From Nature also do we derive this art, as "The sighing of the wind passing over a bed of reeds is Nature's first suggestion of breath," and of music. The clapping of hands and the stamping of feet is man's first element in the making of music, which developed itself into the formation of drums, bells, and cymbals, and the evolution of the same primary principle.
It has been argued, and also ridiculously pretended, that in the Antediluvian period mankind only lived in caves with the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, the rhinoceros, and the hyaena, in a state of barbarous savagery; and that only since the Deluge have the Arts been known and cities built on this terrestrial sphere of ours. Could anything be more fallacious?
We know, from the Bible, that the first man was created about six thousand years ago, and some sixteen hundred and fifty-six years afterwards the inhabitants of the world, with the exception of Noah and his family, consisting of eight souls all told, were destroyed by the flood. Noah and his family, we can take it, were of the same race of mankind then on the earth, of the same descent and of the same flesh and blood (as we all are) of our common father and mother, Adam and Eve; yet we are not told that Noah (he was six hundred years old when he went into the Ark) and his family were savages. In the 4th chapter, 21st verse of Genesis, of Jubal-Cain, we learn that "He was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ"; and in the following verse, Tubal-Cain is described as "An instructor of every artificer in brass and iron."
We learn, also, that magnificent statues were made in Egypt some six thousand years ago; and that mention is made of a statue of King Cephren, said to have been chiselled about this period, and many learned men also affirm that letters were known to the inhabitants of the Antediluvian world. All this, however, hardly looks like the work of a barbarous race, and points to an acquaintance with the Arts, at any rate of Music and Sculpture, and that of the artificers and workers in brass and iron.
To follow, for my subject, this reasoning a little further, if there was music (which, doubtless, there was) there must also have been dancing, and, if dancing, there must, in the Antediluvian age, as a form of entertainment, have also been Pantomime. On the other hand, even supposing that man, at this period, was nothing else but a complete savage, the words of Darwin, that I have quoted on a previous page, conclusively proves, I think (on a common-sense like basis), of the existence of dancing, a rude form of music, and, of course, Pantomime at this epoch.
Ingersoll's doctrine was that "The distance from savagery to Shakespeare must be measured not by hundreds, but by millions, of years."
Finally, why, and for what reason, should the Lord God, in His all-seeing goodness and mercy, punish the inhabitants of the Antediluvian world if they were only poor unenlightened savages? Was it not because they were idolaters and worshippers of idols, "And that every imagination of the thoughts of his (man's) heart was only evil continually," as the sixth chapter and fifth verse of Genesis tells us? This then being so, we know also that in every ancient form of religion dancing was one of the acts of worship, and if dancing, there must as previously stated, have also been Pantomime.