n the vast animal
kingdom as a whole, and in connection with the great theory of
evolution.

This primitive act of perception, the radical cause and genesis of all
mythical representations, and the physical and intellectual condition of
science itself, is also one of the factors and the aesthetic germ of all
the arts. The constraining power which generates the intentional
subjectivity of the phenomenon, and the entification of images, ideas,
and numerous normal and abnormal appearances, also unconsciously impels
man to project the image into a design, a sculpture, or a monument.
Since an idea or emotion naturally tends, as we have seen, to take an
external form in speech, gesture, or some other outward fact; so also it
tends to manifest itself materially and by means of various arts, and to
take the permanent form of some object. It is embodied in this way, as
it was embodied in fetishes in the way described in the foregoing
chapters. Owing to this innate cause, and by the instinct of imitation
which results from it, children as well as savages always attempt some
rude sketch of natural objects, or of the fanciful images to which they
have given rise. Drawings of animals and some other objects are found
among the lowest savages, such as the Tasmanians and Australians. Nor is
this fact peculiar to the lower historic races, and to those which are
still in existence, but it is also to be found in the dwellings and
remains of prehistoric man; carvings on stone of very ancient date have
been found, coeval with extinct and fossil animals, prior to the age of
our flora and fauna and to the present conformation of land and water.
There are many clear proofs of the extreme antiquity of the primitive
impulse to imitative arts. A stag's meta-tarsal bone, on which there was
a carving of two ruminants, was found in the cave of Savigny: in a cave
at Eyzies there was a fragmentary carving of two animals on two slabs of
schist; at La Madelaine there were found two so-called staves of office,
on which were representations of a horse, of reindeer, cattle, and other
animals; two outlines of men, one of a fore-arm, and one of a naked man
in a stooping position, with a short staff on his shoulder; there is
also the outline of a mammoth on a sheet of ivory; a statuette of a thin
woman without arms, found by M. Vibraye at Laugerie-Basse, and known by
the name of the immodest Venus; a drawing representing a man, or
so-called hunter, armed with