arts have
a single origin and are spread by contagion (acculturation), or are
invented independently by many people who have the same tasks to
perform, and the same or similar materials at hand (parallelism).
Lippert[227] says that "the different modes of fashioning flint
arrowheads show us that we must not think of the earliest art as all
tied to a single tradition, and carried away from this. On the contrary,
human ingenuity has set about accomplishing the acts which are necessary
for the struggle for existence in different places, with the elements
there at hand." We have seen above that the materials may, from their
character, so limit and condition the operations of manufacture as to
set lines for the development of the art. If the processes of the men
are also limited and conditioned by the nature of human nerves and
muscles so that they must run on certain lines, it would follow that the
human mind also, in face of a certain problem, will fall into
conditioned modes of activity, and we should approach the doctrine that
men must think the same thoughts by way of mental reaction on the same
experiences and observations.

The facts, however, show that an art, beginning in the rudest way, is
produced along lines of concurrent effort, and is the common property
of the group. All practice it as it is, and all are unconsciously
cooperating to improve it. The processes are folkways. The artifacts are
tools and weapons which, by their utility, modify the folkways and
become components in them. The skill, dexterity, patience, ingenuity,
and power of combination which result are wider and higher possessions
which also modify the folkways at later stages of effort. The
generalizations of truth and right widen at every stage, and produce a
theory of welfare, which must be recognized as such, no matter how rude
it may be. It consists in the application of the notions of goblinism as
they are prevalent at the time in the group. The art itself is built up
by folkways according to their character as everywhere exhibited, for
arts are modes of providing for human necessities by processes and
devices which can be universally taught, and can be handed down forever.
The arts of an isolated group run against limits, even if the group has
great ingenuity, as we see in the case of China. It is when arts are
developed by give and take between groups that they reach their highest
development. The wider the area over which the cooperation