DEVELOPMENT OF PEIMAL SHAPING ARTS. 507 



and tortuous pathway docs not determine the ease of the journey. 

 The ease of the first shaping act does not determine the ease of opera- 

 ting it in such a way as to produce a desired and final result. We 

 observe that in art a desired and definite result may be obtained by a 

 single shaping act, or that a succession of acts may be required. It is 

 also clear that the acts may increase in difficult} 7 as the operations pro- 

 ceed. The intelligence that directs a first act to secure a definite and 

 immediate result may not be equal to the task of directing a series of 

 acts, howsoever simple, aiming at a remote result. In general it may 

 be said that a single-act result would be the first designed result reached 

 and repeated in the shaping arts. A two-act result would follow, 

 and would precede those that depend upon ten, twenty, a hundred, 

 or a thousand acts. Let us examine the four primal stone-shaping 

 processes, fracturing, bruising, rubbing, and cutting, with respect to 

 this point. What is each capable of accomplishing under the simple, 

 elementaiy conditions that must be assumed for the incipient days of 

 mind and art? Of the four processes, that which produced an imme- 

 diate, palpable, available result would be first utilized. The fracturing 

 act, the blow upon a brittle stone, would beyond all dispute be that 

 process. Such a blow produces at once one, possibly two, keen-edged 

 tools having forms admirably suited to the common and ever-present 

 needs of the man who must rend flesh, dress skins, cut wood and 

 bone, and dig roots. 



On the other hand, the bruising blow, the shaping act by means of 

 which tough stones are shaped, produces an almost imperceptible effect 

 on the stone struck; there is no suggestion of a useful result — a result 

 that could add to the availability of ordinary natural forms. The 

 nearest useful result is far away and obscure, and withal, even when 

 reached, not measurably superior to the forms freely furnished by 

 nature. The dullest mind would be able to understand and utilize the 

 simple fracturing act, but would hardly grasp the nature and possible 

 results of a process so obscure as that of bruising or pecking a piece 

 of rock into definite and unaccustomed shape. This is well illustrated 

 by the almost total failure on the part of students of archaeology to 

 understand the operation of the pecking process in its details until 

 elucidated by recent experiments of Mr. J. D. McGuire. The cul- 

 tural interval between the general practice of the two processes- 

 flaking and pecking— would cover, in all probability, a considerable 

 period of progress. 



More advanced stages. — The operation of the shaping processes may 

 be still more fully analyzed and surveyed with relation to actual known 

 implements. The brittle stone to be more than simply fractured must 

 be held in the hand and struck with another stone. The stone to be 

 bruised into shape must also be held in the hand and struck with 

 another stone. The positions may be the same, the shapes the same, 



