THE EVOLUTION OF SCULPTURE. 



BY THOMAS DAVIDSON. 



X we speak of the evolution of anything due to con- 

 scious human exertion, we mean at bottom the evolution of 

 a certain human faculty. The product of this faculty is 

 merely the means and proof of its development, and this 

 development is the real end of the product. In all things 

 done by man, man is the end, and his deeds and products 

 are but means. Man does not exist to develop the world ; 

 the world exists to develop man ; for the world is made for 

 man, and not man for the world. 



The law observed by Aristotle to hold good for political 

 institutions is universal viz. : this, that all human faculties 

 and products are at first developed by physical needs, and, 

 when so developed, are transferred so as to subserve the evo- 

 lution of spiritual faculties. The faculty that held together 

 and governed the Roman Empire, the faculty that sustains 

 this great Republic, started in its career in the humble form 

 of sexual and domestic instinct holding together and ruling 

 the family. The faculty that shaped the marbles of the 

 Parthenon and the Praxitelean Hermes began by molding 

 soft clay into rude drinking-cups and chipping flint for 

 arrow-heads to kill game for food. The faculty that com- 

 posed the symphonies of Beethoven and the operas of TVag- 

 ner began by singing lullabies to restless babies. And so 

 on through all the arts. 



So long as human actions and products are the result and 

 satisfaction of purely physical needs, they do not essentially 

 differ from the actions and products of the lower animals ; 

 but, as soon as they rise above this, the former enter the 

 sphere of ethics, the latter the sphere of art, both of which 

 belong to man only as an eternal being, having no meaning 

 for any other. 



Art begins when physical things clay, wood, stone, 

 color, sound are used to give expression to thoughts or 

 conceptions, so that they may be reflected back upon the 

 artist, or upon men similarly endowed, through their senses, 

 and thus permanently grasped and realized. Art is human 

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