362 PHYSIOLOGY CHAP. 



Another problem of great importance is the origin of artistic 

 activity. The different arts (figurative, ornamental art, sculpture, 

 painting, music, in their various forms) are specific products of 

 human activity, and they too have passed through primitive stages 

 before reaching their present development, stages which we nowa- 

 days regard as crude and may still see amongst lower races. 



Verworn thinks that the artistic sense first began to dawn at 

 the beginning of the paleolithic age as conscious sense of form that 

 is, man then first began to show a preference for certain shapes, 

 which he gave to the earliest works of his hands, articles made of 

 stone. 



Amongst the fossil remains of that period we constantly find 

 implements of pyromacic stone of a conventional almond shape. 

 Next we have the elaboration of bone objects, which we find 

 more or less lavishly decorated with dots and geometrical lines 

 symmetrically arranged. Another source of artistic activity is the 

 desire to adorn the body either by hanging ornaments on it or 

 by painting the skin. 



We are astonished to find examples of figurative art dating 

 from the middle of the paleolithic age, when man inhabited Europe 

 in the diluvial period together with the reindeer, the mammoth, 

 and the bison. In the caves of France articles and artistic 

 representations have been found which reproduce the objects 

 they depict with a skill and accuracy nothing short of marvellous. 

 Amongst them are statuettes made of ivory, reindeer horns and 

 bone representing animal or human forms ; hunting scenes and 

 outlines of animals then existing carved or painted on the walls 

 of these caves, which reach such a high le*vel of artistic excellence 

 that they were at first supposed to be forgeries, a suspicion which 

 is now considered to be quite devoid of foundation. 



Verworn explains this surprising artistic ability of these 

 primitive peoples by the theory that this art, which he terms 

 physio-plastic, differs in its psychological origin from the art of 

 more civilised races, which he calls ideoplastic. The former he 

 regards as the product of immediate (and therefore natural) 

 observation of the figure or mnemonic image without the interven- 

 tion of speculation or reflection. Ideoplastic art, on the contrary, 

 is not the immediate reproduction of visual sensation or of the 

 mnemonic image thereof, since a higher psychic activity, the 

 reasoning or imaginative faculty, enters into the reproduction. 

 As examples of primitive ideoplastic art he gives the drawings 

 of the Egyptians and of children, whose imaginative powers are 

 clearly shown by the apparently incongruous and inartistic way 

 in which they include in the drawing those parts of the body 

 which are hidden by the clothing (Fig. 135). 



With regard to the artistic ability of very primitive peoples to 

 represent figures and hunting scenes, it should be borne in mind 



