This is the case with crystallisations, the first artistic products of unconscious nature. If we look at a vast plain covered with snow, a feeling of sublime cold and wretchedness overcomes us; but if we take up one isolated snow-flake, and place it under a microscope, we find that the elements of the crystallised drop of water surround with harmonious regularity a common centre, which is the body, from which radiate as integral parts the diversified forms of the flake. In studying snow-flakes, we find that the three dimensions of space—height, breadth, and depth, limited by symmetry, proportion and direction—are the principal elements of every form which in itself has to represent a detached total. In all the crystallisations there is one ‘momentum’ of formation—the centre, from which all the parts emanate perfectly well-balanced and complete in themselves. The elements of which all artistic works, whether natural or produced by men, are composed, are the straight line and the waving line. With these elements we can obtain the three principal conditions of every work of art—symmetry, proportion, and direction. Snow-flakes may be used in any direction, and therefore they may be set down as without distinct direction. The rays with their radiation, however, are formed according to the principal law of the universe. They represent the dynamic force; they strive at isolation from the centre which must be looked upon as their static momentum. Thus in the first artistic products of nature positive and negative, or rather dynamic and static forces are clearly perceptible. The horizontal line is the representative of the static, whilst the vertical line is the indicator of the dynamic force.
Symmetry is a perfect equality of form to the right and left of a vertical line on a horizontal base.
Eurythmy consists in a repetition of variegated forms.
In order to produce eurythmy we must confine symmetry within a certain compass; for this purpose we have the frame. Our doors are nothing but frames for the entering or departing individuals; as our windows are frames for the landscape, sky, or walls on which we look, or for ourselves when seen from without. The frame, whether it be real or imaginary, as the correct limitation of forms, is of the very highest importance in decorative and pictorial art.
Eurythmy may be alternating. This alternating principle is observed in metopes and triglyphs. The alternation may be interrupted by a cæsura (a mark or sign of rest). Masks, heads of lions, or any other figures may form the cæsura, as decorative elements in the long lines of the tops of houses, palaces, or temples. The cæsura, combined with eurythmy and symmetry, will give us the best patterns for flat decorations, as in carpets, paper-hangings, keramic works and metal or wood ornaments.
Applying what we have said of crystallisations to plants and animals, we find that symmetry is undoubtedly the predominant element in every flower. The plant developes itself from the ground, which is its horizontal basis. It shoots up generally in a vertical direction, as a radiation from our globe. In trees the branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits are clustered around a central line in eurythmical proportion. In flowers symmetry predominates, whilst in trees eurythmy prevails. In considering the branches of a tree in relation to its trunk, we find the same symmetry and eurythmy, though the direction be changed. We can study these forms best in plants of the coal formation—the Sigillaria, Stigmaria, Lepidodendra, and Calamites; and in ferns, fir-trees, cedars, &c.
In the palm tree we see most distinctly the working of the conflicting forces of nature. The dynamic force of vitality drives the stem upwards, and the static force of gravitation towards a common centre is expressed in the beautifully-drooping curves of the leaves. Symmetry is further to be observed in the lowest animals, in polyps, radiata, &c., but never in higher species, in which it is not planimetrical (viz., cannot be treated on a plane) but linear, none of them being perfectly regular in any of the three dimensions of space.
Man is altogether different from the products of the mineral or vegetable kingdoms, which give us the prototypes of conventional art. Man is not in all directions symmetrical in the strict sense of the word. He has not two heads, two noses, or two mouths. The component elements in man are different. His very nature revolts against a planimetrical treatment. This was perfectly understood by the masters of arabesque, who have always turned man half into a fish, a plant, a serpent, a tendril, or some other form adapted for planimetrical treatment. Eurythmy and Proportion are the elements of higher organic forms—to which must be added direction or Action, and finally Expression.
In most of the lower animals the vertebræ are horizontal, and coincident with the moving direction of the whole creature. In man, on the other hand, the vertebræ are vertical, in opposition to the moving direction which is horizontal; so that the vertebræ and line of motion are at right angles.
In men, detached as they are from their horizontal basis, the soil—carrying their static force with them, and able to change it either from below, upwards, or from front to back—direction is of a complicated nature, and must be well studied, so as not to produce incongruities.
If a woman or man were painted with the most beautiful and expressive face, but having it twisted round, so as to crown the spine, we should turn from it with disgust, as anyone endowed with the sense of beauty turns from acrobats, because the natural laws of gravitation and symmetry would be violated. This illustration may serve to prove, that there are laws in art with which we must make ourselves acquainted, and that the mere ‘right of taste,’ in the general sense of the words, cannot promote the understanding and appreciation of our artistic productions.
Next to direction we have to take into account motion. This element is in animals and men produced by their inherent dynamic force, counteracted by the body itself, which represents the static force, or the ‘vis inertiæ,’ chaining them to the centre of gravitation in the earth.
Motion again leads to expression and action.
Expression is the effect of the conflicting static or dynamic (passive or active) state of the mind, so far as this state is revealed in the lineaments of the face.
Action is the effect of the same conflicting force so far as it is expressed in the limbs and the position of the body.
A third force, which is often used unconsciously, necessarily grows out of these elements—the controlling or ruling element, or, as Vitruvius has it, ‘the principle of authority.’ This element points out the preponderance of certain forms as the visible representatives of the general principles which we have stated, bringing into the variety of details, harmony and unity. This controlling element stands to the surrounding and united parts in the same relation as the key-note to a harmonious melody. Without that key-note no harmony—without the controlling element no beauty, were possible.
Having proceeded step by step from the formation of matter in crystals to man, we may set down the following as the five principal elements necessary to beauty in art:—
α. Symmetry has already been amply treated.
β. Eurythmy is either stereometric or planimetric. It is stereometric in balls and in regular solid bodies, such as the tetrahedron, a figure of four equal triangular faces, or the polyhedron, a figure with many sides. These forms are symmetrical without any controlling element. Such an element shows itself first in the ellipsoid—distinct from the oval—in the prism, and the pyramid. Planimetric eurythmy preponderates in snow-crystals, flowers, plants, trees, and the lowest animals.
The controlling element shows itself in the grouping of the single parts round a common centre, which is often distinguished by a contrast in forms or colours. It is unconsciously expressed by a sign or mark.
