The principle upon which such reasoning rests is one against which the Doctor expressed a strong opinion, whenever he heard it introduced. Nothing, he thought, could be more unreasonable than that the use of what is no ways hurtful or unlawful in itself, should be prohibited because it was liable to abuse. If that principle be once admitted, where is it to stop? There was a Persian tyrant, who having committed some horrible atrocity in one of his fits of drunkenness, ordered all the wine in his dominions to be spilt as soon as he became sober, and was conscious of what he had done; and in this he acted rightly, under a sense of duty as well as remorse, for it was enjoining obedience to a law of his religion, and enforcing it in a manner the most effectual. But a Christian government which because drunkenness is a common sin shall prohibit all spirituous liquors, would by so doing subject the far greater and better part of the community to an unjust and hurtful privation, thus punishing the sober, the inoffensive and the industrious, for the sake of the idle, the worthless and the profligate.
Jones of Nayland regarded these things with no puritanical feeling. “In joy, and thanksgiving,” says that good and true minister of the Church of England, “the tongue is not content with speaking, it must evoke and utter a song, while the feet are also disposed to dance to the measures of music, as was the custom in sacred celebrities of old among the people of God, before the World and its vanities had engrossed to themselves all the expressions of mirth and festivity. They have now left nothing of that kind to religion; which must sit by in gloomy solemnity, and see the World with the Flesh and the Devil assume to themselves the sole power of distributing social happiness.”
“Dancing,” says Mr. Burchell, “appears to have been in all ages of the world, and perhaps in all nations, a custom so natural, so pleasing, and even useful, that we may readily conclude it will continue to exist as long as mankind shall continue to people the earth. We see it practised as much by the savage as by the civilized, as much by the lowest, as by the highest classes of society; and as it is a recreation purely corporeal, and perfectly independent of mental qualification, or refinement, all are equally fitted for enjoying it: it is this probably which has occasioned it to become universal. All attempts therefore at rendering any exertion of the mind necessary to its performance, are an unnatural distortion of its proper and original features. Grace and ease of motion are the extent of its perfection; because these are the natural perfections of the human body. Every circumstance and object by which man is surrounded may be viewed in a philosophical light; and thus viewed, dancing appears to be a recreative mode of exercising the body and keeping it in health, the means of shaking off spleen, and of expanding one of the best characters of the heart,—the social feeling. When it does not affect this, the fault is not in the dance, but in the dancer; a perverse mind makes all things like itself. Dancing and music, which appears to be of equal antiquity, and equally general among mankind, are connected together only by a community of purpose: what one is for the body, the other is for the mind.”
The Doctor had come to a conclusion not unlike this traveller's concerning dancing,—he believed it to be a manifestation of that instinct by which the young are excited to wholesome exercise, and by which in riper years harmless employment is afforded for superfluous strength and restless activity. The delight which girls as well as boys take in riotous sports were proof enough, he said, that Nature had not given so universal an inclination without some wise purpose. An infant of six months will ply its arms and legs in the cradle, with all its might and main, for joy,—this being the mode of dancing at that stage of life. Nay, he said, he could produce grave authorities on which casuists would pronounce that a probable belief might be sustained, to prove that it is an innate propensity and of all propensities the one which has been developed in the earliest part of mortal existence; for it is recorded of certain Saints, that on certain holidays, dedicated either to the mystery, or to the heavenly patron under whose particular patronage they were placed, they danced before they were born, a sure token or presage of their future holiness and canonization, and a not less certain proof that the love of dancing is an innate principle.
Lovest thou Music?
Oh, 'tis sweet!
What's dancing?
E'en the mirth of feet.2
2 From a Masque quoted by D'ISRAELI.
CHAPTER CXCI.
A SERIOUS WORD IN SAD APOLOGY FOR ONE OF THE MANY FOOLISH WAYS IN WHICH TIME IS MIS-SPENT.