Tlie Evolution of Art. 313 



is, or through what varying conditions of intelligence, 

 government, religion, or other environments the products 

 of art which bless and dignify our own age have been devel- 

 oped, we are brought to the close of our fifty minutes' con- 

 sideration of our subject. 



Briefly considered, it would appear that the artist, by which 

 is meant the art-creator, is not the product of any known 

 cause; that he visits unbidden and unaccounted for the 

 haunts of men ; but, on the other hand, the art-lovers are 

 largely the product of favoring or unfavoring influences of 

 widely different education, leisure to observe, capacity to 

 value, and desire to possess the products of artistic genius. 

 To the furnishing of this environment have contributed all 

 processes of nature, all inventive genius, all improvements 

 in mechanism, all tendencies which shorten the hours of 

 necessary labor, reveal to man new opportunities, or bring 

 within his reach new art-creations. Out of the first neces- 

 sities of man arose the first products of his hands, aud out 

 of this gratification of his necessities has developed this in- 

 creasing desire, which has been called the " play- want " of 

 mankind, for the ornamental as distinguished from the use- 

 ful. It had its rude beginnings in the uncouth decoration 

 of the tattooed savage, it rose to sublime heights in the 

 Athenian courts, it went down in the despairing darkness 

 of the middle ages, it revived in the glories of the French 

 renaissance, it was planted upon firm foundations in the 

 Elizabethan age, it crossed the ocean to the New "World, and 

 is to crown at last its new environment with ever- widening 

 beauty and grandeur. 



Seeking thus for the seeds of culture, refinement, and 

 beauty _ out of which have blown the precious products of 

 the artist's soul, we have found them beneath alien skies, 

 among foreign peoples, and in older times. It may well be 

 worth our while to ask of the future what it has in store for 

 the latest home of art. 



Seasoning from such premises as the fundamental doc- 

 trines of evolution can furnish, what should the answer be ? 

 If from any soil there are to spring more fruitful products 

 of the human mind than all the past can furnish, here is 

 the clime, here will be the environment. Art, in the sense 

 in which we have considered it, is the crowning product of 

 a great people. He who reads aright the labors of our 

 fathers must discern that we have but cleared the forest and 

 laid the foundation stones of our American Pantheon. We 



