uestion whether man has ever lifted up his heart
in a grander one.

Space would fail me if I now sought to carry you off to the cave of
Altamira, near Santander, in the north-west of Spain. Here you might
see at its best a still later style of rock-painting, which deserts
mere black and white for colour-shading of the most free description.
Indeed, it is almost too free, in my judgment; for, though the control
of the artist over his rude material is complete, he is inclined to
turn his back on real life, forcing the animal forms into attitudes
more striking than natural, and endowing their faces sometimes, as
it seems to me, with almost human expressions. Whatever may be thought
of the likelihood of these beasts being portrayed to look like men,
certain it is that in the painted caves of this period the men almost
invariably have animal heads, as if they were mythological beings,
half animal and half human; or else--as perhaps is more
probable--masked dancers. At one place, however--namely, in the rock
shelter of Cogul near Lerida, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees,
we have a picture of a group of women dancers who are not masked, but
attired in the style of the hour. They wear high hats or chignons,
tight waists, and bell-shaped skirts. Really, considering that we thus
have a contemporary fashion-plate, so to say, whilst there are likewise
the numerous stencilled hands elsewhere on view, and even, as I have
seen with my own eyes at Niaux in the sandy floor, hardened over with
stalagmite, the actual print of a foot, we are brought very near to
our palaeolithic forerunners; though indefinite ages part them from
us if we reckon by sheer time.

* * * * *

Before ending this chapter, I have still to make good a promise to
say something about the neolithic men of western Europe. These people
often, though not always, polished their stone; the palaeolithic folk
did not. That is the distinguishing mark by which the world is pleased
to go. It would be fatal to forget, however, that, with this trifling
difference, go many others which testify more clearly to the contrast
between the older and newer types of culture. Thus it has still to
be proved that the palaeolithic races ever used pottery, or that they
domesticated animals--for instance, the fat ponies which they were
so fond of eating; or that they planted crops. All these things did
the neolithic peoples sooner or later; so that it would