The Evolution of Sculpture. 347 



a race rises above physical usefulness into expression. All 

 depends upon the aim which the artist has set himself. 



So much for art in general. My theme at present is 

 sculpture and its evolution. For the sake of freedom of 

 treatment, I shall make sculpture include all the arts termed 

 plastic, as distinguished from the graphic, literary, and mu- 

 sical arts. Indeed, the evolution of sculpture could hardly 

 be treated without this extension. By sculpture, then, I 

 mean the molding or cutting of solid matter with a view to 

 making its form express some inward idea or emotion of the 

 soul. It is evident from this definition that the evolution 

 of sculpture will include three elements : (1) Evolution in 

 the choice of materials ; (2) evolution in manipulatory pro- 

 cesses; (3) evolution in ideas to be expressed. Eoughly 

 speaking, these three elements develop simultaneously, al- 

 though sometimes one outruns another. As men's ideas 

 deepen, so their power to fashion matter increases, and 

 hence they will go on choosing matter more and more diffi- 

 cult to fashion. 



The first material of sculpture was, in all probability, 

 soft clay ; the first process, molding with the fingers ; the 

 first embodied ideas, the rude conceptions of beings in the 

 unseen world men, animals, monsters. In saying this, I 

 do not mean to imply that men did not copy things in the 

 seen world before they tried to body forth things in the un- 

 seen ; but I mean that the former process was not art, and 

 therefore not sculpture. Art begins with the first attempt 

 to portray the unseen as it lies in the human soul. At first 

 the unseen world is conceived very much after the fashion 

 of the seen, and this could not be otherwise, for obvious 

 reasons ; only the conditions of life in it are conceived as 

 more attractive and easy. It contains sun and moon, men 

 and animals, which, accordingly, are the earliest objects 

 represented. The number of clay men and animals that 

 have come down to us from the prehistoric ages is very 

 great. They are to be found in almost every museum of 

 palaeontology. Along with these rude, clay-molded prod- 

 ucts, and perhaps originating later, are figures scratched on 

 sandstone and on bone, many of which have been found in 

 caves and near the dwellings of primitive men. In these we 

 ' find a forward step in technique the use of a sharp instru- 

 ment but we find no advance in thought or imagination. 



The first material cut into shape for art ends was almost 

 certainly wood. This, however, is of so perishable a nature 