Ornamentation takes its origin in the effort to express, to designate, or to mark out the controlling element. The ornamented object has only then a meaning, when it expresses visibly the hidden idea of the controlling element, say the idea of fastening or keeping together, as in clasps, brooches, buckles; or the idea of equilibrium, as in earrings. Such signs or marks were very early used, and are spread all over our globe; they developed into the rough tombs in Phrygia, Greece and Italy; took a higher form in Central America and Assyria; became crystallised in the Pyramids; and attained the highest perfection in the tombs of Mausolus, Augustus, and Hadrian. The mark or sign is also used in games, as on race-courses, in the stadium, the circus, or the amphitheatre. A more distinct expression is gained when the mark or sign, as divine statue, altar, &c., is surrounded by rhythmically-arranged circles or encompassing walls, as the visible expression of the union of the many, or variety, for one religious or ceremonial purpose. The mark or sign reflects, on the one hand, the idea of harmony, whilst, on the other, the rhythmically-arranged surroundings form an impressive total, heightening the force of the controlling element. This law explains the awe, veneration, mysterious feeling, and secret fear with which men at all times have looked upon the central mark or sign, whether in the simple stone-circles of Abury, Stonehenge, and Carnac, the rock-hewn temples of India, the temples of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, or the synagogues and churches of our own times.
Next to the controlling element, we must take into consideration the grouping of the whole object on a horizontal basis around a vertical axis. This axis becomes the seat of the linear, symmetrical, controlling element. It is especially marked by richly ornamented reliefs or by gaudier colours, so pronounced that the other parts of the ornamented object appear as mere accompaniments of the horizontal and vertical lines. Remarkable in their incongruity, but often unsurpassed in the application of this principle, are the tattooed heads of savages, in which the linear central line is ornamented symmetrically on both sides of the face—the prominent parts being marked by spirals to make them appear still more prominent.
γ. Proportion, as an element of art, cannot work by itself, but must be considered in relation to its parts and the controlling element. Proportion consists of a basis, a middle piece, and a dominant. To illustrate this, we have in plants and trees, the root (basis), the stem or trunk (middle piece), and the top, crown or flower (dominant).
The basis represents the cosmical element of gravitation by powerful masses, simplicity of forms, and dark colouring. This law was especially observed in the excellent decoration of the Roman houses at Pompeii, and is still followed in our wainscoting. We try unconsciously to express the static force from which the dynamic rises.
The middle piece, growing out of the basis, is supported and supporting; it unites the elements of the basis with the top or dominant; it is the connecting link between these two extremes. The basis stands in the same relation to the middle piece, as the latter to the dominant.
The dominant harmoniously reconciles the conflicting forces of striving upwards, and being drawn downwards. Variations in these relations are not only allowable, but form the very element of the artist’s creative originality—so long as he clearly marks the purpose of the three elements.
δ. Direction, or motion, in its highest form is only to be found in man. In fishes the axis, or seat of the controlling element, is not fixed as in plants. If fishes pursue some point of attraction, they shoot forward in a straight line, so that a conflict between the static and dynamic forces is never visible in them, because the axes of these two forces are always one and the same. This is entirely different with birds, quadrupeds, and especially with men, who, to a great extent, are masters of their motions; for will, as the force of their conscious intellect, changes their static as well as their dynamic direction.
Man is the symbol of earthly perfection. In him all laws and elements of the universe are united. What is with inanimate nature a static point of attraction, is with man moral; the dynamic force of activity, is with him intellect. Animals also work, but their works are in general the result of their instinct; whilst with man, though he may also be ruled by unconscious impulses, intellect—self-conscious intellect—is the mainspring of all his actions. These have a reflecting mirror in the glance of his eyes, whilst the changing and changeable effects of scorn, love, wrath, delight, happiness, or despair are pictured in the mysteriously-woven lineaments of his countenance.
ε. Expression, of intellectual and moral impressions, is most concentrated in MAN.
Man is placed on this globe as a radius,—a detached radius. The axis of his body is part of the diameter of the earth, and divides him into symmetrical halves. A line, that passes at an equal distance through the double organs, also divides the single ones into two equally-arranged portions. We possess two eyes, to receive the impression of light; two ears, to be touched simultaneously by the waves of sound; two tubes are opened, to receive the refined, imponderable bodies producing odour; the lips are grouped round a marked central line to the chin. We have two shoulders, two arms, two hands, two legs, two feet; both hands have the same number of fingers, and both feet the same number of toes. On the other hand, the parts, taken by themselves, break through all the laws of symmetrical uniformity. The arms are longer than the trunk; the legs are longer than the arms; hands end in unequally-subdivided fingers; feet in similarly-treated toes. But notwithstanding this want of symmetry there is perfect harmony in the relations of the parts to the whole, so that man may be said to be the very master-piece of creation. In considering the controlling linear elements, in the three grand groups into which humanity may be best divided for a comprehensive study of art, we find that the very fundamental facial lines differ.
We have first the Negro, the fossil, the black, or antediluvian man. The eyes, nostrils, and lips are drawn downwards in melancholy lines. He is cross-toothed (prognathous), triangular-headed, has flat feet, long heels, an imperfect pelvis, but a very powerful digestive organ, and a correspondingly enormous mouth.
The Oceanic Negro is the best example of this group. He is slow of temperament, unskilled, his mechanical ingenuity being that of a child; he never goes beyond geometrical ornamentation; builds tumuli or triangular wigwams; lives on what he finds by chance, and, at the best, hunts or fishes. His reasoning faculty is very limited, his imagination slow, but his perceptive faculties (the senses) are highly developed. He is altogether incapable of rising from a fact to a principle. He cannot create beauty, for he is indifferent to any ideal conception. He possesses only from 75–83½ cubic inches of brain, his facial angle being about 85½ degrees. This lowest group of mankind branches off into different types. The general features of the group have neither changed nor improved. The Negro is still the woolly-headed, animal-faced being, represented on the tombs of the Pharaohs, because his bodily structure, his facial lines have not altered during thousands of years. In studying the artistic products, the customs and manners of this group, we can picture to ourselves the state in which Asiatics and Europeans must have lived during the oldest stone period. The Negroes use the same kind of flint instruments, manufacture the same crude kind of pottery, adorn their clubs, paddles, and the cross-beams of their huts with the same rope and serpent-like entangled windings and twistings, that are found in various parts of the globe of pre-historic times. The ruling lines of the face and head of the Negro are reflected in his triangular or mound-like architectural constructions.
