^ESTHETIC EVOLUTION IN MAN. 339 



self-satisfied. The educated man sees how slender his attainments 

 really are, and discontentedly strives for deeper knowledge. Let us 

 be impartial, whether we praise, blame, or satirize. Blessed be stu- 

 pidity, for it shall not be conscious of its own deficiencies. 



ESTHETIC EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



By Professor GRAJSTT ALLEN. 



ALL the higher processes of evolution are necessarily so complex 

 in character that we can really deal with only a single aspect 

 at a time. Hence, in spite of the rather general title which this paper 

 bears, it proposes to treat of aesthetic evolution in man under one such 

 aspect only that of its gradual decentralization, its increase in disin- 

 terestedness from the simple and narrow feelings of the savage or the 

 child to the full and expansive aesthetic catholicity of the cultivated 

 adult. We have to trace the progress of the sense of beauty from its 

 first starting-point in the primitive sensibilities of the race or the in- 

 dividual to its highest development in the most refined and advanced 

 of European artists. 



To do so, we must first find this starting-point itself. What is the 

 center from which the widening circle of aesthetic sensibility takes its 

 departure ? In other words, what is the primitive source of the appre- 

 ciation of beauty ? Putting the question into a concrete form, what 

 objects did man, as a whole, and does each man in particular, first find 

 beautiful ? If we look at a cultivated European, we see that he de- 

 rives great aesthetic enjoyment from contemplating the sunset clouds, 

 the green trees, the lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, the flowers, birds, and 

 insects around him. But, if we look at a savage or a child, we see 

 that for the most part they care for none of these things. We might 

 almost conclude, on a hurried glance, that they had no sense of beauty 

 whatsoever. Yet, when we examine them a little more closely, we 

 find that there are many objects to which they do apply some such 

 word as pretty, the symbol of the simplest aesthetic appreciation. If 

 we can discover the limitations of these earliest aesthetic objects, we 

 shall have solved one of the most important fundamental problems in 

 the theory of beauty. 



The settlement of such fundamental problems seems to me an in- 

 dispensable preliminary to the construction of a scientific doctrine of 

 aesthetics. When professors of fine art discuss the principles of beauty, 

 they are too fond of confining themselves to the very highest feelings 

 of the most cultivated classes in the most civilized nations. The mere 

 childish love of colors, the mere savage taste for bone necklets and 

 carved calabashes, seem beneath their exalted notice. Nay, more, we con- 

 stantly find them accusing one another of having no feeling for beauty, 



