6 7 6 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



of delight, and the pleasure we feel in this glimpse of a vanished 

 fauna is enhanced by the fact that we look at it through the 

 eyes of Solutrian man himself. The pictures seem to be a pure 

 study of nature, expressing the vivid sympathy of the artist with 

 the world around him. In part this must be so, but there may 

 be more. Without a full understanding of the civilisation of 

 a race we cannot understand its art. Our own minds are 

 saturated with the influence of our age, and the art of Solutrian 

 man may have meant something very different and something 

 much more to him than it does to us. Indeed, M. Salomon 

 Reinach has endeavoured to show it was intimately bound up 

 with his religion. 1 He points out that all the animals repre- 

 sented are such as are desirable for food : " undesirable " animals, 

 such as lions, bears, and tigers, are never depicted. But it is a 

 widely spread belief, once apparently universal, that the image 

 of an object gives the possessor some sort of hold upon it, and 

 thus by drawing the likeness of these animals primitive man 

 might have thought to influence them in the chase. When we 

 speak, M. Reinach remarks, of the magic of the artist's pencil, 

 we use a metaphor which had once a literal meaning. Again, 

 in the initiation ceremonies practised among the Australian 

 aborigines a sacred figure, which the women and uninitiated 

 are not permitted to see, plays an important part ; and in con- 

 nection with this the singular fact is cited that the animal 

 figures in the caves never occur in the better illuminated parts, 

 but always at some distance from the entrance, where the 

 obscurity is so great that nothing can be seen by civilised eyes 

 without the aid of artificial light. At the same time no signs 

 of smoke remain to show that the troglodytes made use of 

 torches or similar means of illumination. 



The portrait that we should most welcome is not to be found 

 on the walls of the caves, for Solutrian man has not depicted 

 himself. There are some grotesques (fig. 5) which seem to be 

 meaningless, like the foolish caricatures on a schoolboy's slate ; 

 possibly they are intended for demons, which the Babylonians 

 are said to have made as unprepossessing as possible in order 

 that they might be frightened at their own image. Some singular 

 beings are also represented, which have been taken for anthropo- 

 morphous apes. 2 



1 S. Reinach, " L'art et la magie apropos des peintures et des gravures de 

 1'age du Renne," LAnthr. 1903, xiv. p. 257. * Piette. 



