Excerpt from The Dance 'the gods themselves danced, as the stars dance in the sky, ' is a saying of the ancient Mexicans. 'to dance is to take part in the cosmic control of the world, ' said the ancient Greek philosophers. 'what do you dance?' asks the African Bantu of a member of another tribe after his greeting. Livingston said that when an African wild man danced, that was his reli gion. It is said that the savages do not preach their religion but dance it. According to. The Bible, the ancient Hebrews danced before their Ark of the Cove nant. St. Basil describes the angels dancing in Heaven. According to Dante, dancing is the real occupation of the inmates of Heaven, Christ acting as the leader of a celestial ballet. 'dancing, ' said Lucian, 'is as old as love.' Dance had a sacred and mystic meaning to the early Christians upon whom the Bible had made a deep impression: 'we have piped unto you and ye have not danced.' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.