CHAPTER IX. 



ARCHITECT. 



706. Building of the kind dignified by the name archi 

 tecture, cannot exist during early stages of social develop 

 ment. Before the production of such building there must 

 be an advance in mechanical arts greater than savages of low 

 type have made greater than we find among the slightly 

 civilized. 



It is true that constructions of unhewn stones arranged 

 upon the surface in some order, as well as rude underground 

 stone chambers, have been left by prehistoric peoples, and 

 that incipient architecture is exhibited in them. If we ex 

 tend the conception to take in these, however, we may re 

 mark as significant, that the art was first used either for 

 preservation of the dead or as ancillary to ceremonies in 

 honour of the apotheosized dead. In either case the implica 

 tion is that architecture in these simple beginnings fulfilled 

 the ideas of the primitive medicine-men or priests. Some 

 director there must have been; and we can scarcely help 

 concluding that he was at once the specially skilful man 

 and the man who was supposed to be in communication with 

 the departed spirits to be honoured. 



But now, saying nothing more of this vague evidence, let 

 us pass to evidence furnished by those semi-civilized and 

 civilized peoples who have left remains and records. 



707. We are at once met by the broad fact, parallel to 



the fact implied above, that the earliest architecture be- 



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