Next we have the Turanian (from tura, ‘swiftness of a horse’), the Mongol, the square or short-headed (brachikephalous), the traditionary, the yellow man. His face is flat, his nose deeply sunken between his prominent cheeks; his reasoning faculty is developed only to a certain degree. He has small, oblique eyes, the lines being turned upwards, expressing cunning and jocularity. His mouth is less powerful than that of the negro. He has broad shoulders, an expansive chest, thin and small bow legs, as if formed to use those of horses instead of his own; he is an excellent rider, but a slow though steady walker. He looks on nature with a nomadic shepherd’s eye, and not with that of a settled artist. He excels in technical ability, has great powers of imitation, can produce geometrical ornamentation of the most complicated and ingenious character, and a realistic imitation of flowers, butterflies, and birds, but has no sense for perspective and no talent for shading. He is incapable of drawing the human form. Sculpture of a higher kind is unknown to him, though he can execute perfectly marvellous carvings, which, though quaint in design and composition, are wanting in proportion and expression. Faithful to his nomadic traditions, and the lines of his head and face, his architectural constructions take an according form. Like his facial lines, the roofs of his houses are twisted upwards.
The amount of brain in the Turanian averages 83½ cubic inches, and his facial angle is 87½ degrees.
Finally we have the Aryan, the long or oval-headed man (dolichokephalous), the historical, the white man, the crowning product of the cosmical forces of nature. His facial lines are composed of the two conflicting elements, the horizontal and the vertical line, and are framed in by an oval. His amount of brain is on an average 92 cubic inches, and his facial angle 90 degrees. His development is not limited. This group of mankind, though divided into many different types (races or nations), which have arisen from an intermixture with the other two groups, or through the influences of climate, food, and the aspect of nature, stands at the highest point of civilisation. As the lines of his face are admirably counterbalanced, and his body is a master-piece of regularity and proportion, he has tried to establish a perfect balance between the conflicting forces in his moral and intellectual nature. To him exclusively we owe art in its highest sense. Once he stood on the same level with the primitive black savage, then he advanced to the ingenuity of the yellow man, and left both far behind him in his gradual but always progressive development. He surpasses the other two groups of humanity, not only in technical skill, but especially in inventive and reasoning power, critical discernment, and purity of artistic taste. The white man alone, has produced idealised master-pieces in sculpture and painting.
The white man in his architecture uses either the horizontal or the vertical line, or both; he takes the triangular building of the negro and places it on the square tent of the yellow man, making his house as perfect as possible; he goes further, and, in accordance with his powerfully-arched brow, over-arches not only rivers and chasms, but builds his magnificent cupolas and pointed arches, the acme of architectural forms.
Ethnology then serves us as a foundation for the study of art in its different phases.
Conforming to the general tendency of modern science, we have tried to express the cause of the artistic development of the three groups of humanity by figures; we have measured the seat and instrument of our intellectual faculty, and have thus tried to leave the sphere of mere conjecture, or unfounded opinion, in order to place the phenomena of art-history on a firm basis. Though art, undoubtedly, belongs ‘to the magic circle of the imagination, and the inner powers of the mind,’ those powers are dependent on our very bodily construction, the amount of brain and the facial angle. We do not deal in mere hypothesis, but submit to our readers a complete theory borne out by facts.
In considering the frontispiece of our manual, representing the ‘Tree of Art,’ we can visibly trace the slow and gradual development of the white man. The negro fixes our attention only as savage; the yellow man has a line of his own, and has remained stationary in his artistic development; the white man has passed through the savage stages, and by his own exertions, undergoing various phases of rise and decline (the real signs of historical vitality), has steadily progressed till he began to attempt, and to succeed in bringing about, ‘a harmonious connection between the representation of nature and the expression of awakened emotion, and a mysterious analogy between the emotions of his mind and the phenomena perceived by his senses.’
As all phenomena must take place in space and time (the two fundamental forms of all existence), the products of art must also have been executed under these two conditions, and can therefore be treated historically.
Space is the expansion and extension of the forces of nature into the infinite. Time is the limitation of this activity. Without space no object could arrive at completion. Without time the subject would be eternal. These are the two counteracting elements. The one, space, is positive—the other, time, negative. Time is either relative or absolute. If relative, it can be measured by an ascertained succession of events. If absolute, it becomes measurable by years. In both we can trace a gradual and successive development of artistic forms. In general, time relative, with its succession of products, is more reliable than time labelled with voluntary and more than doubtful dates. For instance, we cannot measure the periods of the formation of the earth’s crust by years, and still we are perfectly convinced that the tertiary formation could not have taken place before the primary; thus we are justified in assuming that the iron period must have succeeded the stone or bronze period; bronze instruments never being found with iron handles, whilst iron blades have ornamented wooden or bronze handles. Man naturally scarcely ever uses the worse material for a practical purpose when he has once found a better one; but he will use the softer material as a means of ornamentation.
That we have plenty of ‘survivals’ in art, as well as in nature, does not in any way militate against the strict logic of facts. The lowest forms of animals have mostly survived (like the lowest forms of ornamentation), yet no one can doubt or deny the gradual and systematic development of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. If we find no fragments of pottery in Australia, New Zealand, or the Polynesian islands, we cannot assume that a grand and powerful civilisation has perished there, leaving no traces behind. In finding different kinds of pottery, gradually improving even in the quality of the material—the clay being first unwashed, then mixed with grains of quartz and felspar, next carefully washed, then sun-baked, then fire-baked; first hand and then wheel turned, and at last glazed, unornamented or ornamented—we cannot assume that the order was inverted, and that man first ornamented glazed pottery, which he turned out on the wheel, and then went back to unwashed clay and hand-made pottery. The ‘degeneration theory’ has exploded as entirely as the geocentric and anthropocentric theories have vanished. We know that man, like flowers, trees, rocks and animals, is the product of the combined forces of nature and the influences of climate and food, and that his religious, social, and political conditions are closely reflected in his art. As little as our globe is the centre of the universe, or man the centre of creation, so little did art or science spring at once perfectly armed, provided with spear and shield, from Jupiter’s head like blue-eyed Athene. In a certain sense art and science are both of divine origin, but only so far as the originating and creative power is concerned, which, once set in motion, had to grow and to develop according to definite and immutable laws. To trace this development step by step in general outlines, from time relative to the mythical and traditional periods, and thence to the age of history, is the aim of our manual. In generalising thus, and separating the special from the universal, we are enabled to embrace at once with greater clearness a wider range of knowledge, and to give to the treatment of art-history a more elevated and useful character. By a suppression of details, the great periods and features of a common development are rendered more intelligible, and our reasoning faculty is enabled to grasp that which might otherwise escape our limited powers of comprehension.
