444 ESTHETICS 



individual and its generally human aspect. Concerning the genesis of 

 the child's understanding of art and impulse to produce it, we learn 

 most from the studies of his drawings at an early age. Here are to be 

 noted well-established results of observation, even though as yet 

 they are few in number. On the other hand, the unfolding of primi- 

 tive feeling (and of the aesthetic sensibility in general) during the 

 historical period can be only approximately reconstructed. The 

 case is somewhat more favorable for our information in regard to 

 the beginnings of art, especially since it has been systematically 

 assembled by Ernst Grosse and Yrjo Hirn. If the conditions of the 

 most primitive of the races now living in a state of nature can be 

 taken as identical with those at the beginnings of civilization, the 

 entire vast material of ethnology can be made use of. We gather 

 ' therefrom how close-linked with the useful and the necessary beauty 

 is, and see clearly that primitive art is thoroughly penetrated by 

 the purpose of a common enjoyment, and is effective in a social 

 way; but beyond such general principles one can go only with 

 hesitation, inasmuch as it seems scarcely possible to us, creatures of 

 civilization, to fix the boundaries of what is really art there. 



There are three conjectures as to objective origin of art. It may 

 be that the separate arts have developed through variation from one 

 embryonic state. Or the main arts may have been separate from the 

 very first, having arisen independently of each other. Finally, there 

 are middle views, like that of Spencer, according to which poetry, 

 music, and the dance on the one hand, and writing, painting, and 

 sculpture on the other, have a common root ; Mobius recognizes 

 three primitive arts, to which the others are to be traced back. The 

 solution of this question would be especially important, could one 

 hope to find Darwin's maxim for all setiological investigations valid 

 for our field also -- that is, the dictum: What is of like origin is of 

 like character. 



As psychological conditions, from which the artistic activity is 

 likely first to have arisen, the following functions have been suggested 

 and maintained, the play-instinct, imitation, the need for expres- 

 sion and communication, the sense for order and arrangement, the 

 impulse to attract others and the opposed impulse to startle others. 

 Each of these theories of conditions must clearly connect itself with 

 one or the other of the just-named three theories of art's origin; for 

 had music, taken in our sense and independently, existed as the orig- 

 inal art, one could hardly regard imitation as the psychological root 

 of art. All in all, art and the play-instinct seem most closely linked; 

 that is also true, moreover, of its development with the child. 



I come now to the fundamental problems of artistic creation. It 

 is the}'- which present the most obstinate difficulties to a thorough 

 and exact investigation, for experiment and the questionnaire 



