186 ORIGIN OF THE 



meaning ol" this word ; and it is only when an already existing taste for 

 art unites itself with these, that their performances are able to attain tlie 

 form of art. 



In the period of infancy generally man needs only a few simple signs 

 for the expression of his ideas, and for the most part, in the early stages of 

 human culture the monument is nothing more than the simple designation 

 of a particular and selected spot. Of such monuments of the simplest 

 form, the earliest narratives of Scripture inform us. In the place where 

 Jacob in his dream saw the ladder that reached to heaven, and received 

 Jehovah's blessing, he set up a stone and consecrated it to the memory 

 of the revelation which he had received ; so also, a meal, and a heap of 

 stones became the holy witness of the covenant which Jacob made with 

 Laban. A smooth stone forms, in those early periods, the altar to which 

 the Deity descends to receive the gifts and prayers of mortals •, a hillock 

 of earth rises above the bones of the sleeping hero, who has raised 

 himself up to the ranks of the immortals, and his exploits are celebrated 

 by sacrifices at the place of his earthly repose. 



To be sure, the shapeless stone, the rude hillock, are still in them- 

 selves but arbitrary signs ; nothing yet appears to stand forth in them 

 by which they can really be made the bearers of the idea which is to 

 speak itself forth in them. But this is the proper nature of a work of 

 art, that it is not a mere unmeaning sign for the idea, but, much rather, 

 the body united with which and through which it first makes its appear- 

 ance. Equally does it lie in the nature of the case, that — as the human 

 race was further developed, and its ideas gradually gained a more fixed 

 form — so also, those rude monuments received a definite stamp which 

 necessarily became the actual and immediate expression, though, at first, 

 only of the' simplest thought. Moreover, even before this sign of thought 

 could be developed in a peculiar or definite manner by the active hand 

 of man, they were already adapted in certain aspects to serve as the em- 

 bodiment of the thought. By the selection of differently formed stones, 

 as they were supplied by nature, (either by a .loose mass, or from the 

 quarry,) by the peculiar mode of their erection, or of their arrangement, 

 the general impressions of elevation, of massiveness, or even of harmo- 

 ny could be excited. 



Yet it is difficult to re-ascend to that early youth of human his- 

 tory. We do not know in what land we are to seek the first, simplest 

 monuments erected by mankind ; we can only too well surmise, tliat the 

 new generations that took the place of the old, did not always spare 

 and protect the works left behind them by their predecessors ; nor dare 

 we congratulate ourselves upon possessing" a complete knowledge of all 