Art, like nature, is its own interpreter. A well-finished pattern has not preceded a more simple one; circular ornamentations are of a later date than ornamentations with straight lines. The cave-habitation must have been in use before the construction of independent temples. Art must have had a beginning like language; for it is a language—a language in forms, speaking to our eyes. If what the Arabs say is true, that the best description is that in which the ear is transformed into an eye, the best picture will be one that transforms our eyes into ears. Art speaks through light, as language through sounds. We have tried to discover by means of philology—which in modern times has become a science—a more or less close relationship between idioms and idioms; in the same way we try to trace some general primitive types from which we may deduce the innumerable works of art.
In times long by-gone we find traces of man’s inventive and decorative force. The products of that force even in pre-historic ages widely differ in their degrees of workmanship. There are more or less finished hatchets, chisels, knives, arrow-heads, paal-stabs, celts and armlets. The ornamentation, from mere varying straight lines, goes over into spiral forms of different direction and combination. We have therefore no difficulty in classifying the products of pre-historic art in the following way:—
The first two subdivisions belong to savage life, the third to the mythical or traditionary, and the fourth to the historical periods.
During the old stone age we have scarcely any traces of ornamentation; during the new stone age we find some attempts at geometrical lines, and some sketches of animals on ivory blades; during the bronze age we have winding and twisting patterns of excellent geometrical design; and, finally, during the iron age, animals and even human forms are used as means of ornamentation.
During the pre-historic period of man’s artistic development we find a peculiar similarity between his dwellings and his tombs. The mountain cavern, and the hut constructed of beams and boughs, covered with skins, were undoubtedly men’s first stately palaces. The very oldest traditions bear out this statement. The earliest inhabitants of Greece dwelt in mountain caverns. The people of Siberia, anterior to the Samoyedes, lived, according to Erman, in subterranean caves. The Kyklops of Homer are but nomads, residing in mountain caverns. Of the Hittites, a tribe in Canaan in the times of Abraham, it is recorded that they buried their dead in caves. But it is an incontestable fact that the burial-places resembled the dwellings of the pre-historic man. Crypts, catacombs, and rock-hewn temples may be set down as having originated from man’s first mountain home. The tombs of the Tartars in Kasan resemble their houses on a small scale. A Circassian tomb resembles a Circassian cottage. The tombs of the Karaite Jews in the valley of Jehoshaphat, are like their houses. Laplanders live in caves. The aborigines of Germany and France, the contemporaries of the mammoth, rhinoceros, auerochs and elk, dwelt in caves, as their bones are found mingled with those of these now extinct animals, together with various implements, such as adzes, flint arrows, stone knives, and even, as in the cave at Perigord on the borders of the Dordogne, works of art of great artistic power. Jordanes, in his ‘De Rebus Geticis,’ mentions people in Sweden (Scania) living like wild animals in caves, cut out in the rocks. But the nomad savage could find such dwellings only where there were mountains. If he wandered out of such a district into the plains, and wanted to shelter himself from the inclemency of the weather, he had to collect blocks of stone, and to form with them artificial caves. In this manner cromlechs, Dös, Dyss or dolmens, and gallery chambers arose, in which the long, narrow gallery corresponds to the confined entrance of the mountain-cave, and the chamber to the cavern.
By degrees man began to construct detached houses for himself, and at last temples for his god or gods. No traces of temples are found in pre-historic times, except in the Western hemisphere. The Stiens of Cambodia, in the central parts of Cochin-China, have no temples. From the southern promontory of Africa to far beyond the banks of the Zambesi no temples are found. The pastoral and agricultural people of Madagascar have no temples, though they have huts and houses, ornamented pottery, and are to a certain degree acquainted with textile art. Before man constructs a temple he constructs a house, to protect himself, his herds, and family from wild animals, but above all from his still more dreaded fellow-creature, in whom he sees a dangerous rival. This propensity serves to explain the origin of lake-dwellings—the most ancient proofs of man’s constructing capacity, and of his talent to unite for a certain purpose, and to enclose a given space. Herodotus already tells us of a settlement on Lake Prasias, the modern Tachyno (in Rumelia, European Turkey), where men lived on platforms, supported by tall piles. Abulfeda, the Syrian geographer (b. 1273; d. 1313), speaks of Christian fishermen living in wooden huts, built on piles in one of the Apamean lakes on the Orontes (in Asia). The Papuans of New Guinea still live in such pile-dwellings, the floors of which are supported by rudely-carved human figures, an attempt at telamons. These are ‘survivals,’ but the lake-dwellings in Italy and Switzerland belong to pre-historic times. In tracing their different modes of construction, we find three periods of a progressive architectural development recorded.
We have pile-dwellings of the most primitive construction. Rough piles were used, pointed with the aid of fire or with stone hatchets, later with bronze, and finally with iron tools. They were placed either close together or in pairs, or wide apart—generally in regular order. The heads of the piles were brought to a level above the water to receive the beams of the platform, which were fastened down with wooden pins. Later, as an improvement, mortices were cut in the tops of the vertical piles to receive the cross-beams.
Other constructions, especially those near Nidau (niedere Au, lower meadow), are built on a foundation artificially strengthened with stones, which is, undoubtedly, an improvement on the former method.
Experience taught the pre-historic architects that the piles were not quite safe, and ought to have some support against the turbulent risings of the lake. This produced the still more improved fascine constructions, which certainly gave still greater strength to the dwelling. The platform did not rest on mere piles but on artificial foundations, built up from the bottom with horizontal layers of sticks or small branches of trees, the vertical piles serving as connecting links to the whole construction.
Cranoges, or wooden islands, are chiefly found in Ireland and Scotland. They differ from the fascine constructions in that they frequently were built on natural islands, or on shallows approaching to this character. The huts built upon these pile-constructions were rectangular; some may have been round, like the huts of savages, in imitation of mole-hills, the prototypes of the numerous mounds strewn all over the globe. The huts contained an artificial hearth, made of three or four slabs of stone.
