PREHISTORIC ART. 351 



leaves off or that of the artisan begins. The work of the artisan is 

 often quite as difticult to perform as that of the artist. It affords 

 him as much pleasure; he takes as much pride in it, and puts as much 

 sentiment into it, as does the artist. Nor can the test of utility be 

 better applied, for some of the line arts are highly utilitarian, while 

 some of the industrial arts may be the reverse. If utility is to be the 

 test, the lace maker, whether of point or bobbin laces, should be 

 classed as an artist, for her work is always ornamental in contradis- 

 tinction from utilitarian. It is only by this test that the sardine fish 

 nets of western France are not to be classed as lace. 



The idea sought to be presented is the extreme difficulty in distin- 

 guishing fine art from industrial art, the artist from the artisan ; and the 

 reader of the following pages is asked not to be critical in the author's 

 api)lication of the word "art." 



Not infrequently a piece of work begins in industrial art and ends in 

 fine art. The decorations in the Congressional Library building in 

 Washington are examples. Much of the work began with the stone- 

 cutter and was finished bj'^ the sculptor; much of the wall decoration 

 must have begun with the whitewasher and ended with an aggregation 

 of the best artist painters in the country. The mosaic work also ran 

 the entire gamut of art. So it may be in many of the arts mentioned 

 in this book. The work may have begun with the rudest mechanism, 

 as in flint cliii)piug, and ended in specimens of great beauty, requir- 

 ing the highest skill, representing sentiment or imagination, being 

 purely ornamental, without utility, and intended to satisfy an lesthetic 

 demand. In these the dividing line between fine art and industrial art 

 is ]iot attempted to be maintained, nor is this at all necessary. A 

 manifestation of a high order of industrial art by prehistoric man 

 comes equally within the scope of this paper as though it were recog- 

 nized fine art. 



Sir John Collier, in his "Primer of Art," says that decorative art is 

 the making of something to please the eye, but as to what is pleasing, 

 that each person must decide for himself. With this definition for a 

 basis, about all we can say is that the objects made by the prehistoric 

 man pleased him and he desired them. All beyond is mere theory — at 

 least is to be referred to psychology for an answer. To answer why he 

 desired tliese objects to be beautiful in addition to their being ultilitarian 

 would be only speculation on our part. 



Professor ITaddon, in his work on "Evolution in Art," says that the 

 most satisfactory method of procedure when dealing with difficult 

 problems is to reduce them to their simplest elements and then investi- 

 gate these simple elements before studying their more complex aspect. 

 The author has proceeded along the lines of this advice. He has thus 

 far taken not only a single i)c(>ple, but has taken them in a single 

 locality, and has given all i)rocurable evidence bearing on their art 

 work, whether in its material or psychologic aspect. Through this we 



