2 
J. E. Wallace Wallin, 
expression of impulses consciously striving to produce perfect uniformity, 
for the sake of a certain pleasure which is derived from the satisfaction 
of expectant attention. In so far as it is perfectly mechanical, it disre¬ 
gards the logic and sense of the word, for the fuller gratification of these 
impulses which are relatively incapable of being intellectualized and which 
subserve but a limited function. 
Brücke’s conclusions are accurate only within wide limits owing to 
the inaccuracy of the apparatus of that date. The measurements were 
recorded on a crude form of the kymograph, the rate of rotation of which 
could not be increased sufficiently to register1 the minute differences 
which inevitably existed between the individual measurements. 
In reference to Brücke’s second method, we have to consider that 
the concatenation of syllables in the particular series that was scanned, 
was arbitrary and artificial. The syllables were uniformly monosyllabic, 
and of such a character as to require relatively equal strain on the organs 
of speech in uttering them. A combination of difficult and easy syllables, 
physiologically considered, would probably have yielded different results. 
The experiments of Hurst and McKay,2 with more accurate appar¬ 
atus, were measurements of the intervals between the beats of the finger 
made in unison with scanned verse. The method was, in the main, like 
that of Brücke. 
The following conclusions were reached : ( i ) the feet of a given verse 
are equal in length ; ( 2 ) dactyls and trochees are shorter, respectively, 
than anapaests and iambics; (3) a radical difference exists between the 
anapaest and the dactyl, the length of the syllables in the former being of 
an “ascending,” in the latter of a “descending,” order; (4) there is 
a lack of a fixed proportion between syllables—the emphatic, however, 
being longer than the unemphatic. 
The postulates which underlie all similar attempts at measuring the 
duration and equality of poetical feet, are essentially two : (1) the rhythm 
of the scanned verse agrees with the rhythm of the taps of the finger, 
and (2) neither exercises an influence upon the'other and the rhythm of 
the finger does not tend to regulate the rhythm of the scansion. Neither 
of these assumptions is legitimate. In the first place, the two types of 
motor innervation do not exactly correspond. This has been proved 
by the experiments of Miyake, at the Yale laboratory, in which the 
subject beat upon an electrical key with the finger as the sounds ma, pa, 
1 Meumann, Untersuchungen zur Psychologie und Aesthetik des Rhythmus, Philos. 
Stud., 1894 X 418. 
2 Hurst and McKay, Experiments on time relations of poetical meters, Univ. Toronto 
Stud. (Psychol. Series), 1900 157.