That the inhabitants of the lake-dwellings were acquainted with textile art, is proved by the discovery of an innumerable quantity of clay-weights for weaving purposes, and by pieces of burnt woven flax. The crude pottery, tools and wooden pegs, fibres twisted into ropes, remains of different cereals, fruits, and domestic animals found in these settlements, clearly prove that a certain kind of family life must have existed. At all events, the inhabitants must have reached a higher degree of civilisation than some of the South-Sea Islanders of our century, who, on receiving some iron nails, planted them, in the expectation of reaping a rich crop of this valuable vegetable.
We see that in pre-historic times art was already practised, not only for a merely utilitarian but also for an ornamental and artistic purpose.
This may be said, in a much higher sense, of the pre-historic art-remains in the Western hemisphere. Art had there a threefold development, corresponding to the three groups of humanity. We find the mounds of the Negro; the pottery of the yellow man, with its quaint ornamentation; and the remarkable temples, fortresses, viaducts, and aqueducts of the Aryan group. We possess in our museums abundant specimens of the works of these three groups, as also of their singular hieroglyphic writings, resembling the first attempts of the Chinese and Egyptians to represent ideas in forms. Imagination with savages supplies the form; the mere outlines therefore suffice. The horse drawn in this way (a) is a real horse; (b) this forms a real goose; (c) this is the sun; and (d) this a real man. It is a kind of pictorial writing or ideography, to be seen for miles and miles hewn in rocks at Massaya, and practised by humanity at large, as by our own children, in the first stage of awakening consciousness.
We find not only ethnological, but also philological and artistic traces of the fact, that at an unknown pre-historic period, the Western hemisphere must have been in close connection with the Eastern. The name of the supreme Divinity, Dyaus, Θεός {Theos}, Deus, is in the far West Teotl.
Art in the North of the Western hemisphere is primitive, kyklopean walls and sepulchral mounds being the principal remains.
In the Centre of the Continent, art bears all the traces of a gradually-developed progress. It almost reached the forms of Egypt, but stopped half way. By some means Atalanta was separated from the East, and the pyramids, temples and palaces of central America remained in the same relation to the pyramids, temples and palaces of Egypt as the tapir to the elephant; the alligator to the crocodile; and the llama to the camel.
The West possessed a knowledge of astronomy analogous to that of the Chinese, and their mode of ornamentation in excellent stucco reached a high degree of technical and even pictorial skill. They went so far as to represent scenes of an historical character with some degree of dramatic power; as the stucco of the rock-hewn temple of Mitla in Mexico proves. Their ornamentation is irregular and confused, like their wild vegetation, in which creepers predominate.
Some figures are striking in their resemblance to Egyptian forms.
A sculptured divinity of granite, 3½ feet high, found near a finely-built pyramid not far from Guatusco or Huatusco, is excellently worked and finished in a simple style. Still more curious is a small statue executed in lava, with a head-dress resembling those of Isis, the Sphinx, the capitals of the temple of Denderah, or at a later period those of Antinous. Even the position of the feet reminds us of the sphinx, and proves the absence of a knowledge of proportion.
In South America, in the regions of Lake Titicaca in Peru, lying at an elevation of 13,000 feet above the level of the sea, i.e. about four times as high as Snowdon, we have proofs of a very high civilisation. Artificially-constructed causeways lead over the surrounding marshes to the sacred town of Cuzco, the capital and central spot of the empire of the fabulous yet real Incas. Of those times we have a garden of the Incas, in the warmest and most sheltered part of the island, ‘with its baths, and its fountains still flowing with silvery sheen and murmur.’ Not far from Titicaca is the island of Coati, sacred to the moon. Here stood the famous palace of the Virgins of the Sun (reminding us of the Vestals instituted by one of the Roman rulers), flanked by two shrines dedicated to the sun and moon. These are the best-preserved specimens of American pre-historic architecture. Round Lake Umayo, on a peninsula, we find a remarkable group of ancient square burial towers, known as the Chulpas of Silustani.
Cuzco was the Rome of the south of the Western hemisphere. The town was traversed by four high-roads in the direction of the four points of the compass. It was divided into an upper (Hanau) and a lower (Hurin) town. Grouped around the central square in the form of an oval were twelve subdivisions (Carrios). Here stood the great palace, one mile in length and a quarter of a mile broad; the Yachahuasi (Huasi, houses) dedicated to the instruction of the youth; the Galpones, edifices in which festivals were held; the convent of the Virgins of the Sun, the Corichanca or Palace of Gold, and the temple dedicated to the sun, surrounded by chapels dedicated to the moon, the stars, and to thunder and lightning. Here also stood the eighth wonder of the world—the great fortress Sacsahuaman; the entrances with slanting jambs, and a large plinth, constructed like inverted stairs, sometimes in stone, sometimes in excellent stucco, either with or without ornament. The three lines of massive walls round the town, forming the defence, were constructed ‘en tenaille,’ the entering angles all being ninety degrees; the very best European fortifications, planned by Vauban or Moltke, could not surpass the terrace-like arrangement of these three lines of defence. The polygonal blocks, of which the walls are constructed, are of blue limestone, from eight to ten feet in length, half as much in width and depth, and weigh from fifteen to twenty tons each. The first wall has an average height of about twenty-five feet, the second eighteen feet, and the third fourteen feet. Total elevation of walls, fifty-seven feet.
However cursorily we have touched upon art as it developed in the Western hemisphere, the reader must be impressed by two facts. (1) That there are analogies between East and West which are too striking to be attributed to mere chance; and (2) that those who built the edifices of Uxmal, Palenque, Copan, Chichen, Itza, and Cuzco must have been far beyond a mere nomadic state. They had palaces, temples, and therefore a kind of social organisation and religion. Their religion must have been of a low and cruel character, judging from the representations of their divinities, and from their using detached limbs of the human body as arabesques; though we can trace in their calendar, as in their conceptions of the personified powers of nature, Eastern influences, connecting the pre-historic West with the historic East. Whilst the Eastern world used incense at its religious ceremonies, the West used tobacco smoke. In both hemispheres some mysterious power was attributed to animals. The helmets of all nations took their origin in this common belief. Eagles, vultures, wolves, tigers, lions, dragons and serpents are used to adorn the fighter or to charm his weapons. The custom of wearing masks and helmets or head-dresses of some terrifying form, exaggerating the size of the head, is of purely barbarous origin. In the remains of ancient Mexico, Peru, and the South Sea Islands we find a variety of carved masks; some resembling human faces, adorned with false hair, beards and eyebrows; others representing the heads of birds. They are generally painted, often ornamented with pieces of foliaceous mica to make them glitter, or with turquoises and other precious stones.
