it is designed as a language by which men may be instructed. In savagery, the language by which the gods are addressed is sign language; in barbarism, it is gesture speech; in monarchy, the national god is the only true god,—all others are devils,—and this true god understands and employs the national language, and religious drama is a gesture speech designed to instruct men in divine lore. This new element appears in one form in the more highly developed savage society, in another form in barbaric society, but in tyrannic society it is fully fledged as ceremony. It is shown in the account which we have of the Eleusinian mysteries; it appears also in the dramatic performance of many nations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, where the drama becomes an institution promoted and regulated by the ruler, and drama is the principal system of worship in the national religion, while local worship is restricted largely to tribal methods. This new element of worship is developed by transmuting the actual sacrifice into ceremonial sacrifice. No longer are hecatombs slain; no longer are wines poured upon the ground; no longer are cereals burned in the fire; but a ceremony representing these things is instituted and held to be sacred, and especially efficacious, while praise is not only terpsichorean as in savagery, not only athletic as in barbarism, but it is pageantry. Thus, in the tyrannic stage, we have ceremony.
Toward the close of this stage religion and drama are partially divorced, so that there is a drama more or less distinct from religion.
Histrionic Art—We have now to consider drama as an esthetic art in the fourth stage of culture. This stage is brought about as a revolution in society fundamentally through the agencies of science; not that there is no science anterior to this stage of culture, but that its power has not attained that potency necessary to the transmutation. Science is only simple knowledge, which is but a verified inference, and in all ages men have known something. A few simple facts known in savagery become germs
