SCULPTURE AND MODELLING.
The earliest indications of the imitative art of the sculptor come down to us from the "reindeer period " of Western Europe. They are repre sentations of this and other animals rudely chiselled from pieces of its Horns. Probably the oldest of all known human figures is a little stat uette of this material in the collection of Vibraye, and it is significant of the inspiration of art through all time, to which we have already alluded (see p. 120), that it is the figure of a female, so distinctly pro nounced that it has received the classical appellation, " ['outs imp uiiczts." The passage from this rude and obscene little image up to the noble pro pations, the discreet drapery, and the godlike expression of the Venus of Milo, marks the progress of the sculptor's art, ever impelled by the haunt ing dreams of womanly charms.
Egyfitian way was long, and many cycles and many nations had to run their careers before its goal was reached. Thousands of years elapsed before the artist could free himself from the fetters of the material in which he worked. The prohibition of innovations in ancient Egypt probably checked what would have been brilliant' progress there, for the finest examples of their work are the oldest. The celebrated " wooden man " preserved in the museum of Boolak is believed to have been carved nearly four thousand years before the Christian era, and yet the body is admirably modelled and the head life-like. In later Egyptian works it is not equalled, and although the artists acquired surprising efficiency in carving stone, the limbs of their statues were not developed as independent members, but remained attached throughout a part or the whole of their length to the body or to the matrix. This is also the cha racter of the Assyrian and early Cypriote work. Anatomy was little regarded, and grace of position not at all. Only in the hands of Greek sculptors did the art reach the degree of perfection which satisfied the trained resthetic sense.
Native American highest development of this art in the New World did not attain the level of that of Egypt in its earliest recorded dynasties. There has been no statue of any material discovered in America equal on its artistic side to the "wooden man" above mentioned. With considerable skill in technique, the Americans fell far away from the higher ideals of art, even when, as in modelling in clay, they had entire command of the material. This is nearly as true of the most cultivated nations as of those of ruder lives. The severe judgment of the Carthusian, De Salazar, who spent several years in Mexico about 155o, when numerous remains of its native arts were extant, is almost borne out by the collections of archze ologists: "Of all the carvings and images I saw among those Western peo ples, whether in wood or stone or gold or silver or bone or any other sub stance, I have not seen one but was disagreeable, ugly, and, to speak plainly, diabolical; although I am by no means insensible to the beauties of the equally heathen statues of the ancient Greeks and Romans." When
in our own century such an eminent critic of art as Wilhelm von Hum boldt expresses himself of the Aztec productions in words almost as sweep ing, we are obliged to deny to those nations the gift of the conception of ideal beauty and harmonic proportion.
Secret of Greek. art, be it remembered, in its highest expressions does not mean mere superior technical skill, nor simply exact and faithful imitation of nature. Its products must possess something which brings the observer into unison with the mood of the artist in his moments of creation, thus establishing a sympathy of soul based on uni versal and ever-living sentiments. This was the secret of Greek art, and this is why it holds its sway over the cultured mind when the more math ematically accurate productions of modern studios leave it cold. In the psychology of nations there are few more instructive contrasts than are presented by their relative appreciation of art in this its highest definition.
Prohibitions of Artistic Studies.—Plato tells us that the Egyptian designers "were forbidden to select any new subjects or to invent any new methods;" and we have seen how completely these restrictions blighted the opening flowers of plastic and glyptic art in that nation. But it was not merely dwarfed, it was wholly rooted out, in several of the most intelligent communities of the ancient world. Time command, "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor the likeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth" (Ex. xx.), came to the Israelites with the most solemn surroundings of a divine mandate; and thought it is not easy to-recon cile it with the practice of placing the figures of the cherubim in the temple and with the work of artists, such as "Bezaleel the son of Uri," cunning " in cutting of stones for setting, and iu carving of wood, to work in all manner of workmanship" (Ex. xxxi.), unquestionably this nation was prevented from any general practice of modelling or carving. The Persians, who also regarded all images of a religious character as evidences of impiety, retro graded from the height attained by the Assyrian sculptors, and their pro ductions, always of a secular character, were never marked by taste nor by an improved technique. Inheriting or adapting the Hebrew hatred of idol-worship, Mohammed extended the prohibition against images even to painting, and throughout the varied nations which in time adopted the religion he founded there are no representations of animal forms by ally means known to art. The iconoclastic sects which have at times arisen in the Christian Church, and the influence of the widespread Greek ritual and doctrines forbidding statues (although permitting pictures), have acted as serious drawbacks to this beautiful expression of the esthetic sense exerting its legitimate influence on the development of the race.