176 Beginnings of Porcelain 



heritage in the life of the Mediterranean and great Asiatic civilizations. 

 This well-defined geographical distribution, and the absence of the 

 wheel in all other parts of the globe, speak well in favor of a monistic 

 origin of the device. 



The chief results of the present investigation may be summarized 

 as follows. The industry of ancient Chinese pottery, in its principal 

 technical and social features, has exactly the same foundation as the 

 corresponding industry of western Asia, Egypt, and India. This 

 phenomenon is only one of a complex of others with which it is in 

 organic cohesion; that is, the entire economic foundation of ancient 

 Chinese civilization has a common basis with that of the West. 1 It is 

 a reasonable conclusion that identity of apparatus and technical 

 processes must have yielded similar results. Comparative study of 

 forms, however, is futile for the present, as long as we do not have the 

 very earliest prehistoric ceramic productions of China, Central Asia, 

 Iran, and India. This much is evident, that only by co-ordination can 

 the real problem to be pursued be solved, and that isolation or detach- 

 ment of each particular field will yield no result that is worth while. 

 The incentive for the process of glazing pottery was received by the 

 Chinese directly from the West, owing to their contact with the Hel- 

 lenistic world in comparatively late historical times. The knowledge 

 of glazing rendered the manufacture of a porcelanous ware possible; 

 yet in this achievement the creative genius of the Chinese was not 

 guided by outside influence, but relied on its own powerful resources. 

 Nothing of the character of porcelain was known under the Han 

 (206 b.c.-a.d. 220). The murrine vases of the ancients were not 

 porcelain, and in fact bear no relation to China. They may have been 

 instrumental, however, in bringing to the notice of the Chinese the 

 beauty and effect of ceramic glazes; hence the manufacture of glazed 

 ware springs up in the age of the Han, more particularly under the 

 reign of the Emperor Wu (140-87 B.C.). It is admissible to place the 

 first subconscious gropings with ware of more or less porcelanous char- 

 acter in the closing days of the Later Han dynasty; and under the Wei, 

 in the middle or latter part of the third century, we see these tentative 

 experiments ultimately crowned with success. Continued till the end 

 of the sixth century and the beginning of the seventh through a long 

 line of experiences and improvements, they gradually resulted in the 



1 The details are somewhat more developed in the writer's popular article 

 Some Fundamental Ideas of Chinese Culture (Journal of Race Development, Vol. V, 

 1914, pp. 160-174). 



