ESTHETIC EVOLUTION IN MAN. 347 



present paper to illustrate its progress in a somewhat different di- 

 rection. 



From delight in the beauty of ornaments to delight in the beauty 

 of weapons or other utensils is but a step. What a man cai'ries in 

 his hands is almost as much a matter for personal pride as what 

 he wears around his neck or his waist. From the very earliest ages, 

 the material for palseolithic stone hatchets seems to have been inten- 

 tionally chosen with conscious reference to beauty of color. Among 

 the minerals so employed were "red or other colored jasper " ; "green- 

 stone, mottled jade, and green jasper " ; " quartz, agate, flint, ob- 

 sidian, fibrolite, chloromelanite, aphanite, diorite, saussurite, and stau- 

 rotide." The bone knife-handles and other utensils from the rock- 

 shelters of the Dordogne (of palaeolithic date) are admirably carved 

 into the forms of animals, or decorated with ornamental patterns. In- 

 deed, both in outline and detail, most works of art of the chipped-flint 

 period show very distinct jBsthetic care, which is often marvelous when 

 one considers the extremely rude nature of the tools in use, and the 

 immense extra labor entailed upon the maker by any attempt at unne- 

 cessary ornamentation. The weapons of all but the very lowest exist- 

 insT savages show similar marks of aesthetic care. Their stone hatchets, 

 besides being exquisitely polished, like those of the European neolithic 

 age, are fitted in smooth wooden handles, and bound to the shaft by 

 pretty twisted strings of red and yellow fiber. The Australian boom- 

 erangs are beautifully worked in hard wood. The staves or clubs of 

 the Admiralty Island chiefs are wrought with the most exquisite and 

 laborious tracery, which puts to shame our careless European wood- 

 carviug. The canoe-paddles of other Polynesian and Melanesian tribes 

 are models of graceful and effective ornamentation. Among many 

 savages belonging to the second rg,nk, I find few works of art except 

 weapons or like personal utensils on which any high degree of pains 

 has been expended. We may therefore fairly regard this as the second 

 human stage of aesthetic development. 



Hardly superior to this second level is the love for decoration on 

 vessels and other domestic utensils. Yet these, as being just one 

 degree less personal than weapons, may be regarded as occupying a 

 slightly higher stage. Calabashes and cocoanuts are almost always 

 carved or decorated. Pottery from the very first is more or less 

 ornamental in form, and even among very undeveloped savages is 

 often prettily molded with lines or string-courses. Many of Dr. 

 Schweinfurth's Central African specimens are extremely graceful ; 

 while sevei-al of the exquisitely simple prehistoric forms unearthed by 

 Dr. Schliemann at Troy and Mycenae have been adopted as effective 

 models for the modern artistic Vallauris ware. France itself can pro- 

 duce nothing more beautiful in its own kind. 



Decoration of the home is one degree more disinterested than deco- 

 ration of the person or personal implements. The palaeolithic savages 



