantation against disease, and hence we have the Erse manadh, incantation or juggling, and moniti in Lithuanian.  The linguistic researches of Pictet, Pott, Benfey, Kuhn, and others show that in primitive times singing, poetry, hymns, the celebration of rites, and the relation of tales, were identical ideas, expressed in identical forms, and even the name for a nightingale had the same derivation.  So also the names of a singer, poet, a wise man, and a magician, came from the same root.