PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 557* 



PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 



X. SCULPTOR. 



By HEKBERT SPENCER. 



THE association between architecture, sculpture, and painting 

 is so close that the description of their origins, considered as 

 distinct from one another, is not easy ; and those who judge only 

 from the relations under which they are found in the remains of 

 early civilizations are apt to be misled. Thus Rawlinson remarks 

 that 



"Sculpture in Egypt was almost entirely 'architectonic,' and was in- 

 tended simply, or at any rate mainly, for architectural embellishment. . . . 

 The statues of the gods had their proper place in shrines prepared for 

 them. . . . Even the private statues of individuals were intended for orna- 

 ments of tombs." 



Here the implication appears to be that as, in historic Egypt, 

 sculpture existed in subordination to architecture, it thus existed 

 from the beginning. This is a mistake. There is abundant rea- 

 son to conclude that everywhere sculpture, under the form of 

 carving in wood, preceded architecture, and that the tomb and 

 the temple were subsequent to the image. 



In the first volume of this work ( 154-158) * evidence of vari- 

 ous kinds, supplied by various peoples, was given proving that in 

 its initial form an idol is a representation of a dead man, con- 

 ceived as constantly or occasionally inhabited by his ghost, to 

 whom are made offerings, prayers for aid, and propitiatory cere- 

 monies. Confusion arising in the uncritical mind of the savage 

 between the qualities of the original and the like qualities sup- 

 posed to accompany a likeness of the original, long survived. Its 

 survival was shown among the Egyptians by their seemingly 

 strange practice of placing, in a comf)artment of the tomb, a 

 wooden figure (or more than one) intended as an alternative body 

 for the spirit of the departed on his return, in case his mummied 

 body should have been destroyed. Still more strange is the fact 

 referred to in the sections named above, that among ourselves and 

 other Europeans but a few centuries ago, the effigies of kings and 

 princes, gorgeously appareled, were duly presented with meals 

 for some time after death : such effigies being, some of them, still 

 preserved in Westminster Abbey. Merely recognizing this long 

 persistence of the primitive idea, it here concerns us only to note 

 that the making of a carved or modeled figure of a dead man be- 

 gins in low stages of culture, along with other elements of primi- 

 tive religion ; and that thus sculpture has its root in ghost-worship, 



* Principles of Sociology, vol. i. 