That the pre-historic man, whether of the East or the farthest West, had some sort of civilisation may be best studied in his keramic products. Earthenware vessels, pots, jugs, vases, urns, and amphoræ are as interesting to the art-historian as fossil plants and animals to the paleontologist, or the different strata of the earth’s crust to the geologist.
Pottery is one of the most reliable historical documents for fixing the degree of civilisation of a nation. Fossil pottery very much resembles antediluvian animals—it is without shape and form. Shells, leaves and fruits suggested it. By degrees gourds and eggs gave man better patterns. At a certain period it must have been the fashion in Egypt, Etruria, Greece, China, Mexico and Peru to use animal and human forms for vases, bottles, jugs and goblets, whilst horns, skulls and boots are found amongst Teutons and some savage tribes. The Teutons hoped to drink sweet honey out of the skulls of their slain enemies in Walhalla. We cannot wonder that so amiable a creed should have engendered quaint drinking vessels. We see in our own times plates and dishes adorned with frogs and lizards, which indisputably prove that there are pre-historic ‘survivals.’ From Kyprus we have, in the Imperial Cabinet of Antiquities at Vienna, an urn with a human face, which is very much like those found in Mexico, of which the South Kensington Museum and the Christy collection of the British Museum possess excellent specimens.
The wild and fantastic mode of ornamentation in the Western hemisphere, in pre-historic times, is entirely due to the aspect of nature. Man seems to have received patterns from India, Egypt and Greece, and worked them out by reflecting the impressions of an exuberant nature. Flowers, feathers, pearls, trinkets, hieroglyphs, animals, human bodies—all are mingled together in endless confusion. Here and there a symmetrical echo of times long by-gone can be traced. Though, however, the Western artists of pre-historic times sometimes attained symmetry, they continually sin against eurythmy. Of proportion and action they have no conception. They have a style, but a style of their own, devoid of all those requisites which elevate a product to artistic beauty.
The Chinese undoubtedly reached a high degree of culture earlier than all the historical nations, and still they are in a state of civilised infancy. They possess reliable historical records referring to periods when branches of the Aryan group of humanity were still nomads. They knew that our globe is flattened at the poles, at a time when we thought it to be a square supported by pillars; they were acquainted with the properties of the magnet-needle; worked metal; cultivated the mulberry-tree, systematically fed the silk-worm with its leaves, weaving its product into the very best silk. In pottery they have attained the greatest perfection so far as the material is concerned. In engineering they were not less clever. They have aqueducts, executed with great daring; innumerable bridges span their rivers; they drained and irrigated the land at a time when other people assumed a universal deluge; and yet they remained babies in thoughts and customs, whilst they grew older and older in age. They have all the manners of precocious children with prematurely aged faces. This phenomenon can be explained in figures. There are 400,000,000 of Chinese, nearly all Turanians. Taking an equal number of Aryans, we shall find that they are not less than 3,400,000,000 cubic inches short of brain, of which each inch represents a certain amount of intellectual force. This deficiency in ‘brain-force’ shows itself in their totally different development, and the stationary character of their institutions. They ingeniously play in science, art, politics, and religion. 4,500 years ago they reached a high degree of civilisation, and they remained stationary in their civilised childhood, which they preserve with a pious veneration. To look back, to believe that the past was better than the present, has become the static law of China, and has checked every progress. Their language is agglutinative, only one degree higher than the savage monosyllabic, and forms a link between this and the flexible languages. The 450 monosyllables are used to form 1,230 word-sounds, out of which they compose from 40,000 to 60,000 compounds. They cannot pronounce certain consonants, resembling in this some badly-taught European children. They say: ‘Yoo-lo-pa’ instead of Europe; ‘Ya-me-li-ka’ instead of America; ‘Ma-li-ya’ instead of Maria; ‘cu-lu-su’ instead of crux; ‘Ki-li-tu-su’ for Christus. Their mode of writing has developed from pictorial signs. They preserved these; and, although arbitrary characters have supplanted picture-writing, or hieroglyphs, they still retain the clumsiness of this form, and have for every word a special sign.
Notwithstanding these drawbacks they possess an encyclopædia in 5,000 volumes, and a collection of works of fiction amounting to 180,000 volumes. They can boast of a Socrates in Confucius, of a Plato in Mem-tsu, and of a Xenophon in Tsem-tsu.
Five is with them a holy number: they had five emperors during their Golden Age; there are five great principles on which they base the possibility of a regulated social existence, viz. humanity, justice, conformity, uprightness, and sincerity. They have five holy books: the Shoo-King (political precepts); the Y-King (a philosophy of emanations based on figures); the Shi-King (a collection of didactical odes and songs about 3,000 years old); the Li-King (a record of ceremonial customs and social manners); and the Yo-King (a book on music, regulating harmony on the most discordant principles). They have five domestic principles, five elements, five primitive colours, five seasons of the year, five ruling spirits, five planets, five points of the compass, five sorts of earth, five different precious stones, five degrees of punishment, five different kinds of dresses; and their whole principle of ornamentation is based on five points Five dots at corners of a rectangle and in the middle. By uniting these five points they produce that ingenious system for the conventional treatment of flowers and animals, which has been divided by Owen Jones into—
In these three systems they observe the natural laws of radiation and tangential curvature.
But in all their works of art appears the spectre of childishness, with wrinkles in its withered face. Their patterns in textile art are such as some people delight in for the sake of their quaint originality. They altogether neglect the laws of ornamentation; and we never know whether in ornamenting a vase they did not intend to dress a Chinese lady for a tea party, or whether in dressing a high-standing mandarin, or a lady in stiff brocade, they did not intend to ornament one of their peculiarly-shaped tea-pots. In fact their vases are ladies in brocade dresses, whilst their gentlemen and ladies look like ambulatory vases. We often see on a lady, ‘doves as big as bustards, cooing; flowers and trees growing on plates and vases upside down, and inside out.’ We see a mandarin strutting about, adorned with an embroidered tree with fifty different foliages. One screen is decorated with fishes with feathers, another with birds with fins, or monstrous dragons creep on the ground or fly in the air. Everything in art is done as it ought not to be done. It is as if some merry and mischievous hobgoblin had instructed the Chinese to make up a kind of artistic patchwork out of all the odds and ends of ornamental fancies, distorted figures, and incomprehensible combinations.
