birds to man--is some form of the dance. Among the Negritos of the
Philippines dancing is described by A.B. Meyer as "jumping in a circle
around a girl and stamping with the feet"; as we have seen, such a dance
is, essentially, a form of courtship that is widespread among animals.
"The true cake-walk," again, Stanley Hall remarks, "as seen in the South
is perhaps the purest expression of this impulse to courtship antics seen
in man."[36] Muscular movement of which the dance is the highest and most
complex expression, is undoubtedly a method of auto-intoxication of the
very greatest potency. All energetic movement, indeed, tends to produce
active congestion. In its influence on the brain violent exercise may thus
result in a state of intoxication even resembling insanity. As Lagrange
remarks, the visible effects of exercise--heightened color, bright eyes,
resolute air and walk--are those of slight intoxication, and a girl who
has waltzed for a quarter of an hour is in the same condition as if she
had drunk champagne.[37] Groos regards the dance as, above all, an
intoxicating play of movement, possessing, like other methods of
intoxication,--and even apart from its relationship to combat and
love,--the charm of being able to draw us out of our everyday life and
lead us into a self-created dream-world.[38] That the dance is not only a
narcotic, but also a powerful stimulant, we may clearly realize from the
experiments which show that this effect is produced even by much less
complex kinds of muscular movement. This has been clearly determined, for
instance, by Féré, in the course of a long and elaborate series of
experiments dealing with the various influences that modify work as
measured by Mosso's ergograph. This investigator found that muscular
movement is the most efficacious of all stimulants in increasing muscular
power.[39] It is easy to trace these pleasurable effects of combined
narcotic and stimulant motion in everyday life and it is unnecessary to
enumerate its manifestations.[40]