I.\ ANNl'AI. REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR 



silied, and illustrated from examples never before presented. 

 The accessible material on the subject shows that in America 

 there is opportunity for the study of the origin of art beyond 

 any hitherto enjoyed in the Eastern Hemisphere. In the 

 order of evolution, the character of the specimens now under 

 examination ends where classic art begins, and though the 

 recent discoveries by Schliemann and others have brought to 

 notice the lower archseologic substratum of the East, its pro- 

 ductions are few and meager compared with the multitudes of 

 representative objects of the same general character already in 

 the National Museum. These now open to the student the 

 advantage of a method which examines into the beginnings 

 of art in reference to form and ornamentation, as well as 

 into the earliest traces of manufacture or construction and of 

 function, which show a widely different evolutionary line. Mr. 

 Holmes does not consider that he has made more than a par- 

 tial and tentative paper on the subject, and he is preparing 

 a monograph on a comprehensive basis. The present summary 

 is confined to the geometric side of the study. Otherwise 

 considered, it is the non-ideographic side continued upwards 

 until it reaches the point where it meets the ideographic side, the 

 history and evolution of which are distinct. The general obser- 

 vation to be deduced from the subject, as now presented, is 

 that no metaphysical law of beauty is to be ascertained. The 

 aesthetic principle is not to be found directly in or from nature, 

 but is an artificial accretion of long descended imitations of 

 objective phenomena. Objects are not made because they are 

 essentially pleasing, but are actually pleasing - because they 

 have been customarily made. The primitive artist does not 

 deliberately examine the departments of nature and art, and 

 select for models those things which are most agreeable to an 

 independent fancy, nor even those which simple reasoning 

 would decide upon as most convenient Neither does he ex- 

 periment with any distinct purpose to invent new forms. What 

 he attempts in improvement is what happens to be suggested 

 by some preceding form familiar to him. Each step is not 

 only limited but prescribed by what he already possesses in 

 nature or in art, and knowing his resources his results can be 



