580 HISTORY OF ART 



The evil of this theorizing is two-fold. First, the hypothesis is 

 accepted as proven fact by the rank and file, and is written down 

 finally as history. It is the kind of history, to be sure, that has to be 

 rewritten every ten years a kind that could not live ten minutes 

 by virtue of its own strength; but nevertheless it is accepted, and 

 confuses for a time. Secondly, the learning and research put into such 

 a theory is not placed to the best advantage, and does not count for 

 as much as it should because used to uphold a questionable structure. 

 That is such a pity, particularly in the case of Professor Furtwangler, 

 whose knowledge cannot be gainsaid. 



One feels some regret of this kind in reading the works of so cautious 

 an archaeologist as Professor George Perrot. His histories of ancient 

 art are monumental, marvels of patient research and shrewd percep- 

 tion; and yet when he comes to Greece, his final goal, and opens with 

 his volumes on Mykenaean art he shakes our faith in his judgment 

 somewhat. For instance, he accepts the Schliemann conclusion 

 about Troy. Schliemann, it will be remembered, dreamed as a boy 

 of finding Troy and Agamemnon's Tomb, and when as a man he 

 started out in search of them he naturally found them in the first 

 mound he unearthed. Had he been seeking Aladdin's lamp he would 

 have found it in the first junk-shop on the Mouski. Professor Perrot, 

 strangely enough, accepts this hypothesis, and couples it with the 

 theory of the sequential development of the Greek race. Of course this 

 combined theory is not impossible, not improbable. Indeed, it is 

 made quite plausible; and yet one may question whether it is the 

 archaeologist's or the historian's affair to theorize and argue to such 

 an extent. Imagination may, in the end, remain imagination, and the 

 argument may be true enough and yet point to a false conclusion. 

 The facts are these. The mound which Schliemann discovered and 

 called Troy was found to contain three strata, each one reflective of 

 a different stage of civilization. Professor Perrot 's conclusion is that 

 the so-called Stone-Age man of the first stratum was the lineal ances- 

 tor of the Bronze-Age Trojan of the third stratum. And so the links 

 in a chain are forged to show you how the Greek finally came to power 

 and splendor, in life as in art. 



Hut now let us see how it might have been; let us imagine some- 

 thin"; not a whit less improbable. Suppose this city of St. Louis 

 destroyed by an earthquake, buried deep, forgotten. Two thousand 

 years hence it is dug up by scientific historians. They find in the 

 ruins three strata representing three stages of civilization. They 

 first dig out the remains of a twenty-story "sky-scraper." then the 

 remains of a log hut, and under all they find mounds and mound- 

 builders' pottery. The conclusion according to Professor Perrot 

 would be most obvious. The present people of St. Louis must have 

 evolved from their ancestors, the Mound-Builders! It is all very 



