4. THE FINE ARTS. 
If art is compelled first to search out or invent forms for the representation 
of the Deity, it takes a mystical direction, as for instance was the case with 
the animal symbols of the Grecian divinities, and then he alone whose mind 
is penetrated with the special feeling and belief can discern the divine life 
in the animal. 
As architecture has been handled sufficiently at length in another 
Division of this work, the subjects which remain for us to treat of here are 
Puastics or ScunpTurE, Pamrine, and Music. Each of these we will take 
up separately, combining our remarks on the art itself with the history of 
the same. 
I. SCULPTURE, OR THE PLASTIC ART. 
The art of representing the objects of organic nature in all sorts of 
materials, as clay, stone, metal, wax, &c., in such a manner as to be per- 
ceived by the sense of feeling, is called sculpture, or, as mallet and chisel 
are not always used in it, the plastic art; and to this is always reckoned 
by way of exception that part of tectonics which relates to the artistic 
arrangement of the various articles of furniture, as vases, &c. 
Sculpture either represents its objects full-rounded, in all their propor- 
tions, so as to be viewed from every side, and then it furnishes the truest 
copy of nature, or else it presents a half-rounded image, which projects 
only by a portion of its thickness, either half of it (bas-relief), or somewhat 
more than half (hawt-relief’), from the plane surface which both serves as a 
background, and cements the figures together. We have already remarked 
that relief forms the connecting link between sculpture and painting. A 
detail of the processes by which the art of sculpture is carried into practical 
execution would be out of place here. We will only state that the artist 
first prepares a model on a reduced scale of the object to be represented, 
and this he transfers to the block by gradually removing the superfluous 
parts until the finest details are brought out. 
We will now consider the art of sculpture as it has been practised by 
different nations and at different times. 
1. Non-Crasstc ANTIQUITY. 
We reckon as belonging to thenations of non-classie antiquity ali those 
whose civilization and mental culture are older than those of the Greeks 
and Romans; and consequently, with but few exceptions, those primitive 
nations of whose mental cultivation it is true we possess relics, but whose 
writings have either wholly or for the most part perished. 
A. The Hindoos. 
The people among whom we find the earliest traces of mental cultivation 
are the natives of India, the easternmost branch of the Caucasian race; and 
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