418 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



teclmologic similarity. They assert the foregoiug rule to be a natural 

 law and applicable to widely separated peoples, and not at all depend- 

 ing upon any communication or correspondence between them. Others 

 applying this theory of similarity of human thought to the evolution of 

 art, principally of ornament, seek to explain every design or pattern, 

 whether historic or prehistoric, savage or civilized, ancient or modern, 

 by declaring that they originally had some occult meaning and that they 

 represented some idea (to us unknown) of the aborigines who invented 

 them. It is declared that if the psychological, including the anthropo- 

 logical, student of the present day could follow these aboriginal designs 

 back to their origin they would find them based on this occult, unknown 

 meaning. Some of these authors, elucidating this proposition, investi- 

 gate the ornaments of savage or primitive peoples, and seek to demon- 

 strate this occult and unknown thing to have been the origin of all 

 ornament and design. They argue that by the various processes or 

 evolution, the design changing as the idea changed, gradually, step by 

 step, the idea is lost, and nothing remains to represent it but the pres- 

 ent unmeaning ornament. 



The author, deprecating the tendency to lay down general rules, con- 

 cedes the possibility of this genesis of ornament in some cases, but 

 declines to accept it as one of the rules. He believes his illustrations 

 of the earliest designs made by man, their great numbers, and their 

 evidently original invention and adoption as ornaments show that the 

 foregoing genesis of ornament is not the rule, whatever its application 

 in particular cases. He denies the correctness of the general proposi- 

 tion of Professor Haddon, especially in its api)licability to prehistoric art, 

 "that those who write in the future on decorative art will have to prove 

 that any pattern or design is a purely arbitrary form. That assump- 

 tion is no longer permissible." ' 



It is always said by the reformers in the i)sychology of art that their 

 position could be sustained if we could only get back to the beginning 

 of the ornament or to the origin of the art. In the present chapter the 

 author has presented the very beginnings of art. No art can, either iu 

 point of time or of civilization, be earlier than that here given. The 

 specimens, in their relation to time, date to the Glacial epoch, and in 

 point of civilization to the Paleolithic period. Nothing that we know 

 of man, not even his existence, is earlier than the art works set forth 

 herein. There was no other beginning to art; there is no relation 

 between this and any preceding period, for so far as relates to art and 

 ornament there was no preceding period. Art begun here; these speci- 

 mens show the natural or original germ of art iu the human mind unin- 

 fluenced by anything beyond the necessary environment of life and the 

 inevitable conditions of existence. 



So far as can be known, the impulse which moved man in this art 



1 



' A. C. Haddou : Evolution iu Art as Illustrated by the Life Histories of Designs, 

 p. 164. 