Their towns look like large encampments of nomad hordes, ready at a moment’s notice to take up their tents and run away. Though they have constructed a huge wall, which is 25 feet thick at the base, diminishing to 15 at the platform, provided at distances of 100 yards with towers about 40 feet square at the base, diminishing to 30 at the top, and about 37–48 feet in height; though they have carried this over the ridges of lofty hills (one of them 5,000 feet above the level of the sea), and led it through the deepest valleys, or upon arches over rivers—their architecture is still in its very infancy. It is a kind of toy-architecture. The walls of their houses may be pulled down, and the houses still remain standing. For architecture with the Chinese is in no way an organic total; it is not even a chemically-united composition; but a mechanically-joined something, without any ruling and connecting idea. Contrary to all rules of good architecture, they express in their constructions the principle of the separation and independence of the active elements of the building, instead of their union and harmony. It is variety without unity. Their walls are mere screens in bricks or wood, mere frameworks for tapestry. The wall with them does not support; it appears movable and totally distinct from the roof. The scaffolding which supports the horizontal, as also the vertical enclosures, belongs more to textile than to tectonic art The Turanian is still addicted to fascine work, like the pre-historic lake-dweller, or our contemporary aboriginal New Zealander. The divisions in the interior of the house are movable; either consisting of real carpets, lattice-work, wooden-jointed leaves, or boards, ornamented to imitate carpets or movable screens. Imitations of flowered woven-stuffs, lacquered panels with impossible perspectives, bamboo tress-work, with protruding knobs, carved and turned into gaping and grinning fantastic monsters, are also among the principal characteristics of Chinese architectural ornamentation. Chinese trellis-work has a fairy-like appearance. The patterns are infinitely varied, either closely fitting or perforated, dividing and enclosing spaces, surrounding terraces as railings, running up the staircases, or forming large borders between column and column.
The trellis-work of the Chinese may be divided into three classes:—
1. The bamboo wicker-work, a close imitation of textile fabrics; in fact, woven wood-work.
2. The lattice-work, a kind of transition or metamorphic work between trellis and cross-barred work. The patterns are of a grosser kind.
3. The mixed-work, a combination of the two classes.
The first is generally used in ornamenting the interior of the basements of the houses. The natural bright yellow tint of the bamboo is either left, or it is lacquered in variegated colours to heighten the effect of the patterns.
The lattice-work is used for door and window-frames. In the latter case the holes are filled up with transparent shells, coloured paper, or painted glass, which has been in use since 3000 B.C.
The mixed-work runs along the walls, forming a frieze of gilt metal or alabaster. The last-named material is employed in summer-houses as a finish to the outer space, connecting bright red or light blue columns. When thus used the effect is undoubtedly charming. The roofs are tinted dark green, an unconscious reminiscence of by-gone times, when they were made of the leafy branches of trees or the broad foliage of plants. The dark azure of heaven shining through the perforated trellis-work, contrasting with the white marble of the substructure and the red columns, forms a combination both striking and agreeable. The upper parts of a building appear to swim in the air.
The brick walls of the Chinese are bare of stucco; the void predominating. They use the walls either as enclosures for court-yards, as isolated protecting walls before the entrances of houses—reminding us of the gates of India or the propylæa of Egypt—as substructures, or as enclosures and partitions for dwelling-places. All these walls are constructed of air-dried, fire-baked, or glazed tiles and bricks. The latter are only used for temples or imperial buildings. Whilst we possess a Board of Public Works that unfortunately has no administrative power, and cannot prevent our thoroughfares from being constructed according to the principles of a most inveterate symmetrophobia (hatred of all order, shape, style, and homo-geneousness), the law in China goes so far as to regulate even the use of building material, not according to any esthetical rule, but pandering merely to rank and class interest. White marble may only be used for imperial substructures, the enclosure of imperial courts, and in the construction of imperial bridges, and must never be used as wall-decoration. Their cement for coating walls is like ours; the stucco flat coloured, and the colours mixed with the plaster before laying on. According to his station in the State, the owner of a house may surround it with a wall of clay or lime, or with one of air-dried or fire-baked bricks. Only the walls of princes may have stone plinths. The encircling walls of imperial palaces have a roof of bright yellow, and light-green glazed tiles. The Tshao-Pings, or protecting walls, placed before the entrance doors of houses, like screens before our fire-places, have large protruding plinths. They differ in colour according to the rank of the owner. Generally they are white, with painted ornamentation. Before the houses or palaces of princes the colours are red with gold, and the covering green or yellow. Before Miaos, temples of honour, they are nearly always of bright yellow. The outer walls are mostly white, decorated with incrusted landscapes or other conventional decorations. The inner walls are red and richly ornamented with gold; they have a kind of frieze ornamented with trellis-work, so as apparently to detach the support from the supported roof. In the houses of the higher classes the walls are decorated with damask, and in those of the commoners with paper-hangings, which latter we have adopted. Drapery is also freely used, hanging down and serving to divide the interior spaces of the houses. Doors and windows are still formed of curtains, as in the primitive times of civilisation in Assyria, India, and Babylon.
We are all acquainted with the excellence of Chinese silk-weaving, interspersed with golden threads, as also with the brightness and originality of some of their patterns, whenever they keep to an imitation of nature in their floral forms. They are generally, however, too realistic, the material not unfrequently appearing like a botanist’s herbarium, or like a collection of butterflies or stuffed birds. Their embroidery is not less old than their silk-weaving. As early as 2205 B.C. in their statistical records (numbering about 4,768 volumes) gold, silver, copper, ivory, precious stones—five sorts of pigments of mineral extraction—silk, hemp, cotton, weavings of these materials, and the feathers of all sorts of birds are mentioned. The woven stuffs are of one colour. Silk is either red, black, white, or yellowish, weaving in colours not being known. The frequent mention made of birds’ feathers may serve as a proof that they were used for embroidery, which in primitive times was more an ‘opus plumarium’ than embroidery proper, which is the forerunner of the art of painting. Feather crowns, kilts, and dresses are still in use amongst the savages of our own times. The colours are given by nature, and suit the grotesque taste of the undisciplined mind by their bright variegations and incongruities.
