II. Wherein is attempted a survey of the Art of Antiquity-and an explanation of the terms Classic, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Humanism.

It is the habit of the professor to begin his theories on art by some such statement as that the first need of the human being was to clothe himself, and fashion tools and weapons and shelter against the fury of the elements and wild nature-that he had to become industrious before he became an artist.

The professor says this because he mistakes Art to be a painting on a canvas in a gold frame, or a piece of sculpture, or the like. In such case his platitudes would be true enough. As a matter of fact, Art was as overwhelming a need of the human being from the very first as was his need for industry. Man, as an intelligent being, has created Art from the beginning-probably as soon as he discovered the need for industry. From the day that, having stepped down from the branch of a tree and stood up, on his hind legs, and discovered himself the Thinking Thing, Art was at its dawning. From the tree to his wild cave, whence he slowly began to forgather in the valley to his tribal councils against wild animals and other enemies, and to rally for his hunting ; from the moment that he desired communion with his fellows, then Art was born. For, just as by his rude speech he sought communion with their thoughts, so by means of his rude arts he essayed to make his fellows feel what he had felt by getting to their senses what his own senses had experienced.

'Twas like enough that song and dance and the telling of tales were his first forms of art ; but early in his rude days he scratched upon the reindeer's bone and upon the [9] walls of his cave the impressions of life as he felt them ; and decorated himself and his belongings to impress others with his barbaric dignities and ambitions. And just as in tale-telling and song and dance he roused his fellows to feel what he felt ; so he soon came to putting colours upon the rude drawings and sculpturings that his hand essayed, so that his fellows should feel through their sense of vision what his own eyes experienced. And the art of painting was born.

Therefore, when the professors, splitting hairs, tell us that art has this difference from man's other activities, in that it is not for utility, he is thinking of palaces and gorgeous paintings in elaborate frames, and the like ; but art is deeper than this, and is not only an utility but an absolute necessity of life. To the luxurious, art may be made a luxury ; but luxurious art is not the highest form of art. And to conceive of Art as a luxury or a diversion is to miss its whole significance. The moment Art becomes a luxury or a mere diversion it is in decay ; and the significance has gone out of it. One might as wisely say that Cleopatra dead is as significant as Cleopatra alive-the beautiful body is there, but the wondrous miracle has departed from it. The whole falsity about art is created by the fact that the professors only seem to discover works of art when they are in decay.

So, it is likely enough, our first rude ancestors came to apply the recording of their emotions, the utterance of their sensations, to the glorification of those deep and awful feelings of man that seek utterance in religion ; and the carved and moulded gods were raised upon the rude altars of their fantastic faiths, and colours were plastered upon wall and god and idol to enhance the wild emotions of awe roused by their faith.

[10] For painting, mark you, was not of necessity a flat art, but employed in the round as well.

Thence through the Stone Age, when man knew no metals, but lived in lake-dwellings, and built the mighty stone blocks upon the earth, and began to know the sowing of corn and the reaping and harvesting, and the taming of animals that went to make his flocks and herds, and forthwith discovered flax for the weaving of his garments ; thence he came to the moulding of gold and copper, the first metals he employed ; thence to tin ; on until he discovered how to fuse tin and copper into bronze, which thrust him forward on his upward wayfaring ; until he stood but a thousand years before the coming of the Christ, the arts were increasing with the increasing range of man's upward striving.

The Egyptians, long before they used bronze and iron, were turning pots and painting them; and before the Pharaohs came, bringing to the banks of the Nile the use of metals, Egypt was painting the human figure and animals, in rude fashion. The Pharaohs came to govern the land some four thousand five hundred years before Christ, and under them Egypt became the first people of the earth to raise great buildings of stone, and employed therein and in sculpture a skill that has never been surpassed. And the walls of their ancient tombs were wrought with paintings, essaying to utter every phase of life-royal victories, religious adoration and rites, the acts of daily life, the soul's journeying to the place of the dead. Landscape is used for backgrounds, if rude enough and lacking as to perspective. Painting was mere colouring, 'tis true, without sense of light and shade. But to the Egyptian the vast mystery of Eternity ever loomed before all else-for Eternity he wrought his arts, whether the mighty pyramids, the sculptured sphinxes, and vasty temples ; for Eternity he embalmed his dead.

[11] Side by side with Egypt the Chaldeans wrought by the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates, and their peoples, the Babylonians and Assyrians, after them, wrought paintings and coloured friezes glorifying strength and power and brute force, that found their outlet in cruel delights, bloody butcheries in war, brutal revenges, barbarous huntings and slayings. And it was from Chaldæa-from these Assyrians -that the Greeks, and from the Greeks the modern world, received the winged bodies of men and animals so dear to the decorative instinct of the ages.

It was in Chaldæa and Egypt, then, that what art of painting there was, flourished before the Greek.