ter adapted
to both the purposes and materials of savages than the art which aims at
representation. As a rule, the materials of the lower savages are their
own bodies (which they naturally desire to make beautiful for ever by
tattooing), and the hard substances of which they fashion their tools and
weapons. These hard substances, when worked on with cutting instruments
of stone or shell, are most easily adorned with straight cut lines, and
spirals are therefore found to be, on the whole, a comparatively late
form of ornament.

[Fig. 7. Bushman Dog: 290.jpg]

We have now to discuss the efforts of the savage to represent. Here,
again, we have to consider the purpose which animates him, and the
materials which are at his service. His pictures have a practical
purpose, and do not spring from what we are apt, perhaps too hastily, to
consider the innate love of imitation for its own sake. In modern art,
in modern times, no doubt the desire to imitate nature, by painting or
sculpture, has become almost an innate impulse, an in-born instinct. But
there must be some 'reason why' for this; and it does not seem at all
unlikely that we inherit the love, the disinterested love, of imitative
art from very remote ancestors, whose habits of imitation had a direct,
interested, and practical purpose. The member of Parliament who mimics
the crowing of a cock during debate, or the street boy who beguiles his
leisure by barking like a dog, has a disinterested pleasure in the
exercise of his skill; but advanced thinkers seem pretty well agreed that
the first men who imitated the voices of dogs, and cocks, and other
animals, did not do so merely for fun, but with the practical purpose of
indicating to their companions the approach of these creatures. Such
were the rude beginnings of human language: and whether that theory be
correct or not, there are certainly practical reasons which impel the
savage to attempt imitative art. I doubt if there are many savage races
which do not use representative art for the purposes of writing--that is,
to communicate information to persons whom they cannot reach by the
voice, and to assist the memory, which, in a savage, is perhaps not very
strong. To take examples. A savage man meets a savage maid. She does
not speak his language, nor he hers. How are they to know whether,
according to the marriage laws of their race, they are lawful mates for
each other? This important question is settled