PAINTING 



349 



obtained among prehistoric people as is seen among the savage 

 races of to-day. 



The Art of Painting. 



Here again we find a region in which man stands alone 

 among the entire series of animal life. No animal is able to 

 reproduce his observations or ideas in a pictorial form. This 

 man can do ; not on account of his hands, as apes also possess 

 hands, but on account of his human soul. 



That artistic aspirations are inborn in all human beings, is 

 seen by a glance at the attempts made by the children of all 

 nations. They make playful attempts at scribbling pictures of 

 trees, animals and men of 

 the quaintest description, 

 and when they can get 

 hold of mud, they use its 

 plastic properties to con- 

 struct models of new 

 forms suggested by their 

 active imaginations. As 

 this desire for art exists 

 in all children, and in all 

 savage races, so in the 

 earliest times of human 

 existence we meet with 

 marked artistic activity. 

 We might indeed almost 

 imagine that this phenomenon was physiological in nature, and 

 that art was as necessary to man as salt. To return once more 

 to the children, we may learn from them that in many ways, 

 both bodily and spiritual, the childhood of European and 

 other civilisations reflects the natural life of the human race 

 (Klaatsch). 



Palaeolithic art regarded with not unnatural wonder the 

 entire natural world, as seen on Western European soil. It did 

 not concern itself with decorative patterns, but produced free- 

 hand drawings of animals (mammals, birds, reptiles and fishes), 

 less frequently men, and least frequently of all plants. It 

 attained within its own province a higher level than does 



FIG. 175. Bronze ornament of the Hallstatt 

 period, -| natural size. (Homes.) 



