EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATION AND THE ARTS. 347 



a position in any way superior, have been able to create an indi- 

 vidual art free from apparent relationship with anterior models. 

 In less than a century after they conquered the Greco-Roman 

 world, the Moslems had transformed the Byzantine architecture 

 which they adopted, so greatly that it would be impossible to dis- 

 cover by what types they were inspired, if we had not the series 

 of intermediate monuments under our eyes. 



Even a people possessing no artistic or literary aptitude may 

 create a high civilization. Such were the Phoenicians, who had 

 no superior gift except their commercial skill. They promoted 

 civilization by bringing different parts of the world into relations, 

 while they produced nothing themselves, and the history of their 

 civilization is nothing but the history of their trade. 



There are, finally, people that stand low in all the elements of 

 civilization except art, as the Moguls, whose monuments in India, 

 with hardly anything of the Hindu about them, are so splendid 

 that competent critics have declared them the finest works that 

 have been raised by human hands ; but nobody would class the 

 Moguls among the higher races. 



It is further to be remarked that, even with the most civilized 

 peoples, the period when art attains its highest degree of develop- 

 ment is not usually at the culminating epoch of their civilization. 

 The most perfect works of the Hindus and Egyptians are gener- 

 ally the most ancient ; and that remarkable Gothic art, the ad- 

 mirable works of which have never been paralleled, flourished in 

 Europe in the semi-barbarous middle ages. It is, therefore, im- 

 possible to judge of the degree of a people's advancement solely 

 by the development of its arts, which constitute only one of the 

 elements of its culture, and that one which has not been shown, 

 any more than has literature, to be the highest. It is, on the con- 

 trary, sometimes the case that peoples at the head of civilization 

 — as the Romans in ancient times and the Americans in modern — 

 are weakest in works of art, while other peoples have produced 

 their highest literary and artistic masterpieces in their half-bar- 

 barous ages. 



The period of individuality in the art of a people appears, there- 

 fore, to be a blossoming of its infancy or its youth, and not of its 

 mature age. There are many other evidences that the progress 

 of the arts is not parallel with the advance in the other elements of 

 civilization, but that they have an independent and special evolu- 

 tion. It is a general law that when art has reached a certain level, 

 marked by the creation of high masterpieces, a period of imitation 

 sets in, followed by a period of decadence, both of which are inde- 

 pendent of the course of the other elements of civilization. This 

 lasts till some revolution or innovation, the adoption of a new 

 creed, or some like factor intervenes to introduce new elements, 



