Eat EDN Bes ACR T'S 
Pruatss IX. 1-26. 
Arr is the flower of civilization, the ornament of life. Although the 
artistic instinct may be said to be innate in man, although the feeling for the 
beautiful is deeply implanted in our nature, still it does not come forth to 
light until the requirements of the body have been satisfied ; for want gives 
the death-blow to art, which can only attain its full development when the 
mind is free from care. So long as nations are occupied in securing their 
material well-being, we find among them only those rude forms which seem 
sufficient to meet the immediate demands of security and comfort ; and it is 
not till a later period that we find the sense of the beautiful making its 
existence practically manifest, by joining the agreeable to the useful, and 
the ornamental to the necessary. 
Art rises with the mental cultivation of a people; and in its productions 
the character, disposition, and degree of civilization of a people are accurately 
reflected. An effeminate sensual people are strangers to vigorous forms in 
their works of art; and with the decline of scientific cultivation, art alsc 
declines. 
Before proceeding to perform the task we have undertaken in this treatise, 
that of giving a brief history of the Fine Arts in all times and among the 
principal nations of the earth, we must premise a few words on the meaning 
of the term art, and the accessory notions connected therewith. 
By the term a7t in general, we understand that species of activity 
whereby something internal and spiritual is brought forth into the visible 
world, or in other words the power of representation. The essence of art 
then, as such, consists in this, that its design is only to represent ; and 
thereby it distinguishes itself from all other, viz. from practical pursuits, 
which are constantly directed to the attainment of some end in external life. 
This, too, is what distinguishes art from a trade or handicraft. A handicraft 
sets an object before us as practically useful; art adorns it and renders it 
more agreeable to the eye. 
The external object or object to be represented in art is a sensible form, 
whether created by the fancy or borrowed from external nature. But as 
even corporeal seeing, and in a far higher degree mental, artistic seeing, is 
an operation of the fancy, we must regard the latter as the principal coud 
tion of artistic representation. Thus the painter properly paints with his 
ICONOGRAPHIC ENCYCLOPZDIA.—VOL. IV. 25 385 