The oldest Chinese embroidery in colours was perfectly plastic. The plants, flowers, animals, and even figures, formed a polychromatic relief on the flat surface of the stuff. This style is still fashionable in China, though, instead of feathers, artificially coloured threads are used, always so as to make the objects appear raised from the surface. Even at present life-size figures in relief, or whole scenes, are executed with the needle in brightly-coloured silk threads. We are here involuntarily reminded of the reliefs of Nineveh, and we may assume that they are nothing but a transformation of embroidery into stone or alabaster.
The dresses, furniture, saddles, tea-pots, shoes and boots, jackets, covers, weapons, doors, and windows of the Chinese are all ornamented with patterns which have had their origin in this kind of relief-embroidery, traces of which are found even in their lacquered and keramic products.
The roofs of their houses are curved and drawn up like their features; they are copies of lids of baskets, tea-caddies, urns, or of caps and hats. The protruding parts are richly ornamented with dragons. The dragon with the Chinese is the prototype out of which man developed; the dragon is therefore the symbol of the imperial power.
Whilst the Chinese are altogether deficient in painting, because they have no idea of perspective or shading, they certainly excel in the technical treatment of keramic works of art, especially in the paste, which they make of kaolin, a decomposed feldspathic granite. The forms of their genuine pottery are most primitive in outline; dishes, cups, plates, and bowls are cylindrically shaped, as are their bottles and jars. Our South Kensington Museum abounds in specimens illustrating this.
Sharp naturalism and an exact reproduction of the forms of nature, without any skill in the conventional treatment of flowers, creepers, leaves, stems, fruits, and animals, prevail in all Chinese and Japanese works. The artist, if he intends to work in the Chinese style, must divest himself of all considerations for the higher esthetical principles of art; he must stoop to the tastes and delights of children, must study thoroughly their every-day customs and manners, enter into their mode of thinking, try to make the quaint quainter, and the grotesque still more grotesque. A big sun with thick rays in a corner to the right; some sharply-drawn trees in the middle; a bridge up in the clouds with a dog running over it; some children with large heads playing to the left; a bright stream marked with rough waves, through which fishes are peeping; the whole excellently finished so far as the lacquered work goes—and a Chinese tray is complete. The coloured enamel on keramic works, and their lacquered or varnished ware, notwithstanding their unimaginative naturalism and monstrously fantastic delineation, surpass anything we are capable of producing in the West of Europe. Their magnificent folding-screens, trays, tubs, wash-hand basins, toilet-cases, work-tables, perfume-cases, frames for looking-glasses; their jewel-tables—full of little drawers, secret nooks and corners, puzzling openings, and hidden shuttings—are so many additional proofs of their childish nature. They use the fret, which they have in common with the Mexicans, Peruvians, and Greeks. Whilst, however, the latter arrived at a continuous system of fret ornamentation, the Chinese still use it mostly fragmentarily, either one link after the other, or one above the other, without forming a continuous ornament.
We see in the Chinese one of the most interesting phenomena in the history of mankind, whether we look upon them from a social, religious, or artistic point of view. They govern their State on paternal principle, and on the grand rule, ‘Do to another what you would he should do unto you, and do not unto another what you would not should be done unto you. Thou only needest this law alone; it is the foundation of all the rest’ (Confucius in the sixth century B.C.), and yet they have made no progress in sciences and arts. The paternal government and home-rule check every thought. A moral principle of the very highest meaning has, as with many of us, worked badly. They have done unto others what others have done unto them. They cheated because they were cheated; they told falsehoods because they were deceived by others; they were hypocritical because others were so too; and they robbed and plundered others, because they were robbed and plundered themselves. In this moral chaos they forgot to cultivate the intellectual force of reasoning; they thus further disturbed the already deranged equilibrium between morals and intellect. And though they had gunpowder before the West of Europe, it remained in the far East of Asia a mere toy to amuse young and old at festivals, whilst in the possession of Western Europe it became, next to the art of printing, the most powerful agent of civilisation. They had paper before the West of Europe; they knew how to print at least five centuries before Europe thought of re-inventing this Chinese invention. They are as polite, if not politer, than the most civilised Frenchman, and are witty and good-humoured. They have no fear of death; trade with the same skill and perseverance as we; cultivate the soil with even greater industry and ability than we; so that their territory, about equal in extent to the whole of Europe, looks like one great well-drained and irrigated garden, in which no spot which can yield some return for assiduous labour is left uncultivated. There is amongst the 400,000,000 of subjects of one single emperor not one who cannot read and write. All places in the administration are assigned after a severe competitive examination, and still they lack the capacity of self-conscious, independent reasoning both in science and art. They can paint a tiger-skin with such truthfulness that it appears a real skin, framed under glass; but in the conception and reproduction of the head of the ferocious brute, with its bloodthirsty jaws and its merciless cruelty, they altogether fail. They have an aversion to a proportionate division of space; they never attempt to counterbalance their artistic ideas, and to arrange them according to a law. They abhor spiritual, imaginary, and all higher intellectual culture to such a degree, that they concentrate all their powers on mere technicalities. Therefore they have remained stationary, whilst others, who began their self-conscious national existence thousands of years later, have left them far behind. The Chinese sacrifice everything to preconceived ideas of custom—in morals, science, and art. As our forefathers did, let us do also. The result of this principle has been that curious, grotesque, and ingenious, but above all childish art, which we must study as the link between savage and Aryan art. Whilst the Negro scarcely went beyond geometrical figures, we find the Turanian already capable of using plants and the lower kinds of animals in ornamentation, in addition to geometrical figures. As soon, however, as he approaches beings, in whom proportion, action, and expression, as the higher elements of form, prevail, he loses his power of reproduction altogether.
Matter-of-fact prose is the element of the Turanian; he is without every higher artistic feeling, because his mode of writing, speaking, and thinking, his religious, social, and political organisation, has till lately checked all expansion of the imagination, and the use of the intellectual faculties. Art with him has remained undeveloped, and however interesting his products may be, they form only a subject for our curiosity and perhaps momentary fashion, showing what humanity at large did when in its infancy.