Hanslick suggests, “Melody is the ‘initial force,’ the life-blood, the primitive cell of the musical organism, with which the drift and development of the composition are closely bound up”; both melody and harmony are “achievement of man.” Rhythm, however, and in particular duple meter, he believes "is" found in nature: “It is the only musical element which nature possesses, the first we are conscious of, and that with which the mind of the infant and the savage becomes soonest familiar.” He continues to posit that music is a product of the mind, having no precursor in nature. Even the music of a shepherd is not natural, he claims, since it was invented in the shepherd's mind, and the imitation of cuckoos in symphonies, for example, should not be considered music, since its function is not musical but poetic (i.e., to point to something outside of the music).