it can be arranged in
what I may call a pentatonic scale of culture. You may be aware that
all musical scales of all savage and barbarous and primitive tribes
are not in the octave, as ours, but in five notes only; they all have
one musical scale only, and that is a pentatonic scale; and it is
perhaps because they feel that their own minds are based upon some
such arrangement as that (although that is an idea which I do not
subscribe to, but only suggest); but when we come to look over the
whole cycle of culture, as we find it described in the histories of
culture--in the histories of civilization--we find that they are all
efforts to develop one or the other, or several, of five primary ideas
which are in the mind of every human being; and when they are
developed, then culture is perfect, either in the individual or in the
nation or the race. These five primitive ideas, innate in every human
soul, are the ideas of the useful, of the beautiful, of the just, of
the good and of the true, and you will not find any savage (provided
he is not deficient in the ordinary mental ability of his tribe) who
does not indicate an appreciation of every one of these in his own
way. It is the idea of the useful which teaches him his utilitarian
arts; which teaches him to build his house; to chip the flint for his
weapon; to sharpen the stick to dig the place to drop the seed; and
all those we call the arts of utility, the useful arts; and yet you
will not find a savage tribe to-day but what goes somewhat above this;
because among them all they make also an effort that these tools and
weapons of theirs shall have some sign about them of the beautiful;
and you will find decoration--indeed, "the painted savage" is a name
we give to the lowest order of humanity; yet this same paint is to
make himself beautiful; and so it is throughout all his games and
amusements in life--you will find he is constantly striving at the
idea of decoration--at the idea of beauty; little by little he
develops this, until it becomes, in some nations, the joy of their
existence and the lesson of the race, as in the ancient Greeks; as in
the Italians of the time of the Renaissance. These are what we call
the aesthetic emotions, based upon an innate sense and love of the
beautiful: and we may also turn to the lowest savage--we shall not
find him deficient in justice; on the contrary, among the rudest
Australians, without shelter or clothing, you will find that the