EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATION AND THE ARTS. 345 



pie to be, its faculty for absorbing a new element of civilization is 

 always very restricted. Even the Greeks, tlie most intelligent 

 people of antiquity, in the evolution of their arts needed centu- 

 ries to advance beyond gross copies of Assyrian and Egyptian 

 models and arrive by successive stages at the achievement of the 

 masterpieces that have immortalized their name. 



Yet the peoples which have succeeded one another in history — 

 excepting a few primitive nations like the Egyptians and the 

 Chaldeans — have had little else to do than to assimilate, by trans- 

 forming them according to their mental peculiarities, the ele- 

 ments of civilization that constituted the heritage of their past. 

 The development of civilization would have been infinitely slower, 

 and the history of nations would have been only an eternal new 

 beginning, if they had not been able to profit by previously elab- 

 orated materials. The civilizations created by the inhabitants 

 of Egypt and Chaldea seven or eight thousand years ago have 

 constituted a source whence all peoples have drawn in their turn. 

 Greek arts were derived from the arts created on the banks of the 

 Tigris and the Nile ; the Roman style from the Greek ; and the 

 Roman style, admixed with Oriental influences, gave birth in suc- 

 cession to the Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic styles, accord- 

 ing to the genius and the age of the peoples among whom they 

 were developed. What we have said of the arts is applicable to all 

 the elements of a civilization — institutions, languages, and creeds. 

 The languages of Europe are derived from a mother-language 

 formerly spoken on the central plateau of Asia; its laws from 

 the Roman law, which was in its turn derived from anterior 

 laws ; its religion from the Jewish religion, associated with 

 Aryan creeds ; and its sciences would not be what they are but 

 for the slow labor of ages. We can discern, despite the great 

 gaps of which there are many in the history of civilization, a slow 

 evolution of our knowledge that leads us across ages and empires 

 to the dawn of those ancient civilizations which' the modern sci- 

 ence of the day is trying to connect with the primitive times 

 when mankind had no history. But, while the source is common, 

 the transformations — whether progressive or retrogressive — 

 which each people, according to its mental constitution, has im- 

 posed on the borrowed elements, are very diverse ; and the his- 

 tory of these transformations constitutes the history of civili- 

 zation. 



Before considering the transformations which arts, like other 

 elements of a civilization, have suffered in passing from one peo- 

 ple to another, let us ask to what extent they are the expression 

 of a civilization. Writers on art are accustomed to say that they 

 faithfully reflect the thought of the people, and are the best ex- 

 pression of their civilization. This is doubtless often the case, 



